Some Thoughts On the Safety of Our Children

Michael J. Kennedy has been Headmaster of Valley School of Ligonier since 1987. Before that he taught English and coached various sports at the Pomfret School in Connecticut and Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia. A former Navy frogman, Mr. Kennedy frequently writes on educational topics in local and national publications.

From The Headmaster's Study...

Both of our sons flew home for the Holidays, and I must admit it is a different experience for a parent than it was before September 11th. In fact, both have flown several times since the 11th. Neither of them seems to think about it much, beyond getting to the airport earlier and dealing with the increased security precautions. As their father, however, I'm glad when they are safely here, and I'm glad when they are safely back at the end of the visit. It's difficult to pin down my apprehension. It isn't that the plane is going to crash or be hijacked; I guess it is a general recognition that the world is a less safe place than I wanted to believe it was. Our older son is on his own, working at an independent school in Houston; the younger one is a junior in boarding school. Neither is a child any longer, but I am still a parent. And parents worry. It's what we do, and most of us are really good at it.

How much should we worry about our children's safety? How much should we let our fears dictate decisions we make about our children? How much should we let our anxieties interfere with decisions we should let our children make for themselves?

On the afternoon of September 11th, a friend asked me what we were going to do about the son in boarding school. For a moment I didn't know what she meant. He was away at school; it hadn't occurred to me that we would bring him home. That was the implication in my friend's question, however. Of course, my wife Robin and I were thinking about our children. We had exchanged emails with them late that morning. There was an urge to be together. But distance and prudence made us sit tight. Both were as safe as we were; in fact, neither of them had one of the three doomed planes pass directly overhead, as we did. I had known the best thing for us at Valley School was to tell the children what had happened, to say some prayers, to give the children the chance to talk with their teachers, and then to resume our comforting, normal routine of school work and play. Similarly, I knew that our sons were in good hands where they were, and I generally trust their judgment as young men. I am not saying I wouldn't have preferred to have them home.

In a conversation with some fellow school heads recently, I learned they were seeing a trend this past fall among high school seniors: many more than usual are applying to colleges that are close to home. I find this regrettable, if it is a decision made out of timidity or parental decree. Where can one go to be sure he is safe? Since the answer to the question is "nowhere," pleads for a reasonable approach in raising our children when it comes to safety. The psychologist Michael Thompson says in response to a parent's question about football, "Everyone perceives risk differently. For the sake of argument, let me propose the following: you and I both know that about thirty-five thousand Americans are killed in car accidents every year, yet we get up in the morning and drive around town and think nothing of it. Carpooling is far more dangerous than football." There are plenty of us parents, however, who tie ourselves in knots worrying about our children playing sports or just playing in an unstructured or unsupervised setting.

Neither Michael Thompson nor I is saying that you as a parent or I as a headmaster should not seek to provide a safe environment for children. Our playground is supervised; we have a fussy Safety Committee; and the longest part of the "Faculty And Staff Handbook" is the one on safety. At the same time, I would not want to see a playground with nothing to climb on or hang from, or a ban on contact sports ... and we do not plan to fence the campus.

If we were lucky children, think how little our parents knew about what we were doing when out of sight. I recall the time when I was ten and my brother six that I sent him into a pond up to his chest in his snowsuit in the wintertime to retrieve a spear I had accidentally thrown in. If only I could have found a way to dry the snowsuit before we got home. I'm sure I was more than "spoken to" and grounded, but it didn't prevent the ensuing flimsy tree forts, cave explorations, rock fights with sworn enemies, or, eventually, riding in cars with friends who drove carelessly and too fast. And about five years after the pond incident that same brother shot me with an arrow.

You argue that the stakes are higher now; the risks are greater. I agree, but the point is we can do no more than our parents could, if they were reasonable, to keep children safe. We counsel them; we model appropriate caution and behavior, but the risks are there ... and they need to be. Most independent school philosophies talk about risk taking. Valley School's contains the phrase "...the ability to risk and to adapt to new situations." To me this means more than taking a new foreign language or stretching to a higher-level math course.

For parents there can be an inclination to create a bubble of security and success around their children in an attempt to preclude hurt or failure. We must fight this impulse. Such a world would be sterile and surreal and prepare them only for disappointment. There is the lovely line in Tennyson's "Ulysses" in which he says, "How dull it is ... to rust unburnished, not to shine in use!" "To shine in use" implies to me an element of risk. And without it there can be no growth of any kind. He ends the poem with the words "...To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." Dicey business, but that is the spirit I hope we want to inspire in our young people.

Paradoxically, it is because of the events of September 11th, and what we've learned since, that we must let our children go. While the world is an unsafe place, it is the one in which our children live. We must carefully yet boldly teach and encourage them to enter into and interact with that world as they move through the elementary school years. And at each age we must give them freedoms that initially frighten us. Parenting has as much to do with letting go as it does nurturing. Both are essential parts of love.

[back to top]