A Matter of Trust

Embracing family time |

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SUBSCRIBE to TIME Magazine It's day 105 of staying-at-home in my household (but who's counting?). Somewhere around day 90, the siren song of summer and my state's declining rate of coronavirus cases started tempting us to emerge from our cocoon. So my family, like many other families, is inching its way back into the outside world. When I say "outside world," I mean literally outside. As in, the yard. We're still in the privileged position of being able to stay out of stores and offices. My husband and daughters are incredibly social and extroverted. I stand in stark contrast. Staying home in pajamas without apology has been wish-fulfillment for me. As my kids start socializing again, I'm still on my couch under a pile of work, barking out reminders about sunscreen and social distancing every time they step outside. But what happens when I'm not watching? At ages 10 and 12, my kids are exploring their boundaries. I trust that they make an effort to follow the rules, and I enjoy their horrified reports of "naughty" friends taking off their masks or sitting too close together. I'm not naive enough to believe their insistence that they're routinely the only kids in any small group who stayed on their best behavior. Yet I find myself looking the other way. I'm not proud of it, and it doesn't feel right. But insisting they stay home while I work all day doesn't feel right either. I have taken the "what I don't know can't hurt me" approach to parenting many times. When I suspect Rosie's snuck an extra Oreo, or Anna's watched two TV shows instead of one, I can live with it. But in this instance, what I don't know can hurt me. I expected to have a few more years before confronting life-and-death scenarios. (They're too young to drive, experiment with alcohol, and so on.) At what point do we decide to trust our kids even when the stakes are high? How do we convey an awareness of consequences without terrifying them? Write to me at andrea@time.com. I'm so grateful for your collective wisdom and company as I stay tucked away on my couch. All the best, Andrea     MORE STORIES Many traditional camps are closed this summer, but TIME for Kids is here to help. Sign up to receive free daily activities, created and curated by the editors of TIME for Kids. Sign up for the newsletter with one click to learn more. The cover of TIME's July 6 double issue features artist Charly Palmer's painting of a child who is "faced with both the injustice of today and America's historical role in it." Palmer's working on a project to reintroduce a version of W.E.B. Du Bois' children's magazine, The Brownies' Book. In this essay, Jaquira Díaz writes: "I am the Black daughter of a white woman, which means that in my family tree there are colonizers as well as colonized people, and I carry this violence in my body." And Damon Young writes, "If the schools I attended were my only resource for learning about slavery, I would've thought that Abraham Lincoln personally went block to block, like an Amazon truck, to deliver freedom–and I went to 'good' schools." Another worthwhile read: In 2019, TIME published Young's essay about raising a Black daughter. Oakland is removing police officers from the city's schools. In this new novel, a mother is overwhelmed by debt from an emergency C-section, student loans, and the cost of raising two young children. Last year, billionaire Robert F. Smith pledged during a commencement speech to pay off the student debt of the Morehouse College class of 2019. Now, Smith is launching an initiative to ease student debt at historically Black colleges and universities. To Unsubscribe You have received this e-mail because you are subscribed to this newsletter from TIME.com. Unsubscribe here. Update Email Click here to update your email address. Privacy Policy Please read our Privacy Policy, or copy and paste this link into your browser: https://time.com/privacy TIME may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice. For Further Communication Please contact parents@time.com TIME USA, LLC 3 Bryant Park New York, NY 10036 Connect with TIME Find TIME on Facebook Follow TIME on Twitter Subscribe to more TIME Newsletters Get TIME on your Mobile Device Get TIME on your iPad Subscribe to RSS Feed