Country or City?

A few months ago, driving with my daughters in the back seat, 9-year-old Ella remarked, “You know, Dad, dinosaurs once roamed around Colorado. Even before there were Wendy’s and banks.”

I chuckled at the thought of a T-Rex running up the A-trail and then turned serious. Sixty-five million years is a hard enough concept to grasp, but with technology and population growth expanding uncontrollably, even relatively recent frontier times seem like ancient history. Our little Front Range escape is no longer the quaint, undeveloped town of old, and isn’t getting any smaller. As Fort Collins swells and development surges, I wonder: Does city size matter when raising children?

When we moved to Fort Collins in 2004, the population was 125,000. Today, it’s closer to 150,000. The development is obvious, from new neighborhoods south on Timberline Road to more traffic on College Avenue to the explosion of retailers at Front Range Village. Yet it’s essence has remained the same: friendly people, active lifestyle and great weather. I’m definitely hooked.

I was born and raised in the cosmopolitan city of Montreal, home to 2.5 million people. The street on which I grew up was home to more ethnicities than exist in Fort Collins. My friends and I took the subway and the city bus alone before junior high school. We functioned in two languages and developed the confidence that comes from living in a fast-paced atmosphere. After seven years in South Florida, also fast-paced and diverse, the speed finally got to me.

Once Ella was born in 2003, Tanya and I were ready to move. We sacrificed the financial opportunities and stimulation of urban living for the intimacy and amiability of a small town. We still love the sophisticated cultural and culinary opportunities of big cities (not the prices, mind you), but smaller and closer to nature were priorities.

There are many reasons to raise families in populous places like Chicago or New York or Atlanta. Proximity to higher education and extensive travel opportunities come to mind. I also suspect that a high percentage of kids who grow up in big cities develop an appreciation for multiculturalism and the confidence necessary to thrive in a competitive marketplace.

Some of my close friends and family are raising children in places such as Montreal, Toronto and Boston. While my kids and theirs might eventually think differently about issues like politics, business and the environment, I’m pretty sure the truly important aspects of their personalities will be similar. That’s because basic human kindness, generosity and respect are learned on the inside of the home.

Successful, happy people come from all pockets of the world: urban, rural and everything in between. And while external factors in a person’s development are innumerable, the ultimate product has nothing to do with whether you ride the train or a bike to school. Or, for that matter, a dinosaur.

Quitting the Family? Good Luck

A few weeks ago Ella asked me if she could play at the park after dinner. It was already 6:30 after a long day at school, and she and her 6-year-old sister, Sophia, had yet to have a bath. “Sorry,” I answered. “There’s too much to do before bed.”

Ella stomped up the stairs and yelled, “Sometimes I wish I could just quit the family and do whatever I want!”

Ella’s only 9, so I wasn’t concerned that she would follow through on her threat. I did, however, see her point. Like most parents, Tanya and I tell our kids what to do all the time, mostly because they don’t listen until something is repeated 10 times. I wondered: In the interest of showing my kids how much they really need my bossing around, should I consider actually letting them do whatever they want?

This wasn’t the first time I heard Ella voice her displeasure with the family hierarchy. I appreciate that from her perspective, it must be hard to only occasionally taste the freedom that parents seem to exercise all the time. Even from a young age, we all know how good it feels to make decisions, from what to eat for breakfast to whom to invite to our birthday party. We crave autonomy.

The catch is that young children don’t have enough experience to understand what they need and how to make sound long-term decisions. I consider Ella to be emotionally mature for a 9-year-old. But left to her own devices, I wouldn’t be surprised if she bathed once a week, ordered pizza for dinner every night, and watched television until her eyes glazed over. Of course, I could be wrong.

It would be quite the social experiment (and probably criminal) to give Ella and Sophia, say, three days to police themselves. I wouldn’t leave the house, just leave them alone. My instructions might go something like this:

“Be careful using the stove.”

“Wear clean underwear.”

“If you shower, don’t flood the basement.”

To be clear, I would never go through with it. But if I did, Sophia probably would raid the candy drawer, then beg us to come back within a day. Ella, I fear, might actually consider it a vacation. She’d scramble up some eggs in the morning, wear the same clothes every day, and watch a lot of movies. In other words, she’d be fine, but only until she wasn’t.

That time would come eventually, because it has to. Children can’t grasp how dependent they are on being told what to do. Even if they don’t freely admit it, they crave guidance and examples of how to navigate the world. If kids were meant to do whatever they wanted all the time, parents would have been phased out a long time ago.

As my own mother told me when I was finally old enough to understand: When your kids tell you to back off, listen closely. They’re telling you the exact opposite.