The paradox of hailing for a bus

The barrier between becoming a responsible, autonomous child and holding on to the healthy anxiety that innocence brings to everyday personal growth experiences is quite broad, but can be easily considered as unimportant. I have often found that the incentive to continue to be and behave like a child is rigorously discouraged as a consequence of the expectations and wonderment of adults, especially when children have begun to display traces of mature behavior.

Parents sometimes say that they do not want their children to grow up, but they expect and demand them to do so. The idealized, almost dreamlike notion of childhood innocence that adults sometimes enjoy somehow manages to live in symbiosis with the personal beliefs of how mature a child of a certain age should be. When the parent of a middle-schooler bemoans that their seventh-grader didn’t show them a note that the teacher had sent four days ago (which meant that the parent and the teacher never got to meet) I always say “Great!” The coexistence of advanced, reflective, critical thinking, cooperative skills, lability of mood, and irresponsible behavior is at the essence of being a teenager.

Today my eldest son and I had to ride the bus home. We had left our car at the shop for fine-tuning. I gave him a bus card so that he could pass it in front of the magnetic band reader when he got on the bus. Now that I think of it, I remember that he was thrilled. He was being allowed to do one of those things that older boys do. My son held the card tightly in his hand, desperately trying not to show his anxiety as we waited at the bus stop. Every now and again my son stuck his neck out from the bus stop to see if a bus was coming. When a bus did come I told him to hail it, so that it would stop for us. He utterly refused, shrank behind me and begged me to do it in a mouse-like little voice. I noticed what I had done. So I hailed the bus and encouraged my son to place the bus card on the reader.

I had forgotten about the chasm between innocence and maturity. My son wanted to show how experienced he was, but the truth is that he wasn’t. Too quickly I had internalized his acceptance of responsibility as a sample of what all his behavior should be like. I had ambushed him, forcing him back to childhood. Sometimes the push into maturity takes a different turn and we end up dreading our children's access to knowledge and experiences we wish they did not have. While we were on the bus, my son asked if we could get off the bus before our stop. He told me that he wanted to walk with me a little longer. Of course, when we got off the bus he walked ahead of me, dying to get home so he could ride his bike.