Sheltering Our Children

In an attempt to teach my son a little science hands-on while doing a bit of gardening, I purchased some seeds and planted them in these organic boxes I picked up at Walmart. They're really cool; they look like egg cartons filled with soil, but the nice thing is that the box is biodegradable. You plant the box in the ground once the seedlings are strong enough, and the box deteriorates in the soil instead of living forever in a landfill. I thought it was neat that my son would be learning two lessons from this experiment.

Now understand, I'm a city girl. Born and raised in the Bronx, I don't have much experience with plants other than the potted ones my mom had all over the windows of the house. We nicknamed our house Wild Asia; I think she just wanted to block the view of the outside world as much as possible. Anyway, the point here is that I don't know very much about taking care of seedlings. I read the instructions and followed them as best I could. It said I needed to plant 2-3 seeds per space deep in the soil. I did that. It said the boxes needed to be in the sun. I took them out on our patio and set them where they'd get ALL the morning light. And it said to mist them daily. My son and I diligently went out each morning and misted the boxes. We were on our way.

Within a week the seedlings began sprouting. Joy!! My son was ecstatic. I was pretty excited too. Yay, we'd have flowers for the summer that we'd planted ourselves! We continued misting the plants each morning and waited patiently for the flowers to grow.

A couple of weeks later, when we went outside to check on our flowers, there were none in the boxes! There were a couple of little lizards (geccos) running around the mini flowerbeds, but all the greenery was gone. I didn't get it. What had we done wrong?

The answer? We didn't shelter our plants.

Outside, in the blazing sun, some of our little plants had just baked. Even though we misted them each morning, it wasn't enough. We had a very dry hot spring, and the sun was just too harsh for these little seedlings. There are also lots of birds in our neighborhood, which is nice in the sense that we can go outside and birdwatch. However, it isn't as nice when the birds are making their nests and use some of our seedlings to do it. The lizards didn't help either. They were running around the flowerbeds, stepping all over our tender seedlings. In the end the poor things were too delicate and couldn't survive the outside world.

I've learned an important lesson about seedlings. They need to be sheltered when they're young and tender if they're going to grow. We planted some sunflowers and daisies, but these are inside the house on the kitchen windowsill where they get sunlight but not the scorching morning sun. I water them generously each day, and they are striving.

I think of my children as seedlings. When they're small, they're tender and delicate. I was careful where I took them, how I dressed them to go outdoors, kept them away from other little ones who were coughing and sneezing so they wouldn't get sick. I'd feed them and bathe them to keep them clean and healthy. But was that enough? What happens when we let our children out into the world? Are they prepared for what's out there?

The Duggars and many others like them have been criticized for sheltering their children. They've been told it's unhealthy to keep the children from seeing what's out there. I think the opposite is true: I think it's unhealthy to let our children loose on the world where they can easily get burned, or trampled, or dragged into some activity we would never approve. I remember going to school with young girls who were smoking marijuana or worse, and their parents had no idea what was going on. Parents who thought they were pretty involved in their children's lives were shocked to find their daughter's in labor when they didn't even know these girls were pregnant or even sexually active. Many of these parents said the same thing: "I don't know why my child would do this. It isn't what we taught in the home, nor was it the example we set." And in many cases these children DID come from nice homes. The problem wasn't what was going on in the home. The problem was these children weren't sheltered from the damaging influences outside the home. After seeing the difference between children who are sheltered and those who aren't, I'm inclined to believe that the sheltered ones have a better foothold on life once they're adults than the ones who aren't. Their parents took care to keep them safe while they were just seedlings, and once they were strong enough to be planted outside, they were able to stand the harsh weather.

I know many parents disagree with this. All I can say to them is, if you choose not to shelter your children, be prepared to work even harder. When your children are home, you, the parent, are in control. Once you let them loose into the cold, cruel world, it's anyone's guess.