To Walk Alone

It is just 400 metres. Just.

But it is the walk to school and as much as I want my son to develop the independence he would have in walking himself to school, it ain’t 1972 (when I walked half the distance and crossed only one street rather than three) to get to school when I was in kindergarten. Another factor that may have influenced that was the challenge my mother would have faced of dressing my younger brothers to get them out the door to do the walk along with me.

He made his request to walk to school on his own and, as is often the case, a resolution of sorts emerged before the day was out. Unfortunately, it merely happened to be an opportunity to cop out rather than take the topic as far as we could. The out of school care (OOSC) program he is in, coincidentally enough, sent out an email a few hours after his request to me. In the email, they reiterated their need for the kids to be logged in when they arrive for they day. They did not, however, make it explicit that it was the parents’ responsibility. If I wanted to close down the discussion, I could say that OOSC wants or needs his mother or I to log him in and out when we drop him off and pick him up.  

I want him to have this responsibility and the trust, confidence and independence that would go with it but now it is something that requires a great deal of negotiation with his school, or the OOSC program. It is quite easy to say that times have changed but the institutions have girded themselves with such rigorous caution against liabilities. My wheels are already turning about the negotiations that I could have with either the school or OOSC to discuss him going on his own and, at OOSC, logging himself in. There is a strong possibility that older kids in the program walk themselves there and log themselves in.

For about 2 1/2 years I have walked my son to and from daycare regularly and we put our steps in throughout the week to other destinations, so covering the distance is not a factor and at every intersection my loop of "look both ways, watch the cars" has played incessantly. He actually stops and waves cars through ahead of him, so I now have to coach him up a bit on asserting his own rights at an intersection but at least he is erring on the side of caution. For the third street crossing he has a well-worn pedestrian overpass that takes the concerns of looking both ways out of the equation. At this point, though, I find it frustrating that I have to rationalize this brief walk to the extent that I do because it is unsupervised.

I am confident that the risks, if any, are minimal and that the consciousness of stranger-danger or traffic are in part a factor of our collective fears, being normalized rather than mitigated. The only other people I see when I walk him to OOSC or school are another parent who lives on the same floor on me taking her daughter, and two cyclists coming north on the sidewalk and prompting me to squish to my left as my son walks the top edge of a low cinder block wall he climbs every morning. I know this walk.

There seems to have been a trade-off between low-probability tragedy and in favour of the guaranteed loss of independence and autonomy, not to mention a higher probability risk of a child getting hit by a car given the number of parents drive their kids to school now. There is also the spectre of parent-shaming looming on this matter of letting a child venture out on their own.  It is easy to say that it is not that much time each day for a parent to drop off their kids and it is a good time for my son and I talk each day.  The city, however, is not as dangerous as we convince ourselves it is and having my son develop the skills to navigate himself through the city on foot or by transit are things that would give him the autonomy that I had when I was his age.

When I raised this with him on our walk home he had forgotten about it but I doubt that it will be for long. I will likely wait until it is light in the mornings again and venture carefully toward ramping him up toward this walk or similar walks and assure myself that he can do it and assure him that I want to give him this independence.

The Dawdle: Lessons for Dad from the Walks to Daycare

We have had the good fortune of a great, supportive daycare for the last few years. A few days ago we found ourselves quizzing Gabriel on continents he learned and can add that his math is coming along too.  The care and attention he has received was a key factor prompting us to hold him back a year. One major advantage of that daycare, however, has been the location.  Daycare is a scant 500 metres away and apart from allowing me to pick him up and drop him off, it has meant walks to and from daycare to bookend our Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays.

At the start of the day, there is the hustle to determine if he wants to walk with me or get a drive with his mother and to get him out the door.  On the night before, it may actually be a strategic move on our part to ask, "Who's walking you to school?", instead of the more neutral, drive-with-Mom-is-a-possibility use of "taking." (As I write this, I wonder if there is the slightest component of a quiz or a call for an expected response in our question rather than allowing him to flex some independent decision-making.) Getting him fed, dressed and out the door ends with him wanting to sprint down our apartment hallway to start our day.

The walks are consistent. I am always in more of a rush to get going and ensure that I'm at the office in time for the start of my day.  At the end of the day, there is less urgency on my part but the speed of his walk is dictated by his mood and energy level at the end of the day.  There are days when he wants to play king of the mountain on each pile of snow.  On others, he pays homage to the same tree (stump now, actually) that got knocked down in a hailstorm in June 2015. Some days he is exhausted and inconsolable. We race each other or run holding hands for the sake of speed without the competition. I am unrestrained in my paranoia about the traffic that is around and striving to ensure that he is vigilant about the cars.  We examine the skies on the predawn walks to acknowledge the huge moon or the colour on the horizon that promises a beautiful day makes us heed the coming of night.  We pause to take in the towers of downtown.

My mood is a factor on those walks as well.  In reality, I am writing this post to work through and trade in my own rush to get home for the presence to take in that dawdle more appreciatively.  My desire to cover those 500 metres quickly can take the opportunity out of the walk because of my poor perception of time. We do race from time to time on the walk home so I ought to take it when it comes.

If he wants to take a different route and walk through a path of large boulders to test his balance, his will wins out, as it should. When I am in a rush, I wish I could pressure him to pick up the pace or take a more direct route, but ultimately this part of the day, unbound by the walls and fence of the daycare is a moment that is his own. Apart from the simple exercise of the walk, there is a measure of independence that he can exercise by stopping the way he does and dictating a change in route if one appeals to him. Ironically, despite the independence that we might associate with the car -- it is mere mobility that a car provides -- it may actually be during this walk that he can develop autonomy with each step he does or doesn't take.  Whether I am holding his hand or a few dozen metres away beckoning him to catch up or cautioning him to watch the car there is an independence that he can exercise with each (watched) step he takes.  The talks about the day become familiar as he talks about a friend he had a hard time with.  I try to tell him to ask how his friends are rather than distancing himself and wait for the time when he can tell me he did and that it worked.

It will be years before I know if these walks amount to anything resembling an independence or autonomy that car-bound kids lack. In reality it will be a theory tested by evidence that I select quite carefully. Next September, when he starts -- as he already puts it, "real school" -- the walk will actually be a little shorter and we will start to grapple with the question of when to let him walk entirely on his own.  I started that walk one my own right away.  It was a 200 metre walk (thank you Google Maps) and I only had one residential street to cross.  Gabriel's will be a little longer and cross a major thoroughfare where moving violations occur with regular, cacophonous frequency.  As I did in the 1970's, I am confident that Gabriel will, when we allow him, be able to navigate that route with the good sense that I did.  For now, though, we will dawdle.

Walking Boy

A simple goal for Gabriel is for him, when the time comes, to walk to school.  It seems a simple goal, perhaps even an odd one to set or aspire to, but as someone who walked to school throughout Primary in 1972-1973, I'm motivated to make sure he manages this, especially since it is a shorter walk.  Too many children are bussed to school or ferried by their parents.  Apart from the concerns about the sedentary thumb-flexing routines of children today, I just want to have him walk a bit and get a sense of independence sooner rather than later.

After having Gabriel in a daycare closer to my wife's work than to home, we have had the luxury of placing him in a daycare merely 500 metres away from home.  With that, we have had the opportunity to walk home at the end of the day and there have been a few occasions where he wants to have me walk him to school at the start of the day as well.

The walk is usually a distracted dawdle as the seasons invite him to pick rocks or dandelions to bring home to mom or a preoccupation with whatever leaves and branches hail or strong winds may have thrown into his line of sight.  There is also the regular stop outside the fence of the daycare for him to bid farewell to his friends who are "still on the inside" and have yet to be picked up.  As our first winter of walking home passed we relished the first opportunity to walk home in daylight and I was happy to assure him we would have daylight for the walk for the next eight months.

On Saturdays, thanks to a theft of Gabriel's stroller, the test was a much more ambitious sequence of walks for the routine of story time at the library, the traditional pizza lunch that has been a part of my Saturdays for over 8 years now and then on to Mount Royal University for music class.  It is a long day, with a departure around 10:30 in the morning, two trains, two busses, a few lengthy walks uphill and a return home by 4:30 or 5pm.

On the occasion that the stroller's departure was realized, I grit my teeth in anticipation of how quickly he would walk and how much energy he'd have after a few long walks.  I dreaded the possibility of him trudging into his music class only to depart early because of a meltdown that would try the patience of his gracious instructor.  If he whined that he was tired, I was ready to loft him onto my shoulders and carry him along if need be.

Nothing.  Throughout the day that we were first thrust into the routine, Gabriel never uttered a complaint.  He actually liked being able to grab a seat on the train or the bus and interact with other passengers, not to mention the diggers and other construction equipment that are the only things that ever line his routes through the world.  He was great throughout the day, only to fall asleep on my lap on the last bus home to leave a puddle of drool on my denims.

Apart from putting in the mileage, the regular travel has made him familiar with the travels.  He knows the name of his stop on the LRT.  He knows to watch the traffic and press the button (about 9 to 11 times) for the walk light at the busy intersection between daycare and home on our afternoon walk.  I suspect that he is more capable than I am prepare to test to make his way to the playground near our house and to the library on his own.

Despite his potential to do those walks on his own, I'm in no rush to thrust that independence upon him.  I wonder if he would be able to make those walks on his own without drawing the suspicion of an adult who would raise an eyebrow and the possibility that the independence is required because of abandonment.  Colleagues of mine with school aged children have already admonished me for even thinking of letting Gabriel walk to school on his own when the time comes.  I also know that no matter how capable Gabriel would be at walking to the closest supermarket and traversing the LRT tracks and busy street that are in his way, the biggest issue would be the dismaying sight of an 8-year-old heading to the Safeway to buy a loaf of bread on his own.

That prospect is at least 5 years away, but there I already have to acknowledge that there will be pressure to put that off until he is much older than I was when I ventured on similar chores with the mantra of eggs, bread, milk dissolving in my mind and learning whatever there was to learn about my neighbourhood and myself in that interlude of the day.