While learning is all around us there is no place that highlights my own issues – as a parent and simply as an individual – quite like the playground. When I’m there I have a chance to see so many other families, how they interact with their kids, and how the kids interact with other. Some days I have the opportunity to behold my son doing a pick up game of imagination with others as my littlest runs around and tests her mettle and strength against all obstacles on the playground. Even the one meant for kids older than five years old (she can climb most of it and go solo down the slides).
I learn from each child and their experiences there by forcing myself to observe as much as possible, but it is in watching my oldest and the other kids he tries to play with sometimes wherein so much of my learning and nail biting comes from these days. The helicopter parents, getting between my son and their’s – ensuring conversation was discouraged through simply ignoring the kid running around and being incredibly outgoing- was a difficult one for me to swallow today. That this happened with a few different sets of kids and parents alike was a little offputting. Through all my relative solitude seeking tendencies it never dawns on me to stop my child from playing with another UNLESS I see an unprovoked meanness being displayed by another child. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly fall into that coaching tendency all too much sometimes, but I do not block simple interactions with other kids.
My first reaction in seeing these parents was one of hostility. It’s hard to not be frustrated in seeing that these individuals, inadvertently or not, communicate callousness/discourtesy as a way of life. That it is my child who is learning of its receipt while these other children are seeming to learn to fear simple play and interactions with kids they don’t already know is a form of hurt. I want to protect – terribly – and instead have to sit with the knowledge that there are some social cues he’s simply going to have to learn from experience and often times some hurt is involved. The best I can do is support him in the lessons as he learns and articulates them.
But I can’t help but be left with the concern of how these children will grow up fearing others, fearing “those” people outside their predetermined circles, and mourn a little. There is nothing particularly good being taught there. Rather it perpetuates the ills so many people rail about online. Treating people who are “different” with fear or with intent to segregate. Ostracize. There are certain demographics that people currently rally around; whatever is politically defined as a minority. These titles still encourage labeling and still acts as a way of discouraging thinking of each person as an individual. People without titles or labels who don’t mesh with what we are used to socially/politically are left out.
Many people have felt the sting of this separateness. This seeming punishment for being nothing other than their genuine self is just that – a way of teaching conformity, of rewarding certain constructs of thought and behavior REGARDLESS of its ethics (or lack thereof) so long as it’s what EVERYONE ELSE DOES. It is about destruction. Destruction of the spirit of each individual by promising the lie of acceptance; that you can have it so long as you are not yourself.
My oldest handled individuals like this at the playground in much the way I still do – go over to the swings with people he trusts (me or his father) and play with them/by himself; an almost solitude of comfort. And so he did until a little boy seemed friendly and outgoing, the father allowing play to happen organically as we did, at which point he took off and engaged in an hour long spontaneous play session that involved imaginary play and much cooperative efforts on some of the tougher obstacles.
Through that roller coaster couple of hours I realized something about myself: One doesn’t have to take in the actions of others, no matter how unthinkingly cruel or rude, as a personal affront. That these issues are their’s and their’s alone despite how it might impact others. My son seems to know this and simply goes about finding the best way he can to return to his play and his joy; that not all people are like this he discovers as he starts up new conversations, hopeful. Such a lesson I have only begun to learn. And I’m learning it in a playground from my five year old.
Journey to Self Knowing 