I had an Uncommon Childhood

My parents raised me in a series of log homes that we built from scratch with fields and forests surrounded by lakes and rivers to learn and grow and explore in.

• They took us out of school for two winters and we explored the continent in a van.
• We sailed, hiked, skied, snorkeled and ice skated our way through childhood.
• We worked together, cutting logs, peeling them, stacking them into houses, planting, hunting, trapping, canning, freezing and drying our own food.
• Dad taught me to drive a big orange truck when I was thirteen and how to shingle the log chicken coop my brother and I built that I lived in the summer we built our third house.
• My mom taught me how to sew, punch copper into pretty patterns and create beauty from what was within arms reach.

I had the uncommon and priceless combination of imperfect parents who did the very best with what they had and created a perfect childhood for my brother and me.

I was nearly twenty before I realized what a rare gift it was.

I don’t know about you, but I look around at the state of childhood with great dismay:

• One in five children are obese.
• 68% of 8th graders do not read at grade level and are unlikely to ever catch up.
• American students rank 25th in math and 21st in science among the 30 industrialized countries, and those are our BEST students.
• The average one year old in the USA watches 6 hours of television a week (Nielsen Media Research, 1998)
• While the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends NO T.V. for kids under two. (American Family Research Council, “Parents Fight ‘Time Famine’ as Economic Pressures Increase,” 1990)
• Kids 2-11 years are averaging almost 20 hours per week in front of the television (BJK&E Media report, The New York Times, December 30, 1997.)
• Most parents are spending only 38.5 minutes in meaningful conversation with their children each week. (ibid.)
• 70% of daycares use TV everyday. (“National Assessment of Educational Progress,” US. Dept. of Education, 1994.)
• 87% of American homes have video game consoles. (KFF.org report p.26)

• 8-18 year olds are averaging 7 hours 38 minutes PER DAY of entertainment media… more than 53 hours a week!

Those are just the measurable statistics.

Is This All There Is?

It’s hard not to feel the pressure as a parent to schedule our kids to the max to keep up with the hyper-parenting families around us.  You know the ones, harried moms with bulging day planners and two extra large lattes in hand to keep enough caffeine in their systems to maintain the momentum of their long list of overlapping activities for their three burned out, over achieving kids.

Does anyone but me ever look around at a little league game and wonder:

“Is this it? Is this what childhood was meant to be? Fast food dinner in the car on the way to the ball park, kids trading school uniforms for ball uniforms, a prim teacher for a yelling coach and the promise of a gold plated plastic award at the end of the season?”

Does anyone else get tired of hearing 12 year old boys talk about nothing but their video game conquests and seeing 12 year old girls laden with make-up thumbing through the latest issue of Teen Vogue looking for their self worth between the pages?

Weren’t twelve year olds once found riding bikes hard and fast down old dirt roads and baking batches of cookies to sell at lemonade stands after school?

Does anyone else wonder if there was once such a thing as toddlerhood without Yo-gabba gabba print PJs or Spongebob sippy cups?

Wasn’t there a time when a box full of spools was fun and advertising didn’t define “cool” for the pre-school set?

I don’t think I’m alone. I think there are hundreds, maybe thousands of other parents out there who secretly long for something more, something different for their families.

Not a return to the sepia toned past that never existed, but a modern, technicolor childhood that is free of the common, but damaging influences that subtly creep in around the margins and is filled to overflowing with the interesting, inspiring, stimulating best of family life and world citizenship.

I propose that we, as a generation of free thinking parents with vision, step beyond the status quo and create beautifully Uncommon Childhoods for our children.

Read on. Dive deep. Discover your dreams as a family.

Recognize your children for the uniquely fabulous humans that they are, separate from you, and yet part of you and your family legacy. Don’t put them on the treadmill of a common childhood. Instead, join me in the freedom to be found outside the box.

Here at Uncommon Childhood, you’ll find encouragement, resources and the tools you need to move forward as a family. We’re not big on short “bandaid” type posts, or quick fixes. Instead you’ll find the real meat you long for to help you  make changes, big and small, that will take you in the direction of your dreams. Most importantly, you’ll find allies in the form of other families who are doing fabulous things and a community of like-minded rebels, out to reinvent childhood for the next generation!

Won’t you join us?