by Stephen Muse, Ph.D.
Mom probably isn’t going to catch a snake for the kids to examine or slip a frog down their shirts. That’s dad’s territory. Blacksnakes, turtles, ground-hogs, rabbits and frogs were regular visitors to our home when our children were growing up. One Fourth of July evening in place of firecrackers we let loose a dozen fireflies inside our rambling Victorian farm house and watched the show. There is something vital about contact with what is wild and organically grown by the forces of nature untouched by human design.
The tart sweetness of wild blackberries growing along the edge of the woods our kids explored still lingers in the memory of our now grown children who grazed them in the midst of their adventures. When they were young we raised free range chickens and made frequent visits to a local sheep farm for manure. Harry Cross’s old saw mill provided rotted wood shavings for our substantial garden. The combination produced fresh spinach in the snow, the earth beneath it still warm and giving off steam in winter.
I have a picture hanging in my office of my two-year-old son watching dad with keen interest as he chopped and stacked oak chords. I still remember the discussion Claudia and I had standing close by as Gregory later explored the glowing heat of our wood-burning stove with fascination. The parental debate was how to protect him from fire (and other hazards) while letting him make his own mistakes along the way without imparting unnecessary parental anxiety and without him being badly hurt. We both tried to find that balance between being close enough to help in case of real need yet far enough away so as not to impede his natural curiosity. That meant more work for us, but what’s a parent for?
Gregory learned to swim by daddy letting him go beneath a small water fall, carried downstream held aloft by foaming rapids and adrenaline into mommy’s waiting arms just below. He and his sister climbed trees, and a neighbor who happened to be riding by the house (after Christi had taken her brother up on a dare) informed us that on at least one occasion they were “up on the roof outside the window walking around without their clothes on!” I’m still not sure which part the neighbor found of most concern, the roof or the clothes.
Now don’t go thinking our kids weren’t well supervised. Children, like grass in even the most well cared for lawns, can always find a way to sneak up through the cracks in the concrete where they aren’t supposed to be. It’s a sign of life always beckoning from beyond the known world, waiting to be explored. When things are too orderly, controlled and all about work and productivity, playfulness and the joy and fascination of new discoveries become an endangered species. Creativity dries up. That’s when dads may want to bring a blacksnake into the house for the kids to examine or read them a story of some kind of wild thing that can’t be domesticated.
And don’t think that it’s mere entertainment or a one way chore. Dad can shed the stress of a day’s labor in this way more effectively than a Xanax or several hours worth of channel flipping in front of the TV set. Kids are a call from the wild. Don’t miss them!
Dr. Stephen Muse, directs the Counselor Training Program and Clinical Services for the D.A. and Elizabeth Turner Ministry Resource Center of the Pastoral Institute, Inc.
