Wishing My Childhood for My Kids – Nostalgia

There is a sense of the 1980’s in my trailer park. No sidewalks, kneepads, or helmets, and plenty of kids running around with no obvious supervision. Yes, my trailer park fits some of the negative stereotypes you may immediately think of, but I’ll defend it every time because it’s a hellofa lot better than the criminally overpriced, under-maintained, poorly managed apartments my area offers the working class. Good, affordable apartments with staff that care do exist, I’ve lived in some, but just not around here.

As a child of the 80’s bought up in a safe neighborhood, I respect a certain degree of the free-range parenting style, but imagining that for my kids makes me uneasy. It’s a whole new world now, and maybe I just don’t want to imagine them growing up (shoot, one’s not even born yet). I do want them confident with their own abilities, judgement, and independence, but I also want them knowing they can tell their parents anything, that we’re always here, and on their side.

Through my elementary school years, my yard was the fun yard. Big, smooth driveway perfect for roller skates, swing set, and a sand box – so mine was the place played in most. My mom was a stay at home mom until I was in high school, so she was always there if we needed anything. The directly next-door-neighbors, in perfect cliché style, were me and my younger sister’s best friends. Their mom was a teacher, so she was there all summer, too. We direct neighbor kids were together all the time for close to 5 years straight before they moved away, but there were plenty of other kids that flowed in and out of the play group. I don’t think I’d really call any of us today’s definition of free-range kids because a) the state of the world meant we could be both sheltered and only modestly supervised, and b) we mostly stuck to the back yards and respected plenty of boundaries, example: be inside by 5:30 to wash up for dinner.

I consulted Google Maps to confirm, but the residential block I keep talking about has 12 houses on one side, 10 on the other. Of those 22 homes, only 6 were comprised of families with children, but in 1988 all 16 of those kids were under 11 years old.

The walk to school was a half-mile, maybe 15-20 minute trip on little legs, with only 1 street just busy enough to warrant a paid, official crossing guard. I always had multiple neighbor kids to walk to school with. The highest number was when my sister reached kindergarten in 1989 – 13 of us kids from that street walked to school together in the mornings, reveling in the independence.

I don’t remember talking to neighborhood adults much as a kid. “Can so-and-so play?” was probably the main interaction with the parents, otherwise ignored unless we were being fed ice-pops or fruit snacks. They were Peanuts comic-strip-style background figures taken for granted until someone started crying.

There are a lot of kids on my stretch of dead-end-street in the trailer park, but the age range doesn’t favor Deedee right now. The direct neighbors’ youngest are a 6-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy who come around more than I’d like. They’re nice to her and Deedee likes them, but they make me uncomfortable by talking to me a WHOLE LOT and by assuming Deedee can do what they can as though they were all the same age. She’s a month from turning 3 so there’s a LOT she can’t do. And are you even supposed to converse with little kids when you don’t have a relationship with their parents? I’ll get into my weirdness about “other people’s kids” in another post, this is already too long.

But yeah, just making this parenting thing up as I go, hoping that when Deedee and her still unborn Princess Baby sister grow up they’re able to thank me for a fun childhood that felt safe with just enough independence. And hoping that more age appropriate kids join the street and/or the 3-5 year plan to buy a house pans out in just the right neighborhood.