Parents should build foundation

When I was growing up we called it “burning off.” I had a friend named Frank Crawford who would borrow his mother’s 1950 Chevy on the nights our Explorer Post met at the church. After the meeting we would marvel at how Frank could lay a strip of rubber at least 50 feet long in first gear, get another couple of feet in second gear, and we would swear we could even hear a momentary protest from the tires when he shifted into third.

In those days learning to double-clutch and drop into low gear while still moving was a rite of passage and skill that fell only slightly behind learning how to inhale grape vines.

You could get your driver’s license when you were 14, a fact that makes me shudder when thinking about it now. I don’t remember my parents complaining much about the insurance rates they had to pay on me at that time. On the other hand, fixing the results of a fender bender was a task most of us knew how to handle.

These memories cam flooding back to me one recent evening when I observed a young man burn off about 50 cents worth of gas as he left a stop sign in quite a hurry. He left a short black trail on the pavement as his tires squealed in protest. The look on his face as he passed made me think he was feeling the same things I felt more than 30 years ago in my 1947 Ford Coupe.

You see we were both making our presence known, displaying our own protest of authority and society rules, the inevitable part of making the transition into late adolescence and if all went well, the dawn of adulthood.

My father’s admonition to burn off from stop signs only at the risk of having my keys taken away if he ever found out never dissuaded me from leaving those marks on the pavement and providing that I was at least in command of my own car.

As my own boys went through adolescence, I held my breath, prayed and waited with curiosity to see their expression of protest. The teenage pranks that served as milestones through the turbulent journey of adolescence in my day seem mild in comparison to some of the contemporary expressions of outburst. And so I was concerned.

Let me hasten to say the acts of rebellion I referred to such as burning off are not to be condoned and can certainly lead to grave consequences. They do seem mild, however, in comparison to some of the rites of passage that now include violence, theft, drugs and sexual expressions of rebellion.

Rearing children today seems more complex. Providing a psychologically healthy environment for our children goes a long way toward making a healthy passage into adulthood more likely. As parents we need to be constantly vigilant about our behavior, so it will set appropriate standards and serve as a model for our children. Let’s all review our own daily lives and see if the foundation we are providing is what they need to help them grow into the kind of adults we want them to be.

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 1989