Pox on Box - January 13, 2022 | Kids Out and About Jacksonville <

Pox on Box

January 13, 2022

Debra Ross

I like doors. I hate boxes.

Some kinds of boxes are fine, like birthday presents and chocolates. I like soapboxes, too; I get up on them regularly. But try to put me IN some kind of box and every fiber in my body resists. I mean that both literally (I'm claustrophobic) and metaphorically: As a kid, I had an outsized sense of resentment when people would decide who I was or try to make me do stuff. I learned to manage it as I got older, but never lost it. This attitude actually helped when I had my own kids: I knew from the inside how much easier it is to get motivated when something is your own decision, so I decided my parenting approach would be one of tour guide and salesperson rather than dictator.

I found the "all doors open" metaphor especially useful in the early days of home schooling our two daughters. Few kids want to do work that's hard when they're being made to do it by a person, but they tend not to mind so much when it's what reality requires. So I found the following technique effective: "I know you don't feel like learning the multiplication tables, but I'd never let a 9-year-old close the door on your career options when you're 18! So what's 7 times 8?"

I resent boxes not just on my own behalf, but on everyone's; I think they impede both progress and happiness. But one kind of box I didn't mind so much was my family's recent Covid quarantine: It was dictated by reality, after all, and by common sense and courtesy. It also served to remind me that there are many kinds of prisons that are harder to escape: Prisons of the body, the mind, and the spirit, which are barriers to success far worse than any temporary public health restrictions.

I am worried about the pandemic's toll on our children on all three of these dimensions. So as kids around the country are popping into and out of school thanks to Covid's resurgence, it can be useful to show them that the adults in their orbit have their eyes on their future even when that's hard for a kid to do... and that the future we see is one where they're healthy, happy, and productive. A future as free as possible of boxes and labels. One where all doors are open.

Deb