Boy Meets World

At a get-together last week, the day the heart-breaking truth of what had become of the little Brooklyn boy Leibby Kletzky came out, a discussion cropped up about a family--relatives, I think of my host and hostess--allowing their 12-year-old son to travel by train into Jersey City unaccompanied by an adult for a daily program at the same high school the boy will coincidentally be attending in September. There was strong condemnation all around for any mode of getting around by kids of any age and at any time of day other than riding in a car driven by their parents. For me, it was one of those, "hello, I'm sitting right here and can HEAR YOU moments," as everyone who was there knows the boy takes the train every day, too. Whether or not they were intending to send me a message of either concern or disapproval notwithstanding, I got to thinking about why I am willing to let the boy board a train in the 'burbs, transfer in Newark and land ultimately in Jersey City when others think it unimaginable.

My father tells me stories all the time about the various sights he'd see and adventures he'd have when at the age of 6 or 7, he would board a trolley in Jersey City all alone to visit his grandmother in Hoboken. By age 9 or 10 he was leading other kids on expeditions to Coney Island via Ferry and the NYC subway. To these stories, I react as my friends did--with disapproval of my grandmother's judgement. He'll say, but times were different. I'll think, but weirdos still existed. Then I remembered that I was riding buses in Jersey City with a same-age friend at age 10 and it didn't seem so outlandish anymore (OK, 6 or 7 still does).

Are there weirdos out there? Absolutely. By and large are they going to capture kids and dismember them? No. Will the boy encounter the occasional deviant, a menacing-looking stranger, an aggressive pan-handler, a would-be pickpocket, a dealer offering drugs? I think so. He has already. But I rode the train everyday as a young woman--aka a magnet for weirdos--and these encounters were scant and manageable. By and large, riders of public transportation are just people getting to where they are going. I think in the rarefied world of the suburbs, people tend to forget this. Kids are so insulated from the real world that a train full of strangers becomes a train full of predators. If the parents think so, the kids will certainly think so.

Both the girl and the boy will drone on about my overprotectiveness over the years. And yes, I've pointed out every scary edge they could fall off, every germ potential they might encounter and the uselessness of every lightweight coat they've ever worn. I can't think about the girl driving too much and feel like I should medicate myself when either of them are flying. The mayor and I were a wreck when the boy started riding the train last year. The mayor would call me when he spotted him heading toward the train, spying on him from his office window in Jersey City, and I'd call him back when "the package" alighted again in town. But, the boy never knew it. He felt the confidence we had in his ability to negotiate his expanding world, even if we didn't fully at first. And I think that is a part of our job as parents, to guide our children incrementally toward independence and self-confidence. In that regard (and in many other regards) we cannot help but revel in our success with the girl. She breaks boundaries and succeeds beyond our wildest expectations every day. We expect nothing less of the boy and are preparing him accordingly.

While I fervently hope I don't live to regret the chances I allow the boy to take, I prefer that risk to having him live to regret chances he was too timid to take because I made him that way.