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Time folds in on itself. Has it really been this long since I lived with young children? Now they are all more than thirty years old and not easily entertained by building a fort of furniture and blankets. Do children still do that? Times have changed. My three grew up mostly without the internet. None of them had a cell phone before they turned 16 and got their driver’s license. Social media and text messaging did not exist. If we wanted to see a movie, we went to the movie theater or rented a video. Many independent or controversial movies never made it to our small town. Our house was so far out in the woods that for many years we didn’t get TV at all, and when we finally did get TV we had maybe three stations. My children recited and memorized the times tables instead of relying on a calculator. If someone gave one of my children a gift, I expected them to write a thank-you note and mail it. Who writes actual thank-you notes anymore? We ate home-cooked meals every night, heated the house with a woodstove, and read books out loud every evening. Ron and I raised resourceful, thoughtful, creative, capable children.
With grandsons now two and four years old, I enjoy plotting things to do with them. This has recently led me to contemplate how many children coming up today have the kinds of old-fashioned experiences that my children had. Some of the disparity from then to now is not a time disparity but a place disparity. Many more children grow up in urban and suburban areas than rural areas so some of the things my children did are things that country kids typically do and city kids typically don’t. That hasn’t changed from then to now. For instance, my children rode horses. How many children growing up today have ridden a horse? My children know how to bank a fire so that it smolders through the night to keep the house warm. Most children don’t rely on a fire to heat the house.
This line of thinking led me to compile a list of things that I think all children should have experienced while growing up. I would be curious to know how 16-to-24-year-olds score on this list and to learn how many of them had most of these experiences. My list is very much the product of a mom raising country children in the Northern California climate. Nevertheless, I believe that childhood should include these experiences. Here’s a cursory checklist.
Have you ever….
Made hand-cranked ice cream
Cared for an animal (pet or livestock)
Seen the Milky Way at night in a place far from light-bleed
Built a fort from chairs and blankets and sat inside it and
read stories
Planted a cover crop in a vegetable garden in the fall
Baked bread and baked pie with a homemade crust
Collected firewood
Started a fire in a wood-burning stove or fireplace
Slept with a hot water bottle
Put kitchen scraps into a compost pile
Tended a vegetable garden
Read a book before bed by candlelight
Participated in a family read-aloud
Made a puppet show
Gone fishing and eaten the catch for supper
Eaten venison
Flown kites
Rode in a wagon
Distributed homemade holiday cookies to the neighbors
Caught bugs and looked at them under a magnifying glass
Made Christmas tree ornaments
Written and mailed a thank-you note
Made a sachet with lavender (from your own garden?)
Made things out of colorful pipe cleaners
Collected feathers
Gone on a treasure hunt
Driven a stick shift (manual transmission) vehicle
Drank well water directly from a well
Gone swimming in the ocean
Dug clams on the beach and roasted them over a campfire
Danced in the rain
Made something useful out of wood
Sewn clothing
Made candles
Drawn a map
Gone to museums of natural history, science/technology,
culture, and art
Seen a live play, heard a live concert, seen a live dance
Swung on a tire swing
Heard frogs croaking their mating song in winter
Made popsicles out of juice
Gone cherry (or berry or apple or peach or etc.) picking
Canned and preserved fruits and vegetables in the summer to
eat in the winter
Put up applesauce
Climbed a tree (sat in a tree to read a book?)
Painted a rock
I could list many more such things but let this suffice. I can’t say that I did all these things as a child myself because I did not but I think my children did. I remember fondly and with pride that one year Yael put up quarts of peaches, Akili stayed home from school to watch the vet spay the cat, and Sudi went out on the deck every night for a month to observe the moon to write about it in his moon journal (a school assignment). My children attended a small country school where families brought their pet goats along to the Spring Sing. When my children went trick-or-treating on the street where their school was, one of the teachers handed out warm, fresh, home-baked chocolate chip cookies instead of candy, and of course the cookies were safe to eat right there on the doorstep. The world keeps changing and the pandemic challenges parents every day to raise children in harrowing circumstances. I don’t say it’s easy.
My husband and I raised survivors and optimists, and the human species needs such people in this world of climate chaos, injustice, and horror. I have said it before, I say it again, I wanted to give my children an enchanted childhood so I moved to the forest. That sounds like the description of a Miyazaki film. Maybe that’s why my children and I love Princess Mononoke so much. Add that to the list – all children should see it. Once my son said to me, “Only the three of us know how truly miraculous our childhood was at the Ranch.” All of them live in the city now, but the forest is in their blood.
