On Self-Reliance

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was called Out In The Wilds: How To Look After Yourself. It was a slim paperback full of dead serious survival instructions. The premise was that if you kept your wits about you and were prepared, independence from grown-ups was yours. The very idea was intoxicating.

The houses across the street where I grew up backed into hundreds of square acres of private ranch property. Barbed wire marked the border between the suburban backyards and wild lands, a border which my parents forbid me from crossing. It was land riddled with rattlesnakes, guarded by horned bulls, protected by ranchers with guns. Though my friend lived across the street and her backyard accessed wild rolling hills that went on forever, I was an obedient kid. Despite my fascination, I never ventured into those wilds.

By the age of seventeen I was gone off to college. My parents paid my tuition and in a few short years I equipped myself with a degree, a teaching credential and a full time job. I took the education they bought me and turned it into a life. I knew how to support myself in the world, and incidentally I knew how to backpack and survive in the wilderness as well. The power of self-reliance meant everything to me then and it still does.

So of course my daughters are self-reliant. It shouldn’t surprise me. But the shadow side of having independent kids is that you become obsolete as a parent pretty quickly.  My daughters do almost everything for themselves. Have you ever heard of the term “helicopter parent”? Here is the opposite: I don’t know my teenager’s Powerschool code. I have never checked it, not once in three years. I’ve also never once contacted a teacher to “advocate” for my children. They advocate for themselves.

Both of my kids can cook their own food, do their own laundry, complete their homework without my help. Now that the older one can drive, the only thing they really need me for is to make money for the mortgage and tuition, but soon enough that won’t be the case. The older one already makes her own spending money and more of it than I could ever provide.

My nine year old found she was having a hard time getting to sleep at night so she decided to get in the habit of making herself a cup of chamomile tea at bedtime. She made one for me too last night, urging me to try it. “It’s good for you,” she said.

At least a helicopter mom is aware of her role. The helicopter mom is the advocate, the grade checker, the tea-getter. My own way is less clearly marked. Perhaps my job is to sit quietly and listen to my children, accept their gifts of tea, and remind them that they have always had what it takes to survive in the wilds.

Out of print now, but one of the best books for kids ever.