I showed my kids how to use email as soon as they asked for it. I think Katy was about four or five when I helped her get her first hotmail account, which she still has. Same with my oldest daughter Hannah. Being the overly permissive parent that I am, I thought that they should have email if they want it. I told them how to use email safely and gave them the typical internet safety mom speech: “Never meet up with someone that you don’t know from the internet” and all that good stuff until they were giving me the mighty eyeroll and the exasperated “Mom! We aren’t idiots!”. I used to think that I should have their passwords and spy on the kids and what they do online. I did do that for a little while but then I realized that I trust my kids. They are smart kids and are not going to do anything stupid. And life is too short to spend all my free time spying on them.

I know some parents that do not allow their children to have email and I know many parents that do. It just makes me wonder what is reasonable. I really feel strongly that kids should be allowed to have email if they want it but maybe there is another angle that I am missing here.

This is the first part in what will probably be a one-part series that I am calling “Ask a Tween”. It just occurred to me that we adults love to make pronouncements on what is acceptable for kids. Should we let twelve year olds supervise other children at the mall? Are video games appropriate for kids? What do they like?

Take this review of games marketed to girls aged eight to twelve years old on Wired. The author ponders whether kids are sent the right messages by video games. Will girls become flaky, silly, stupid, shallow and vacuous if they play a video game about high school cliques? Is this as bad as letting young boys play Grand Theft Auto? Is marketing video games especially to girls a good idea? Let’s ask a tween!

Katy says, after reading the Wired review, “They all look pretty stupid and what the site said was pretty funny. They were all about makeup and high school cliques and crap like that. I’d never buy any of them. The video games I like to play are !!!!!MARIO!!!!!!! ”

So there you have it. All those games are stupid and Katy won’t beg me to buy them any time ever. Meanwhile, we will play Paper Mario. We borrowed a copy of Mario Galaxy from Katy’s friend and we have also played Mario Cart. It seems that collecting coins, jumping on shrooms, throwing rocks, solving puzzles and flying through the air having adventures are fun for everybody. Making Peach, the frilly Pink Princess, a character in Mario that is playable doesn’t hurt either. Katy always chooses the Princess Peach character when we play Mariocart.

Are you listening video game manufacturers? My advice won’t cost you a thing and it’s foolproof. Boys and girls aren’t all that different when it comes to video games.

Just think! Twelve year olds babysitting younger kids! Would you like to know what I was doing when I was twelve years old, besides baby-sitting? On occasion my mother would leave in charge of a small town restaurant for a few hours. I had to serve customers food and run a till all by myself. Do I feel like I endured child abuse? Of course not. Being given responsibility as a child is a sure way to know that your parents trust you. After all, that is what self-esteem is based upon, being able to be trusted with responsibility.

What really kills me about this story is the response of the so-called progressive bloggers that wrote about this story. I saw it on Pandagon, a blog I am usually very fond of. Unfortunately, Jesse fell for the same kind of parental shaming that is so abundant in our STRANGE NEW WORLD! He calls her an asshole and proceeds to go on and on about how bad what she did was. But I am still wondering if he thinks that mall cop over-reacted or not. Is this mother really someone that needs to be charged and waste a lot of the courts’ time? I think not. The mall cop could have satisfied himself with a pompous lecture about what a bad parent she is (people love to disparage your parenting talents, especially if they are non-parents) and went on his merry way. That would have been the reasonable thing to do, rather than put this poor woman through the legal ringer.

I have always given my children plenty of leash and plenty of responsibility to go along with it. When my oldest child was about seven or eight years old, I allowed her to walk herself home from school and let herself into the house and wait for me to come home. She would be home alone for almost a whole hour sometimes! Amazing, I know. This took place after she begged me for months and her baby-sitter told me I should let her stay home alone. I finally relented and worried (for nothing). The child was fine and I would be greeted with a hearty “Why are you home so early?”. Apparently, being home without parental supervision is kind of exciting when you are eight years old. Who would have thunk it, eh?

At least Pandagon isn’t the only perspective on this mess. I just love what the Free Range Kid blog had to say about this outrageous story. Thank you so much for existing, Free Range Kid blog! Here is another take on our collective epidemic of over-parenting.

Of course, I come from rural Saskatchewan. I have family members that live an hour away from Saskatoon on the farm that would never dream of locking their doors. I remember when some cousins from the city would visit and the “Why are you locking the door?” debates would begin. We country kids would be annoyed by the city kids locking the doors because none of us have house keys. There is no need for them when you live out of town. People feel safe. But the city kids just could not comprehend leaving the house without locking it. That idea would blow their little minds. Unfortunately, I am a city kid now and I could never sleep without a locked door again, despite the fact that a locked door is a pretty false sense of security. I guess there are some advantages to rural Saskatchewan after all.