Am I Fucking Up My Kids? - Suburb vs. City
Today is the start of a periodic post where I will ask the very simple question – am I fucking up my kids? The obvious answer is yes, of course, aren’t we all? But besides the fact that every parent is figuring it out on the fly and my children (in particular) are made up of my damaged genes, I ask myself this question on a thousand different occasions. This question in particular though – whether to raise my children in the suburbs vs. the city – came up during a trip to Liberty Science Center this past Friday.
For those who don’t know, Liberty Science Center is an “active museum” located in Jersey City focused on, you guessed it, science. It’s got four floors, each focusing on different areas of science and math, where kids can destroy play with an assortment of different things.
What prompted this trip is that each year I get a day off of work for my birthday. In years past this day was taken to get belligerent at one of the plethora of Jersey shore bars. Now this day is used to edumacate my kids. Though this trip might make it seem like I’m a good parent, what I’m really doing is investing in MY future. If my girls become doctors then the wife and I are likely guaranteed a nursing home with all the amenities.
The first mistake we made was going on a Friday in late May. Every kid that ever grew up in New Jersey has done a field trip to Liberty Science Center (unless your parents were shitty and didn’t sign off on the permission slip). When we pulled up there were no less than twenty buses in the parking lot and a line of kids so long I was afraid there might be a protest of some sort going on. Hell on earth is a museum filled with hundreds upon hundreds of kids who vastly out number their adult chaperones. Our second mistake was that our check in time was 11 AM – an hour before nap time. This trip had the makings to be a complete disaster.
We started off on the outside section of floor two where my daughter was handed a brush and led to a massive sand pit that had dinosaur bones buried underneath it. My girl is a dinosaur aficionado. She knows more dinosaurs than I care to. She’s watched every dinosaur movie you can name (including all the real Jurassic Parks).
I thought I had fucked her up by letting her watch these movies at such a young age but when I watched her eyes light up as she realized that if she dug and swept hard enough she would come across some fossils, I gave myself (and my wife) a massive metaphorical pat on the back.
“We’re killing it as parents,” I whispered to my wife.
There were only a few other kids out there and she got along with them fairly well and I had no reason to question if where we are raising her was a problem. That question popped up on floor three.
For a little background – I was raised in the suburbs. I had one of the softest (and best) childhoods imaginable. Both my parents raised me with an insane amount of love, we lived in a quiet and safe neighborhood, we had a dog and a pool, and my parents are still happily married. You couldn’t dial up a more “American Dream” childhood than mine. Any hardships I’ve experienced in my life were self-made. Any edge I might have was acquired by doing dumb shit throughout my 20’s. I thought my childhood was the way I wanted to raise my children until I met my wife. Though she too is from the suburbs, she grew up a little different than me. As I’ve mentioned, her mom is from Brooklyn (Brooklynese) who raised her and her two sisters alone. She was raised like a city kid, by a city kid. She was taught to have a healthy distrust for people outside her inner circle, whereas I am one of the most trusting, gullible, and stupid individuals you might find on planet earth. My wife can smell a scheme from a mile away. My wife can pinpoint a scumbag just by the way they shake her hand. She intuits people’s actions before they do, while I go through life like a Labrador Retriever.
So when we hit floor three, which was made up of a small aquarium/zoo, I was happy to see that my little girl was excited out of her mind. The floor was PACKED with kids from ten different schools. Some were from South Jersey, some were from North Jersey, and a bunch were from New York City. I don’t know who designed the Liberty Science Center, but I might want to have a chat with them and ask, why on earth would you fill a museum designed for kids with poisonous animals? In every tank there were different types of animals that could easily kill half the children in the room in a blink of an eye. Poison dart frogs, anacondas, puffer fish, snapping turtles – you name it (and it can kill you), they had it.
My daughter sprinted her little legs towards the snapping turtle exhibit where in no less than two seconds she was pushed to the ground by one of the big city kids. I’m sure it was an accident, but I have registered the face of the individual and now have a hit out on them (when they come of age, of course).
When she got up, another group of city kids bowled her over again. Granted she’s only two, but I started to wonder if, in just these first two years, had I raised her too soft? These kids had been crossing the crazy streets of New York City, dealing with thousands of people on a daily basis, pushing and shoving their way to school, whereas my daughter has a backyard she can run freely in without getting knocked down. Had I done my daughter a disservice by not raising in her a place that would harden her for life? She looked back at us with the saddest expression. I wanted to go and pick her up and drop kick a kid or two but my wife said, “Get up! Get in there. Push em’ if you have to!” Half of the city kids turned around, laughed, and then let her in to see the turtle.
It was only a couple moments later when I realized just how suburban I was raising my little girl. She ran up to a tank with the ugliest (and very killer) eel and said “wow, cool!” At the same time a group of kids from P.S. something or other ran up and said, “Fuck that shit!” And I agreed with them. Seriously, fuck that shit. I might have been raised in suburbia but wild animals still freak me the fuck out. They are all killers in my book. So was raising my kid in the suburbs not providing her with enough healthy skepticism and fear of the natural world? Probably, I thought, until the fifth tank (filled with poisonous dart frogs) where she was practically throwing haymakers trying to get closer to the tank. I was glowing with pride and ignored the fact that if one of these little fuckers got out we’d all be dead.
On the final floor she had become one with the city kids. She pushed and shoved her way into a light exhibit where you turn knobs to change the color of light bulbs. It was just her and twenty kids enjoying the magic of color. I thought to myself that this sort of behavior certainly didn’t come from me. I’d be the little pussy waiting on the outside for my turn.
I knelt down and prayed to whoever is listening that I married my wife.
As I did that, my daughter turned around, started screaming, and ran the other way. I thought this was the lack of a nap finally rearing its ugly head until I looked up and saw an image of Dr. Fauci made out of Rubik’s cubes. A terrifying site.
At the end of the day I was extremely proud that my daughter could hold her own and is also scared of overlord type authority figures. Her lack of fear in the presence of imminent danger via animals is a little off putting, but we’ll have to work on that. I guess we won’t know for another fifteen years if how we’re raising her (or where) is correct, but damn if we aren’t trying our best.
P.S. – I could not imagine raising a kid in the city.
P.P.S. – I could not imagine raising a kid in the woods.
P.P.P.S. – Suburbia isn’t so bad.
You are doing just fine! ❤️