Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
December 2nd, 2006 by 
Steven Gould
Late at night (a long time ago) they used to flash a sign on the television that said something like, “It’s 10 O’Clock, Do you know where your children are?” This dates me, I know.
When I was a ten-year-old kid, I was wandering the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, unaccompanied and alone, getting in fights, visiting an animal exporters compound where I was attacked by a gibbon. (I have very strange feelings about Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)
If I let a ten year-old child wander the streets of Albuquerque, today, I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear from Child Protective Services.
Oddly enough, here in the US of A, it’s never been safer for kids to wander around but we are very aware of the things that could happen to them, things that weren’t really talked about when I was a kid.
I feel I’m pretty well off because of the freedom I had. As a junior in high school I’d drive three hours into Nashville to shop for shoes (running shoes) that you couldn’t get where I lived. Again, alone.
It’s a bit of a mess, i’n'it? I want my daughters to grow up self-assured, independent, and capable, but I also want to protect them. But I’m thinking what I need to protect them from most, is that very protection. Finding the balance. Do I loJack my kid? Get them snitch phones?
At the end of Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold, Cordelia Naismith talks about making gliders with her father (but she’s really talking about her son.) You had to run with the glider, getting it up to speed, but the real trick, she said, was knowing when to let go.
To quote Bradley from his Buzzards post, “They’re beautiful when they fly.”
Here is a story that struggles with this issue. It’s by our Maureen and was published in her collection Mothers and Other Monsters. She said about it:
“Oversite” came out of something my husband found on the Internet about a company in Florida that was developing an implantable locator chip. This struck him as creepy, and he said I should write about it. At the time I was writing stories about families, specifically about mothers. In one sense, there are a lot of mothers in fiction, but there doesn’t seem to be much fiction about actualy being a mother, because we have such decided ideas on children. “Oversite” is the story of a mother who has made a questionable choice.
You can read it here at Ruminator.
Posted in Daily Life, Maureen, People, Pop. Culture, Science Fiction, Steve | 
11 Comments »
December 2nd, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Yep, on all counts.
I still get a little freaked if I don’t hear from Rachael every evening. Paranoid fantasies surface despite my front-brain telling me that she’s grown now.
When she was with her mother in Houston, she ran the streets of Montrose at all times of day and night. But she was heavily armed, and always had several male friends with her. I knew and adored most of those friends. They were a bunch of thugs, about the size of refrigerators, and would all take a bullet for her.
The only balance on the subject I’ve seemed to be able to find is to let her fly, and to be terrified myself, most every moment as a result.
December 2nd, 2006 at 7:16 pm
In the East, it’s not unusual to send a kid off to summer camp for eight weeks. Sarcasm Girl spent five summers at the same camp her Dad had gone to–you send away a child, and they send you back her slightly older, vastly changed, more independent and smarter self. Still, the first summer when we put her on the bus my last view of her until visiting day was of her face pressed against the window, tears sheeting down as she mouthed “I’m not ready for this!” In fact, she was fine.
Out here in California, if you mention that you’re sending your kid off for an eight week camp program other parents look at you as if you’re a monster. Two weeks of sleepaway camp is apparently (to some) as long as the parent-child bond can be stretched. And since this year it’s Younger Girl’s turn to go off to Camp Killooleet we’re again getting that “how could you?” look from the parents of her friends (what’s not to love? It’s run by Pete Seeger’s neice; lots of music, lots of fresh air, lots of lefty politics and crafts and theatre and riflery and Vermont hills).
I spent my youth on the sidewalks of New York–literally, chasing up and down my block. Not that there weren’t limits; the guys at the Gristedes would call my mother if they saw me crossing 6th Avenue, just to check and make sure it was okay. But those hours spent without supervision were really crucial to me. I try to remember that when dealing with the kids.
Next year Younger Girl starts going to school by herself, too. I will be watching the kite float up into the sky…but with my running shoes on, in case I have to run catch her.
December 2nd, 2006 at 8:37 pm
This whole topic is giving me the cold grues. OK, breathe, Laura; breathe.
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:03 pm
I know where I am!
Also, that phone is quite creepy. You should not get one for your kids.
And yeah… We did stupid things like getting into fights at 3am in the Montrose, but I lived, so it’s all good. And though it certainly wasn’t the safest thing, I’m glad to have had those experiences.
As far as relating… I wonder where my cat is right now.
December 3rd, 2006 at 7:02 pm
I suspect that when Adam is 40 years old (he’s 21 right now) we’ll be calling and saying, ‘Have you started our taxes yet? And did you get that check-up?’
My sister and I had to come home when the streetlights went on. The woman next door to me in Twinsburg would not let her children walk around the corner to the school bus stop because she couldn’t see them there. We were in a subdivision in a small town where the police blotter in the local paper was full of things like ‘CDs taken out of unlocked car on driveway.’
December 3rd, 2006 at 7:16 pm
When I was a kid, it was probably more like 8-track tapes were taken out of an unlocked car, dammit. (But they did leave a bag of zucchini.)
December 4th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
I remember back in 2007, my Mom got me a GPS phone. My friend Brad would hook up the position router so it looked like we were always “safe” at his house. We would check to make sure things were working right, then go anywhere we wanted for the whole night. Ah the good old days.
-Andy 2047
December 5th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Even in Maureen’s story, where the kids are chipped, they can wrap aluminum tape around their arm and it blocks the signal. Sort of like putting the new rfid passports in a scanproof sleeve.
In my days it was either out the window after bedtime or the two kid saying “I’m staying over at Joes.” “I’m staying over at Steve’s.” Or, just, “Back before 9, mom.”
My sisters had it a lot harder.
December 5th, 2006 at 12:23 pm
That was exactly my point. There’s always a way around something. Chipping your kids or getting them a snitch phone only makes things easier for them.
All kids are going to screw up at some point, but its really about the decisions they make when it happens. No amount of technology will replace all the time you sat and talked with your kids about your beliefs and values.
December 5th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Sat and talked–no. Demoed in daily life, yes. Those I can see getting through. Not that I don’t talk to my kids, but by example is probably a more effective way of instilling values.
December 5th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Hmmm you are right.