A pocket knife and trust

A pocket knife with a 3 inch blade in the hands of a 7 year old would catch the eye of most par­ents. On the farm, how­ever, a knife is a tool to per­form a task. In the small hands of Jonah, a kid help­ing his dad unwrap baleage to feed 35 dairy cows, a knife becomes a sym­bol of respect, expe­ri­ence and service.

He had watched his dad many times slice the bale like one peels an orange. His dad trusted him now to do like­wise. That trans­fer of power to a child is what par­ent­ing is about. There are many jobs a young­ster can help with on the farm whereas urban and sub­ur­ban back yards might not allow for these opportunities.

That was not always the case. Just play­ing out­side, build­ing forts, orga­niz­ing ball games, climb­ing trees, rak­ing and mow­ing lawns, whether sports or chores, a kid out­side engaged in his envi­ron­ment, built con­fi­dence, got to be alone with his thoughts.

In a 2006 col­umn, George Will quotes Bill Bryson, author of The Life and Times of the Thun­der­bolt Kid, a mem­oir of grow­ing up in the 50’s, “The lives of chil­dren were unsu­per­vised, unreg­u­lated, and robustly phys­i­cal. Kids were always out­doors — I knew kids who were pushed out the door at eight in the morn­ing and not allowed back in until five unless they were on fire or actively bleeding.”

Such fright­en­ing words — pushed and not allowed sound cruel to cur­rent parents.

Kids today are so reg­u­lated they march not to a dif­fer­ent drum­mer but to the same. They are indeed allowed super­vised group play, soc­cer prac­tice or any ball sport, yes, out­side but not trusted. The argu­ment is a kid out­side in the city or sub­urbs is always in dan­ger of kid­nap­pers, per­verts, cars, acci­dents, and dirt!

Yes, life is fraught with uncer­tainty and risk and inno­cent, untested chil­dren espe­cially are sub­ject to its per­ils. Nev­er­the­less, a young­ster raised in fear, not given the trust his par­ents have in him to sur­vive because he has been so reg­u­lated and super­vised, may cost him tested courage and a desire to thrive.

Not so Jonah as he cuts into the stiff plas­tic, on his own, wield­ing a knife he respects because his dad trusted him to do so. For this task he received no tro­phy, only a thanks and a chest full of can-do spirit.

Sylvia Zim­mer­man is the owner of Ful­ton Creek Jer­sey Cheese in Rich­wood. She holds two grad­u­ate degrees and, when not work­ing on her farm or pur­su­ing her inter­est in sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, writes her own blog.

Posted by Sylvia Zimmerman on Mar 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.