Children - by Darylynn Starr Rank
March, 2005

I was at our local community pool the other day, in the locker room after a lovely, long, hard swim.  Since I was now relaxed and relaxing, I was paying attention to what was going on around me.  The next scheduled activity was a ‘family swim’ so there were several moms with their kids getting ready for their time in the pool. 

“Do you want to wear your goggles today, sweetie?” one mother asked. 

“The ones with the pink stripe?” asked the utterly adorable four year old.

“Yes, they’re pretty, aren’t they?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Mom, can I have my pool shoes?”  another lovely toddler.

“You want to wear them today?  I wasn’t sure since you didn’t wear them last time.”

“Yes, I think they would be good today.”

“Okay.  Then I think you should.”

It was all so sweet and utterly civilized.  It was just like those little four year old beings were actual people.  Oh my goodness, what a thought!

And I started thinking about some of the wonderful ways of dealing with children that are becoming more and more prevalent.

You go into a bookstore and the shelves are filled with books about how to love your kids better.  DVDs.  Magazines.  Courses.  Workshops.  Television shows. 

How to encourage your kids, understand your kids, take care of them, love them, entertain them, communicate with them.  Even the supposed more negative side, how to discpline them, how to establish ground rules, it’s all for the same purpose.  How to do a better job of raising kids. 

There are organizations all over town, community centres, groups, everyone meeting for the sole purpose of figuring out how to take care of children.

Now of course there are the naysayers (there always are) busily complaining about these goings-on.  ‘Oh, rubbish, they say, we need to get back to basics.’  Well, who’s saying to neglect the basics?  I don’t hear anyone arguing with basics.  But there are so many people wanting to do more.    Do more loving.  Be more skilled.  Be more caring.   Simply do better.  At all of it.

And getting too caught up in doing everything the ‘right way’ can also become a problem.  A stress of its own.  But the intent to do better is great.

It’s a long way from ‘Children should be seen and not heard’…

I smile every time I think of that little girl who decided that, this week, she wanted to wear her pool shoes.  And about the mother who’d brought them along, just in case.  The relationship that allowed them to discuss the idea that it was a good thing for her to do. And a society that values trying to be as good a parent as possible.

And I hereby dedicate this column to all of those parents.  What a wonderful thing to want to do.  It’s like a golden age of parenting.  And I salute it. 

Take care, all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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