The jist:
To baby boomers and other adults of a certain age, young people may seem rude, disrespectful and generally clueless about established social mores.
But to social scientists, the phenomenon is more complicated. Raised by parents who stressed individualism and informality, these young people grew up in a society that is more open and offers more choices than in their parents' youth, says child and adolescent psychologist Dave Verhaagen of Charlotte.
Unlike their parents, they have never known anything but a world dominated by technology. Even their social lives revolve around the Web, iPods and cellphones. So they dress down, talk loose and reveal their innermost thoughts online. "Put that all together and you've got a generation that doesn't have the same concept of privacy and personal boundaries as generations before," Verhaagen says.
Privacy and personal boundaries are important, nonetheless. Abandoning these values, a trend maybe in evidence now and perhaps to worsen, would affect everything in American life. Or maybe that sounds too much like Elvis's dad? I don't know. But I'm worried.
I gave a public falconry talk to a group in Ascension Parish last night. Forty-eight people showed up, about a third of them kids under the age of 15. It was wonderful to see.
I had already decided to revise my usual schpiel and speak mostly to the growing fact of raising kids without access to wild places and pet "critters." I told them about my great, patient parents and all those little animals I stashed under the bed---about being turned loose to walk in the woods after school; read what I wanted; get dirty.
And I admitted then that my own kids get precious little of that treatment and that mostly I keep them locked in the backyard for fear for their lives. I got a lot of sad nods, even here in the Sportsman's Paradise.
I made a point to let every kid mash on the hawk's feathers for a bit, despite the Danger of Natural Oils From Human Hands! and the risk (more real) of devastating personal lawsuit.
I met two great kids in particular, both girls: One about 12 years of age who keeps "two dogs, a cat, a turtle and some chickens my dad gave me" and had a wild bird feather collection---any of which could prompt prosecution under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (I told her to keep collecting).
The other young lady came to me after the presentation, a very slim six or seven year old with Coke-bottle glasses and an earnest face. Her mother hovered in the background, hands clasped. I said, "Hi there. What can I do for you honey?"
In a very quiet voice she asked me, "Are Mississippi Kites more closely related to hawks or to falcons?"
YEAH!
4 comments:
Mom writes:
"You were sweet not to remember the tears when:
* I thought you and Eric were lost in the woods or drowned in the creek
* I discovered the stray kitten had peed for what smelled like weeks under your bunk bed
* The pediatrician flew all over me for allowing my young son TO OWN A TARANTULA!
* My young son was in the hospital with leptospirosis after a romp in the Panama Canal"
I told her, "I didn't forget those, just didn't print them."
And then I did. :-)
This reminds me of the time a coral snake got out of the homemade cage I had built for it and disappeared in the house. At the time (I was 13 or 14) I still thought coral snakes were deadly, and my mother couldn't understand why I started yelling at my brothers not to walk around the house barefoot. Unlike the other three (harmless) snakes I lost in the house over the years, I actually relocated the coral snake in my closet a couple of days later. In the interests of honesty I told my mother what had happened - when I was, I think, 30 or so.
Hi Matt, this is a brilliant post, and your Mom's comment is even more wonderful! (Yeah, Mom!) Jonathan and I have been sharing this post back and forth, and both of us are laughing and have tears in our eyes, for all the great memories it sparked (I've asked him to share his . . .).
My parents had two rules for the five of us kids who grew up in the heart of the Sonoran Desert way outside the growing town of Tucson in the 60s and 70s. (Our home was surrounded by ranchland and miles of open land running all the way to the huge National Forest. We biked, rode horses, walked, built tree houses, dammed up washes to wait for summer rain "floods" - yes, we played in washes during the thunderstorm season) . . .
Mom said: "Be home by dark." That was it.
Dad said: "If you get hurt, just make sure it's by a road so I don't have to come looking for you."
As for the story of the little girl asking the hawk question, Jonathan and I have many wonderful memories of connecting with kids at talks (we give lots of talks, too, about tracking or other nature subjects related to our books). One of our favorite annual gigs is a book fair at a local elementary school - the sight of a zillion kids running around with little tickets to decide just WHICH books they get to buy warms our hearts!
Anyway at one of these fairs, where our most popular book is our kids' book "Desert Dogs" about coyotes and foxes and Mexican wolves, a beautiful bookish little girl about 7 years old, with big thick glasses which she kept pushing up at the nosepiece, shyly approached and then said, with the MOST adorable lisp, "I wrote a report about desert dogs."
Thinking she was going to tell us about it, and it was one of those canned 2nd grade projects teachers have kids do ("My favorite animal is the coyote. It eats rabbits. I love coyotes."), we smiled and said sweetly, That's wonderful! Tell us about it!
And then she proceeded to tell us about 15 biological facts about coyotes, foxes, and wolves - all of which were correct, all in the most amazing technical language (with a lisp of course) most college students today don't know.
We were dumbstruck!
And by the way, Jonathan fell immediately in love!
Jonathan and Roseann:
I'm so glad to see your comments. Mom will relate to the coral snake incident (my snakes and spiders got loose a time or two), and I loved the story about "your" bookish 7-year-old. I'm happy there are a few kids out there who got the bug despite such loooong odds!
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