Lifting Up through Letting Go

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these
little kids playing some game in this big
field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and
nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.
That's all I do all day.”

Holden Caulfield
The Catcher in the Rye.

Holden Caulfield’s words in The Catcher in the Rye reflect the fear of losing the innocence of childhood. Throughout the book, he condemns all adults for being phony and immoral which makes him fear his own coming of age. This fear leads him to make the above statement that he wishes that he could freeze children in a perpetual state of youth so that they can remain happy and innocent forever.

Although Holden Caulfield is in many ways still a child himself, many adults express the same wish to freeze children in a perpetual state of youth so that they can protect their children from the realities that will later come with their emergence into adulthood. We see this occurring everywhere as parents take advantage of new technology that allows them to monitor their children through video cameras, GPS tracking devices, and constant mandatory check ups by cell phone. However innocent this wish to shelter their children may seem, the line between catching children when they fall and holding them back from discovering their own growing identities is a thin line indeed. If parents and adults in general fail to allow children some freedom to learn from their own mistakes or to express themselves in new ways as they begin the transition to adulthood, then many young people either become solely dependent on their parents’ guidance or they rebel against what they feel is the refusal to acknowledge the fact that they are no longer children anymore.

The “crazy cliff” that Holden Caulfield wishes to save children from by catching them is the leap from childhood to adulthood. This leap may be intimidating for many young people and parents alike, but it is a necessary leap that helps shape young people into adults capable of dealing with life by making their own mature decisions. I am not saying that parents should trust children to always make the right decisions or that being strict is detrimental to a child’s development, but I believe that there must be times when children are forced to pull themselves up rather than rely on an adult’s helping hand. The helping hands present in childhood will not always be there, and when young people enter adulthood, they often find that the hands that they encounter in the adult world are just as likely to push them down as they are to help them up. Although all good parents support their children by leading them to the cliff with reassurance and proper guidance, the final leap can be made by the adolescent alone, and this final leap becomes impossible when young people are held back through constant supervision meant to protect young people from themselves. Only through their own confidence can adolsecents develop the skills and strength necessary to make the leap to adulthood. A failure to have confidence in their own hands and abilities is often the dangerous result of being pulled down by a well meaning hand that refuses to let go.

When do you think the line is crossed between support and sheltering?

Have some parents gone too far in the supervision and constant monitoring available through technology such as cell phones, hidden cameras, and GPS monitoring systems?

What are your own experiences as a parent or a child that have shaped your views about this issue?

I would really like to hear from everyone since this is such a pressing and hotly debated issue. Feel free to let me know if you agree or disagree with anything about the quote or my post.
Thank you for reading and please come back for future posts!

--Carrie