When Your Kids' Childhood Doesn't Look Like Your Own

Dan and I have been talking a lot lately about what we want for our kids and what is currently lacking. This conversation revolves a great deal around our neighborhood--there are very few kids, and I wouldn't ever send Auggie and Eland out to play around the neighborhood by themselves.

My childhood was fairly different than Auggie and Eland's. I grew up on a block with tons of kids. We'd have Super Soaker fights on hot summer days, we'd play tag through multiple backyards, jumping fences and chasing behind garages. Plenty of afternoons were spent drinking Kool-aid (which I would never feed my kids! Ha!) and watching Batman cartoons at friends' houses. Supposedly Dan's mom used to have a big triangle that she'd ring outside at dinnertime and that's how he and his sister knew it was time to head home from whatever they were doing with their friends.

Is it okay that my kids' childhood is going to be entirely different than my own? In discussing what we want for our kids (to be able to set them loose, let them run around the neighborhood, ride bikes, have fun, etc etc), Dan and I are realizing that our desires for them are not possible where we live. Our street isn't busy, but it does have a hill with a corner at the bottom and cars tend to whip around the corner which is one house up from ours. Auggie and Eland would not be safe riding bikes on the street.

As I mentioned before, there really are few neighborhood kids. There are two houses with two kids each around the corner, but they are in the middle or end of elementary school and aren't Auggie's and Eland's ages, and one more house way up the street with three kids who are even older. And supposedly there's a little boy down the street from us who might be in between the boys age-wise, but I haven't even seen a glimpse of him since we moved back from South Africa.

And what about sports? Piano lessons? Classes at the local park district? (Do we even have one?) I played T-ball for three or four years, loved floor hockey, and swam on the swim team, but my kids don't even know how to swim! (Okay, so I'm probably to blame there. Top priority this summer..)

So I'm still wondering if it's okay that my kids' childhood experience is going to be so different than mine or Dan's. We both want what we had for our kids--because it was really fun and I think it fostered creative thinking and independence--but are realizing that their childhood is ultimately going to look vastly different than ours. I'm afraid of them not having enough socialization, or that they won't play enough sports. Although I have to admit that Auggie is only 5 and isn't even in Kindergarden yet. We do have plenty of time to work things out.

If I look at things from a different point of view, though, I am realizing that while Auggie and Eland's childhood will look different than Dan's and mine, theirs will still be uniquely their own and have plenty of great aspects, too. For one, every once and awhile on a Sunday afternoon after church Dan will take the boys rappelling off of a nearby dry waterfall. Pretty much every weekend they spend at least one day tramping through the wilderness, building racecourses in the dirt for their monster trucks, and even attempt some rock climbing. They love playing outside in our backyard and get plenty imaginative with the bikes, cars, trucks, and sandbox. We go camping a lot. I hope to tear out some useless bushes this spring and construct some raised-bed gardens so that the boys and I can grow veggies. (We already started an indoor potted winter garden this weekend.) Dan takes the boys "mountain biking" in the flatter trails near our house after work every once and awhile. And they do have plenty of playdates with kids who happen to live all over the city rather than right in our own neighborhood.

That said, thinking about their childhood as different from my own is a bit challenging to adjust to. I'm still not thrilled, but at the same time, I keep reminding myself that it will be uniquely theirs. They will carry their own rich memories of childhood--whatever they may be. I will just need to get over guilty feelings of things not being perfect or exactly the way I want them to be. Their childhood could actually be a lot better than mine. And I guess we'll just have to invite friends over for intentional Super Soaker fights. That's okay, right?