When Gen X writers started writing YA novels, we kept hearing, "Where are the parents? Why are the parents so absent from YA?" One reason was: that's how we grew up. Then we also had to learn how to write for a younger generation whose parents are around much more.
Schools back then also didn't expect parents to be nearly as involved as they do now. There was one "open house" per year where parents could talk to teachers, and there was an award ceremony and graduation, but parents were not expected to constantly show up at school during the day, nor to monitor every assignment, nor to prepare special outfits for theme days.
On the downside, bullying was also seen as "just the way things were." We were expected to tough it out, and it wasn't taken seriously by most adults.
But I will never regret having free hours that I had to figure out for myself how to spend. I will never regret having to decide for myself how to schedule my own homework-doing and term-paper-writing, and I'll always be glad for those "let's play in the woods until dinnertime" days. If I had every hour scheduled for me, the way kids often do now, I would've been miserable.
"there is no one moment when you “grow up.” Nah. It’s an ongoing process, a bunch of little moments and things." -- Absolutely!
Also add the fact that kids are not given enough unplanned time to get bored and have to figure out how to get themselves UNbored. There are important life skills to that too.
Loved this. It's part of the reason we moved to where we are — the kids are absolutely feral here, and we cherished that freedom (and problem-solving) when we were kids. Good work, Bill!
As I was reading your post, I reminded of what both of my daughters had to say about various people in the different European countries. They both said, on separate occasions that people, "smoked like chimneys, drank like fish, and partied like rock stars", and still led healthier and happier lives. I was reminded why I became so protective of my daughters when they were little. GMA had an interview with a man named Callahan Walsh about protecting children from stranger abduction after a 9-year-old child was found safe. I Googled Callahan Walsh and found out he's the son of John Walsh, the longtime host of "America's Most Wanted" and one of the authors of the "Missing and Exploited Children's" law. All of this came about because of the kidnapping and killing of Adam Walsh, the oldest child of the Walsh's. That incident happened shortly after my older daughter was born and, soon, attention was brought to many other child abductions which were happening nationwide at that time. Being a Boomer, I was a latchkey kid before the term became fashionable. I walked home from school to an empty unlocked house with the windows left open. My Mom was one of the few Moms who worked during the Baby Boomer generation, so it wasn't unusual for me to go outside all the time and play unsupervised by adults. Due to a distinct lack of technology, we had to communicate the old-fashioned way, with our voices and our actions. Those were some great days! Take care.
Similar childhood in the 60s. Days spent off in our bikes, exploring and doing who knows what. Developing suburb, lots of half built houses to crawl around in after school. Complete with a woodsy swamp! No quicksand, though I did lose some new shoes in mud at a Halloween event at age 13. My mom DID find out, I was in trouble! Amazing that your walking stick grew into a tree.
What a wonderful essay, moving from the micro to the macro like you did. My favorite part is that Bill had no memory of his heroics. This prompted ME to remember why I am so invested in staying in touch with friends from all stages of my life. Their memories and experience of not just events but of ME can vary from my own memories in stark and dramatic ways. The perspective these friendship-yardsticks provide help me understand myself better and better as the years go by.
This brought back memories! Never got stuck in mud but me and my brother used to run wild with our friends over two patches of common land, one that had unexploded ordnance in it (it was used as a military training ground in WW1, we used to pick up spent bullet casings all the time and one day our school was evacuated when the farmer dug up a live bomb) and the other was an old quarry with most of the workings slowly rusting away. Ah the times we spent constructing rafts to paddle out to decrepit dumper trucks that had been abandoned in the 'lake'! How the hell we didn't get lockjaw at the very least is beyond me, but as you said, we figured things out if we got stuck - calling an adult for help was the last thing we wanted to do. Our parents never knew the half of it, but they trusted us not to be (too) stupid. My brother has tried to instill his son with the same rambunctiousness as our childhood but these truly are different times. Fewer open spaces to play replaced by far more sanitised/commodified 'opportunities', and as you pointed out, a totally different mindset encouraged by social media. My nephew is always shocked by our tales of childhood but then he can't imagine a world pre-mobile phone...
Different suburb, but our Mud Island was The Woods (clever). It was maybe a dozen acres still undeveloped but... there was a mental hospital deep inside! One day we walked all the way there but as we got near there a man came charging at us screaming. Well you have never seen kids run so fast. It was the talk of the school for weeks. Never found out if he had been an escapee. Of course, many other memories of playing there.
I was also raised in the suburbs of a major city and me and my friends always played in the woods and creek and never had any issues with molesters and we did work out our issues together. Thanks for this reminder, also had some fun in those woods as a teenager...lol
You *actually experienced* the nightmare of every 70s kid -- quicksand -- and lived to tell the tale! We had a natural creek like this near my house we used to play in all the time, hunting for tadpoles and frogs and snakes... this is such a great reminder, as I have a son who just turned 10 and so I feel all the feels of what you're writing about here. And, it's not too late for him to experience things that aren't a digital abstractions. I'd like to say we do a pretty good job of that -- he's always loved playing in our backyard, and getting out in nature more than being inside. (But he does love his Roblox games, because he gets to play those with friends.) This is what I needed to hear today, though.
Oct 10, 2023·edited Oct 10, 2023Liked by Brent Hartinger
I don't know what's worse: helicopter parenting or never being allowed to be terrible at something and failing without fanfare. And I don't understand why a "graduation ceremony" is necessary after each grade. I am totally not qualified to be around kids or the parents who are raising them today. This was such a great read on so many levels. There is much to be said about being a kid, learning resiliency ,and what it's like to have genuine friends while growing up.
Same kind of childhood - and then there was the time a friend and I (4th graders) lit a fire to roast hot dogs and roasted about 1/2 acre which quickly swept up a hill toward a neighborhood. Grounded for a month, visit from the fire chief, but a bit of a badge of honor with the guys.
Amen! Life was even more free range in the Fifties. There was always a Mom somewhere as we all played in each others' yards. There were limits, like I couldn't ride my bike anywhere but Redondo, and when Dad caught me one street over, the bike was locked up for a week. But Moms would push us out the door after breakfast. We'd eat lunch then outside again. Every adult was familiar and safe. The only stranger that ventured into the neighborhood one day was leading a pony on a lead line and he took pictures of all of us sitting on this pony. I still have that picture.
I just wanted to let you know I've finished reading both "The Order of the Poison Oak" and "Split Screen". In fact, I had "Split Screen" with me when I met some former colleagues for lunch. My one colleague, a high school English teacher, thought you had a unique and great idea to write the same story from 2 characters' different viewpoints. I told her about reading "Geography Club" years ago and about the movie (which I'm now watching for a 4th. time!) and she thought another great idea would be to make the rest of the Russel Middlebrook series into movies. I wholeheartedly agree! Take care.
When Gen X writers started writing YA novels, we kept hearing, "Where are the parents? Why are the parents so absent from YA?" One reason was: that's how we grew up. Then we also had to learn how to write for a younger generation whose parents are around much more.
Schools back then also didn't expect parents to be nearly as involved as they do now. There was one "open house" per year where parents could talk to teachers, and there was an award ceremony and graduation, but parents were not expected to constantly show up at school during the day, nor to monitor every assignment, nor to prepare special outfits for theme days.
On the downside, bullying was also seen as "just the way things were." We were expected to tough it out, and it wasn't taken seriously by most adults.
But I will never regret having free hours that I had to figure out for myself how to spend. I will never regret having to decide for myself how to schedule my own homework-doing and term-paper-writing, and I'll always be glad for those "let's play in the woods until dinnertime" days. If I had every hour scheduled for me, the way kids often do now, I would've been miserable.
"there is no one moment when you “grow up.” Nah. It’s an ongoing process, a bunch of little moments and things." -- Absolutely!
Also add the fact that kids are not given enough unplanned time to get bored and have to figure out how to get themselves UNbored. There are important life skills to that too.
Loved this. It's part of the reason we moved to where we are — the kids are absolutely feral here, and we cherished that freedom (and problem-solving) when we were kids. Good work, Bill!
Dear Brent:
As I was reading your post, I reminded of what both of my daughters had to say about various people in the different European countries. They both said, on separate occasions that people, "smoked like chimneys, drank like fish, and partied like rock stars", and still led healthier and happier lives. I was reminded why I became so protective of my daughters when they were little. GMA had an interview with a man named Callahan Walsh about protecting children from stranger abduction after a 9-year-old child was found safe. I Googled Callahan Walsh and found out he's the son of John Walsh, the longtime host of "America's Most Wanted" and one of the authors of the "Missing and Exploited Children's" law. All of this came about because of the kidnapping and killing of Adam Walsh, the oldest child of the Walsh's. That incident happened shortly after my older daughter was born and, soon, attention was brought to many other child abductions which were happening nationwide at that time. Being a Boomer, I was a latchkey kid before the term became fashionable. I walked home from school to an empty unlocked house with the windows left open. My Mom was one of the few Moms who worked during the Baby Boomer generation, so it wasn't unusual for me to go outside all the time and play unsupervised by adults. Due to a distinct lack of technology, we had to communicate the old-fashioned way, with our voices and our actions. Those were some great days! Take care.
Similar childhood in the 60s. Days spent off in our bikes, exploring and doing who knows what. Developing suburb, lots of half built houses to crawl around in after school. Complete with a woodsy swamp! No quicksand, though I did lose some new shoes in mud at a Halloween event at age 13. My mom DID find out, I was in trouble! Amazing that your walking stick grew into a tree.
What a wonderful essay, moving from the micro to the macro like you did. My favorite part is that Bill had no memory of his heroics. This prompted ME to remember why I am so invested in staying in touch with friends from all stages of my life. Their memories and experience of not just events but of ME can vary from my own memories in stark and dramatic ways. The perspective these friendship-yardsticks provide help me understand myself better and better as the years go by.
This brought back memories! Never got stuck in mud but me and my brother used to run wild with our friends over two patches of common land, one that had unexploded ordnance in it (it was used as a military training ground in WW1, we used to pick up spent bullet casings all the time and one day our school was evacuated when the farmer dug up a live bomb) and the other was an old quarry with most of the workings slowly rusting away. Ah the times we spent constructing rafts to paddle out to decrepit dumper trucks that had been abandoned in the 'lake'! How the hell we didn't get lockjaw at the very least is beyond me, but as you said, we figured things out if we got stuck - calling an adult for help was the last thing we wanted to do. Our parents never knew the half of it, but they trusted us not to be (too) stupid. My brother has tried to instill his son with the same rambunctiousness as our childhood but these truly are different times. Fewer open spaces to play replaced by far more sanitised/commodified 'opportunities', and as you pointed out, a totally different mindset encouraged by social media. My nephew is always shocked by our tales of childhood but then he can't imagine a world pre-mobile phone...
Different suburb, but our Mud Island was The Woods (clever). It was maybe a dozen acres still undeveloped but... there was a mental hospital deep inside! One day we walked all the way there but as we got near there a man came charging at us screaming. Well you have never seen kids run so fast. It was the talk of the school for weeks. Never found out if he had been an escapee. Of course, many other memories of playing there.
I was also raised in the suburbs of a major city and me and my friends always played in the woods and creek and never had any issues with molesters and we did work out our issues together. Thanks for this reminder, also had some fun in those woods as a teenager...lol
You *actually experienced* the nightmare of every 70s kid -- quicksand -- and lived to tell the tale! We had a natural creek like this near my house we used to play in all the time, hunting for tadpoles and frogs and snakes... this is such a great reminder, as I have a son who just turned 10 and so I feel all the feels of what you're writing about here. And, it's not too late for him to experience things that aren't a digital abstractions. I'd like to say we do a pretty good job of that -- he's always loved playing in our backyard, and getting out in nature more than being inside. (But he does love his Roblox games, because he gets to play those with friends.) This is what I needed to hear today, though.
Great story in so many ways, absolutely resonates with me and my childhood even though I’m a few years older (68)!
I don't know what's worse: helicopter parenting or never being allowed to be terrible at something and failing without fanfare. And I don't understand why a "graduation ceremony" is necessary after each grade. I am totally not qualified to be around kids or the parents who are raising them today. This was such a great read on so many levels. There is much to be said about being a kid, learning resiliency ,and what it's like to have genuine friends while growing up.
Same kind of childhood - and then there was the time a friend and I (4th graders) lit a fire to roast hot dogs and roasted about 1/2 acre which quickly swept up a hill toward a neighborhood. Grounded for a month, visit from the fire chief, but a bit of a badge of honor with the guys.
I couldn't agree more with every statement in this piece.
Amen! Life was even more free range in the Fifties. There was always a Mom somewhere as we all played in each others' yards. There were limits, like I couldn't ride my bike anywhere but Redondo, and when Dad caught me one street over, the bike was locked up for a week. But Moms would push us out the door after breakfast. We'd eat lunch then outside again. Every adult was familiar and safe. The only stranger that ventured into the neighborhood one day was leading a pony on a lead line and he took pictures of all of us sitting on this pony. I still have that picture.
Dear Brent:
I just wanted to let you know I've finished reading both "The Order of the Poison Oak" and "Split Screen". In fact, I had "Split Screen" with me when I met some former colleagues for lunch. My one colleague, a high school English teacher, thought you had a unique and great idea to write the same story from 2 characters' different viewpoints. I told her about reading "Geography Club" years ago and about the movie (which I'm now watching for a 4th. time!) and she thought another great idea would be to make the rest of the Russel Middlebrook series into movies. I wholeheartedly agree! Take care.