Community Parenting
One of the blogs that I read is Woulda Coulda Shoulda by Mir. I love the way she shares her life. She entertains me and makes me cry alternately. I enjoy her posts and I’m always dissapointed when she misses the occasional day. She recently got married and moved from New England to Georgia. Today her post was about the experience of having children living right in her neighborhood. She’s not used to it. She’s especially not used to having what she calls “feral children” living nearby. These are the kids who always show up asking to play, asking to be fed, needing attention, and the parents seem to be nowhere around.
I read Mir’s post and I almost commented. That is unusual for me because I’m a lurker by nature. I wanted to share the joy that I have found living in a neighborhood full of children. I love that my kids can trot themselves two houses away to play with a friend. I love that these friends come over here as well. But then I realized that my spouting about my neighborhood wouldn’t be all that helpful to Mir. The situations are very different. My neighborhood is full of kids whose parents keep track of them. I know most of these parents. I know that if little Charlie shows up at my door to ask to play with Gleek, he probably did so without telling his mom where he went and that I need to send him home to ask his mom first. I know that if little Lucy shows up at my door I need to step out and wave to her mom who is standing on the porch waiting for me to do just that. There is a whole network of relationships built up over 9 years of living in the same place with mostly the same people. There are houses where my kids are not allowed to play because I don’t trust the level of supervision there. There are houses where I’ll let my kids play during the day, but I’d never consider a sleep over. I know which houses welcome kids who show up at the door and which houses really prefer to recieve a call first.
We do have some feral kids in the neighborhood, but there are enough families around that we can take care of them. I am not shy about stating the rules for my house and bouncing a kid who can’t follow the rules. It hasn’t been much of a problem. Mostly children who are feral are so glad to find a structured place that they’ll happily follow rules in order to be allowed to stay and to be fed. It does get annoying sometimes. Non-feral children get annoying sometimes. Even my own kids are sometimes annoying. But My House, My Rules, seems to work pretty well.
I wonder if I lived next door to Mir whether she would consider my kids feral. I know that my kids try to invite themselves over frequently. I know that they ask for food in other people’s homes. I try to teach them to be polite and not invite themselves, but it is hard. I feed neighbor kids all the time and have just kind of assumed that’s normal around here. Do other people look at my occasionally ragamuffin kids and wonder where their parents are? I think we fit in here in Utah. We aren’t the over protective family nor the permissive one. I wonder how different it would be in a place that is not Utah.
I think that while the definition of “good parent” is probably pretty much the same all over the country, the expression of it can be drastically different. There are people who do not believe they can be a good parent unless they buy their child designer clothes and a private education. There are people who believe that good parents fill their child’s time with activities. There are people who believe that good parents don’t over schedule their kids. Each community develops a consensus about how children should be raised. (Note: not all neighborhoods are communities. “Community” implies a network of relationships between the people. Some neighborhoods are just places where people happen to live next door. My neighborhood is very much a community with all the benefits and frustrations that small communities always embody.) My parenting style fits my community’s image of “good parent.” But if I were to change communities I might not find so much acceptance and that would be hard.
I believe that Mir will sort it out. That she’ll be able to establish boundaries and build the relationships she needs to be happy in her new home. I just hope that the community into which she has moved is flexible enough to accept her for who she is and that they can see she is a good parent even if it is expressed differently from the ways they are accustomed to.