Here's Why You Should Let Your Kids Do Things

Weird, out of the ordinary things

Listen to the audio version - narrated by me - here

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Nicolae Ceausescu, the Communist leader of Romania was executed on Christmas Day 1989 which led to a period of huge unrest in the country. By summer 1990, I was there.

I was 5 years old.

My parents wanted to help Romania in any way they could. So they fundraised and sought donations from our local town. They filled up a Volkswagon Transporter van with toys, medicine, and clothes and set off on a three-day journey from the UK to Sibiu in central Romania, taking their five and two-year-olds along for the ride.

Me and the fam, summer 1990

We visited Romanian orphanages - the ones that made world news for their appalling conditions. My job was to give out toys to the kids, the ones you can see me here faithfully washing and drying back in the UK.

That's my 5 year old arm in the bottom left picture

I remember those orphanages so well. My brother tells me they were his first memories.

My father would continue to work in Romania for the next 10 years, and a further 20 in Siberia, Ukraine, and Albania. He’s in his late seventies now but still goes to Albania to teach English twice a year. He will be there next week in fact.

As for me, I visited Romania three times between the ages of 5 and 11. These experiences played no small part in shaping who I am as an adult. It’s no coincidence that I travel now. That I want to live a smaller, more sustainable life. That I want to help people do the same.

Young, formative experiences change kids. Which is exactly why we should encourage them, in whatever shape they come.

***

Do I sound really old and fuddy-duddy if I say childhoods are not what they used to be? Because I fear they are not. The Internet - despite all its glorious advantages - has a stranglehold on our kids’ development. Kid’s YouTube is HUGE - there is one channel that rakes in over $200 million a year. Kids under 8 spend 65% of their time on YouTube. They also spend less time outdoors than any other generation.

More than that is the trend I’m seeing amongst my peers to just not do very much with their kids. The inference is, you get all your travel and the fun stuff “out of the way” before you settle down to have kids and life becomes rather small, both for you and your child.

I must caveat here - I don’t have children. I know they are exhausting so yes, I have no doubt that the temptation is to keep life very quiet and very settled.

But I fear that this quietness means that we are sheltering our children more than we should from life experiences that could shape them into better humans as they grow.

You don’t have to take them to a country that experienced a bloody revolution just six months prior. But we could do more to show our kids what the world is made of, and what it has to offer, both the good and the bad.

My best friends have just taken their 8-month-old baby on a two-month trip to Indonesia and Thailand. Before she was born, my friend told me she was intent on exposing her daughter to travel as early as possible. They are passionate travelers and did not want to deny themselves that just because they had a baby.

The result is win-win. My friends are happy because they don’t have to give up their passion. And their kid gets to have these amazing experiences that most don’t get. They plan to continue traveling as their kid grows because they want these experiences to shape and inform their daughter’s view of the world - much like Romania did for my brother and I.

But experiences don’t just have to be travel based. I know people who volunteer with their kids in their local community because they want their children to grasp the concept of gratitude and empathy as early as possible.

Then there is a guy I know whose nine-year-old daughter is an absolute superstar. She easily converses with adults, puts her hand up, and gives her opinion at conferences, and has even set up her own foundation empowering other kids to become confident, independent, and included in policy discussions. When I asked her father why she is how she is, he told me that he always ensured she was part of his adult world, not just the world of children.

These people let their kids do things. Weird, interesting, out-of-the-ordinary things happening outside the four walls of their home. And those kids are all reaping the benefits of it.

***

This week, I returned to Sibiu in Romania for the first time in nearly 30 years.

I met an old friend there.

Her daughter Alina had fallen off a chair that broke her nose when she was two years old. Because this was 1980s Romania, they couldn’t fix the problem so she grew up with her nose at a 45-degree angle to the right, unable to breathe.

I met Alina when she was 14 and I was 10 because my parents found a plastic surgeon in the UK who offered to operate on her for free. She stayed with us for a month and we became the best of friends. I, in turn, stayed with her and her mother Lucia in Sibiu a year later.

Lucia still lives in Sibiu so last week I paid her a visit at the same apartment I stayed in all those years ago. We drank the local spirit tuica and visited her studio (Lucia paints icons for Christian Orthodox churches for a living) and she fed me and my husband more than I ever thought was possible. When we left, her husband insisted on giving us bottles of tuica for our train journey the next day, along with a huge picnic, beers, and wine. It was Romanian hospitality at its finest and a rather emotional experience for me.

Me and Alina c. 1994 / Me and Lucia c. last week

Of course, this meeting would never have happened if I had not met Lucia and Alina back in 1994. I probably wouldn’t be in Romania right now. Hell, I might not even be a full-time traveler if it wasn’t for the fact that my father found his calling as an aid-worker and met that family in the first place.

It all connects.

I may not have kids, but I once was one so I know first hand - the experiences you give your kid matters. The more you give them, the more you expose them to different ways of living and different ways of seeing the world, the better.

Kids listen to what we say. They watch what we do. They notice what experiences we give both them and ourselves. It all matters.

***

Returning to Romania has been pretty emotional. It’s brought everything back. The experiences in the orphanages. My friendship with Alina and how formative that was. I even remember the food.

When I was a teenager, I was embarrassed that my parents had taken me to Romania. I wondered why I couldn’t have had a “normal” upbringing with holidays to Spain or Greece. Why did I have to stay in the back of a van when they got to frolic at an all-inclusive resort?

Now, I’m immensely grateful for it all. It’s shaped me as a human. My brother says the same.

Our kids need to experience more than YouTube, school, and playdates. They’ll thank you for it (eventually).