Fine Lines

Fine Lines---you find them everywhere in life. There are fine lines between amusing and annoying, confident and arrogant, and between daring and dead. (or brain damaged, or paralyzed) I am referring to the situation of Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger, who just had a motorcycle accident and needed seven hours of facial surgery.

Evidently Ben was not wearing a helmet, and this accident occurred after admonitions from his coaches and friends that if he was going to ride he should wear one. Terry Bradshaw actually told him to put off riding his motorcycle altogether, at least until he was done playing pro football. Now, the point of this is not to accuse or defend this guy on any level---my concern is how it relates to raising our own children, and the fine line between being cautious and overly-cautious in how we let them live their lives.

I admit I have struggled with the helmet wearing issue with our kids. My wife is adamantly in favor of the helmet rules, and she enforces it strictly with our kids—whether they’re on their bikes, or the new electric scooters they got from grandma and grandpa. I will back her up with this rule; but I don’t get quite as worked up about it if I catch them not wearing it. I never wore one when I was a kid; of course we did a lot of things when we were kids which are frowned upon in this day and age.

I remember loving to jump off the 12 foot diving board at our local swimming pool. It was actually a rite of passage. When I climbed that ladder up to the top and made my first jump, there were about 10 of my friends there to watch, and the congratulations and celebrating afterward was great. I had a friend of mine who actually fell off the board one day and broke his arm. His parents took him to the doctor, they put a cast on it, and probably told him to be more careful. They didn’t sue anyone; the irresponsibility was put on their kid. You don’t see 12 foot, or 3 foot, diving boards at pools anymore; why, because some idiot parents sued a whole community because their kids were stupid enough to get hurt.

I remember leaving in the morning to play baseball, and coming home six hours later to eat something. Today, we send our daughter out with a walkie-talkie and tell her to check-in and let us know exactly where she’s at; and that’s when she’s just going a few blocks from home.

I could beat this into the bushes; but you know what I’m talking about. We all want our kids safe and unharmed from dangers in this world; but it’s a fine line between keeping them safe and not allowing them the freedom to explore and overcome fears and succeed in those little rites of passage that we enjoyed when we were kids. It was scary seeing my son climb up 20 feet into the tree next to our house; but what a joy it was to see the look on his face when he made it back down and took that final giant leap for mankind that brought him into the company of millions of kids who climbed trees before him.