September 1, 2022
PUBLISHER’S CORNER
Did You Have a Normal Childhood?
By Eloise Graham
The other day I heard some people lamenting that the children of today just don’t have a normal childhood. That got me to thinking, “What is a normal childhood?”
I thought my childhood was normal. My parents, older siblings and I lived in a two-story modest home that we owned. At age five, I went to kindergarten. Seemed normal to me. The kindergarten was held in a remodeled unattached garage. Our teacher lived in the house near the garage. She lived with her sister and brother-in-law. Through my eyes, that seemed normal.
But not all five year-olds went to kindergarten. At that time there were only two kindergartens in our town. We had four elementary schools and one parochial school. Two of my kindergarten classmates were from different schools. I would not be classmates with them again until we all attended the same Junior High. Within a couple of years, all of the schools had kindergarten classes in their school buildings.
My class was the last to attend the garage kindergarten. Oh, did I say I walked to kindergarten? It was three blocks and I had to cross three intersections. I often walked with a neighbor boy. I don’t remember walking in the rain or snow, but I must have. We only had one car and my dad generally drove that to work. It all seemed normal.
Grade school was four blocks away, and walking to and from was the usual mode of transportation. Bicycles were another way, but that would have been fourth grade on up. Everybody went home for lunch. Seemed normal to me.
Today’s students are bussed from door to door, and to them, that is normal. Lunches are served at school, no more going home for lunch. Again, normal to them.
How about family vacations? I remember going from Kansas to central Illinois to visit my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Gus. Two weeks every summer. It was normal. I thought all vacations were spent going to visit relatives. I was in Junior High when I learned that wasn’t normal for a classmate of mine. Her family had gone to New Orleans for their trip. I innocently asked her if her grandparents or aunts and uncles lived there. I was shocked that none did. Her family had gone on a destination vacation like they did every summer. That was normal for her but completely strange to me.
I graduated high school with some of the same kids I had gone to kindergarten with. The majority of my graduating class had all been together for 12 or 13 years. Not so for our children. We moved a couple of times during their school years. But they seemed to think they had normal childhoods. One of our moves was to Virginia Beach/Norfolk area. Many of their classmates moved a minimum of every two years. Some more often than that. But to them, moving was a norm. So what is a normal childhood, really? The child star that has a tutor on set at the studio. The child athlete that practices two hours in the morning before going to school. That certainly is not normal for me, but they adjust. They still make friends, go to dances and pep rallies, struggle with some of their class work, get their feelings hurt and also succeed at challenges. All seeming normal.
We all see our lives through the lens of our circumstances and experiences, and we feel that is normal. Then we see someone else’s normal. How normal was your childhood? I bet it was pretty normal, even if you didn’t go to kindergarten in a garage! And the children today seem to be having a normal childhood. At least normal to them.
