Up to the Challenge

In the evening

In the comments pertaining to my last post, Jess asks:

I’ve been wondering…has there ever been a time where one of your boys has requested something material that was against your values? How would you handle such a request?

The subjects of children and wanting and stuff and having and contentment get an awful lot of play around here. Over the years, we have been extremely aware – some might even say uptight – regarding our sons’ exposure to material goods and, by extension, the expectations that develop around having and wanting “stuff.” From a very early age – from birth, really – we’ve insisted on retaining a high degree of control over what they are gifted and, via our own consumptive habits, what is modeled in regards to the accumulation of material goods.

I say this as a prelude to answering Jess’s specific questions, because I think it’s important to provide some context, which could be described Penny and me being extremely conscious regarding our sons’ exposure to material consumption. An alternate view might be that Penny and I are totalitarian hard asses who will never be forgiven once our kids figure out how the rest of their culture lives.

So. Onto the questions at hand. Have our boys ever requested something material that was against our values? Well, sort of. I mean, they’ve never asked for an Xbox or a flat screen TV or an iPhone, or anything like that. They’re just not into these things, so we haven’t been faced with the challenge of navigating such requests. Likewise, they’re not interested in new clothing (the looove it when Penny comes home from the thrift store with some camo or anything woolen), or plastic toys, or electronic gadgets, or many of the other accoutrements of modern childhood.

But that’s not to say we haven’t been faced with the scenario Jess mentions. The two most glaring examples I can think of are guns and traps. We did not think of ourselves as a “gun family” (whatever that means), but the boys’ desire to hunt forced us to examine our assumptions about what gun ownership meant to us. Ditto trapping. In fact, in my upcoming book about unschooling and parenting and whatnot, I have an entire chapter on trapping, simply because it was such a watershed moment for our family.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Fin and Rye have never asked for the sort of plasticized and digitized goodies that are so prevalent across pretty much all age groups and socioeconomic strata. Part of this, I’m sure, is that they just haven’t had a lot of exposure to this stuff, but I suspect another less flattering part of it is that they know with absolute certainty that it just ain’t gonna happen. In many ways, Penny and I are the most permissive parents I know. In others, we are the strictest. This is one of the ways in which we might be considered strict, although owing to the aforementioned fact that Fin and Rye simply don’t care about this stuff, I’m pretty sure our sons don’t view us in this light. Pretty sure.

When Fin and Rye have asked for material goods that challenge Penny’s and my notion of what is right and wrong, we have done our level best to educate ourselves on the matter at hand. In both of the above examples (guns and trapping), we were confronted with the uncomfortable truth that our preconceived notions, while not necessarily being wrong in and of themselves, did not tell the whole story. And so we have guns. And so our sons trap. The whole subject of parents learning from their children is probably worthy of a post, itself.

Finally, I wish to point out that we go to great lengths to model contentment with the relative dearth of “stuff” in our adult lives, and also to ensure that the boys do not feel bereft. In my Christmas post, I neglected to mention our efforts with the homemade advent calendar Penny made many years ago, and how for every one of 21 mornings leading up to the winter solstice, the boys come downstairs to find a little note in the calendar pocket that corresponds to the day. And what does the note say? Why, it tells them where to find some little goodie or another. Today, it was a pair of oranges. Sometimes, it’s cookies, or a package of fishhooks. It’s never much, but it’s always something, and it always delights them. This morning, the boys ate their oranges with such enthusiasm a casual onlooker might wonder if they hadn’t eaten an orange in a year. Which, in fact, they hadn’t.

My general belief is that in some regards, children need so much less than what they’ve become accustomed to getting. And that in other regards, they need so much more. The things that kids need less of can be bought, and that makes them relatively easy to procure. Meanwhile, the things they need more of cannot be purchased at any price because, in fact, they are free. Ironically, this makes them even harder to come by.

I’ll tell ya what, though: If you’ve read this far, you’re up to the challenge.