Special to The Swellesley Report by Giannina L. Garcés-Ambrossi Muncey, M.D.
To quote Buddy The Elf: “I’m in love, I’m in love— and I don’t care who knows it!”
Obviously: I’m talking about the Wellesley Free Library’s Children’s Room.
The Children’s Room is every nerd-parent’s dream: books everywhere, a <4 ft tall population, and a multiplicity of Children’s Librarians (I insist on capitalization, the way Stan Lee insisted on Superman capitalization). There’s an entire wall of projected animatronics, where children hop and leap and dunk virtual snowflakes into virtual water.
I tell you all this as one of the aforementioned nerd-parents—because we’re in a pickle. And I’d like your help getting out.
We’re over-coddling, hyper-scheduling, never-take-the-training-wheels-off suffocating our children.
Or, at least, that’s our societal message.
The New Yorker’s invented a new term for us: “Snowploughs.” We’re so intense nowadays, we dwarf the old “Tigers” and “Helicopters”! We Helicopter, *then* “plough” away all difficulties in their path. No Child Left Unmonitored.
“The Anxious Generation” (multi-month NYT Bestseller) suggests that such over-protection is crushing our children’s spirit (I’m massively simplifying a complex book on the correlations between paternal actions and teen mental health, but you get the cultural zeitgeist).
More locally: I’m friendly with the Wellesley poet Dennis Noonan, who wrote a frighteningly honest piece about children not interacting with adults anymore. Before you think I’m admonishing him: no. That poem was a glinting sparkling streak-free mirror to me. To me— and my parenting.
I heard Noonan’s poem in a room full of retired people. After he finished, he left a lingering silence. Then: every person in the group lamented the same phenomenon.
They worried over cosseted kids. They wondered: where has childhood freedom gone?
So.
Why on earth do we parents do this? Isn’t it exhausting, annoying, and, well, just weird to everyone involved (including parent, child, and “geez just chill, lady” community observers)?
Are we parents hypervigilant… ‘cause we’re creepy control freaks?
Or: are we merely responding to our environment? Are, perhaps, our interactions molding our parenting?
Interactions like one which, I’m sorry to say, occurred in the Happiest Place On Earth: the WFL Children’s Room.
It was a three-fleece-and-a-thermal undershirt morning. Glancing skyward, I understood the Behr Paint Color “New England Gray.” No matter: where my son and I were heading, there were animatronic snowflakes to dunk.
Plus: my son recently turned 8. The promised land: freedom to wander the stacks! As a former ESL/new American kid, you know I have a lifetime of checking/double-checking/writing down in my pocket notebook any and all rules in my immediate vicinity.
So I remembered the Rule So Golden as it was printed out and displayed at the Children’s Librarian’s front desk: “Supervision Required For Children Under The Age Of 8.”
Freedom! My son walked the 10 paces to the librarian, because he’d “won” the Winter Reading Challenge. He was retrieving his treasure chest of bounty: friendship bracelet beads.
From my beige puffy backpack, I retrieved the delicious and page-turning “At Least You Have Your Health” by Mina Sinha. And I sat and read.
In case you’re thinking “Wow! Look at that Totally Not A Snowplough behavior.”
Well.
I lasted about 5 minutes. Then, I peeked.
My son hunched over a paperback-sized bead container, selecting a tiny red teddy bear from a plastic subdivision. Surely I’d never been so focused, not even when adjusting my first pair of surgical loupes in MGH’s OR 3. His cheeks were a little less chubby than last year; his hair grew less curly with every KidzCut.
Then, a screech broke through.
“Ma’am, you know you’re supposed to watch the child.”
I looked around, and didn’t see the usual kind librarian faces. (For anonymity, I won’t further describe the speaker.)
Startled, I said: “Oh, it’s OK, he is 8!” Thinking there was just a misunderstanding about age—remembering the printed and displayed sign.
Well, I was wrong.
I got a lecture about responsibility, about supervision, and about “what if another child got hurt.”
I peered toward my son, who, thankfully, was so focused on retrieving a pink heart bead that he didn’t notice us. I wondered what the librarian thought would happen.
Or maybe the librarian thought I was in charge of multiple children? Maybe someone was wild and on the loose? After all, almost every nanny I encountered at the library was also Latina. (I’m proud of how I look, and how we are usually the ones caretaking the treasures of each family.)
I didn’t clarify. I’m aware of how asking questions can be misinterpreted as being “hostile.” Instead: I chuckled as if I completely understood. I pulled my son away from completing his Reading Reward.
We gathered our items to leave, and as we walked past the front desk again, I got another lecture about making sure other children didn’t get hurt. If you are confused now reading, this, well, imagine how I felt.
But, in typical immigrant fashion, I want my child to learn to turn the other cheek, to be dignified in the face of unfairness. So I tried feebly to be ladylike and charming/disarming. Only to be rebuked a third time.
This interaction happened less than a month after that roomful of poet-grandparents bemoaned the sad state of parental overprotection. They’d worried about free time being chomped up by endless Russian School of Math tutoring, instead of wandering the neighborhood on bikes. Why didn’t we parents at least set kids free in the library?
Today, I’m wondering: is it us as parents being unreasonable, territorial, over-protecting?
I can’t tell anymore.
But I do have a request.
I’m requesting for us to be the kind of community where a kid can play quietly in a safe environment. Where a mom can read a wisecracking satire novel for more than 5 minutes.
Where, one day, our calmly self-assured adult children will return with the next generation. Because they connect The Library and independence; literacy and rewards.
Where they fell “In Love, In Love— And Don’t Care Who Knows It!”
Giannina Garcés Ambrossi Muncey, M.D. is a Kichwa Latina (Ecuadorian indigenous people), and a new Wellesley transplant. After graduating college Phi Beta Kappa at 18 years old, she received the Cushing Award at Hopkins Med, as well as the Accomplished Teaching Award in Surgery in her MGH neurosurgery residency. She is a double board certified physician, and a writer published in The Nation and elsewhere.
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