"You Are Not Allowed To Go To The Neighbors And Boff Your Girlfriend"

Some things as a parent you expect to discuss with your children. Especially when you have as many as I do. But there are some conversations that you never expect to have with them. Especially if the conversation contains the words "boff", "neighbors" and "girlfriend" in it. This indeed is a conversation that I walked into the other day as it was happening. All I could think of in that moment was the good old days.

Today is another world compared to when I was a teenager. We did and discussed things a lot different back then. The less your parents knew, the better. You remember the "be home when the street lights come on" era. Or the "I am cleaning the house, go outside and play and don't come back until I call you" time. It was nothing for us to ride our bikes ten miles to get to the BMX track. Then we would ride the track for hours and then have to ride the ten miles to get back home, hoping that we made it back before our parents got home from work. That was usually during the summers when we stayed home by ourselves because both of our parents worked all day. We were only eleven or twelve at that point. But that is another story. We had a lot more freedom back then, but a lot less to worry about then we do now.

Also, my parents never thought twice about letting us wonder around our neighborhood at all times of the day and night. Or drop us off at the mall to walk for hours. And the skating rink every Friday and Saturday night, well that was an adventure. Now, there is no way that my kids are doing any of that without an adult watching over them. There was nothing to worry about back then. It was another world.

Nowadays it's the opposite. You have to know what your kids are doing every minute of the day. There are too many people out there trying to harm them. Some people would consider this being over protective. Yea, so what? If you ask my kids, they would probably agree. But at least I can say that I do everything possible, every day, to ensure that they are protected from the idiots in the world. We just last year started letting our seventeen year old track and cross country star go running outside of our neighborhood and that was a big step for us.

There are so many more things to worry about nowadays. For one you have the internet. It scares the hell out of me when one of my kids asks to get on-line. All they have to do is click on the wrong thing or search for the wrong word and someone knows everything about you.


To add to it, I can't believe now we have to worry about our kids going to the neighbors house.....