When I was your age, I GOT to walk five miles to school!

In elementary school and in high school, I mostly walked to school. I rather liked it. I liked being able to choose what time to leave (go in early to join the pick-up soccer game, or watch another cartoon before I leave?) and which route to take (the direct route like good girls, or the back streets where we could feel transgressive by jaywalking, or through the townhouses' playground where we could feel transgressive because strictly speaking that playground was for residents only?). I liked being able to stop in at Becker's and buy candy, or pop into a friend's house, or, when I was in high school, go out of my way to Tim Horton's for a treat before heading home. In high school I liked how, when I was signed out for an orthodontist appointment, I could just kind of not go back to school for my last class of the day. I liked having private time to talk to my friends away from adults' ears, or to just walk by myself and think without parents barging in and asking me why I'm sitting there doing nothing.

However, sometimes I got a ride for various reasons, and various adults around me would give me crap about that. They'd tell me that THEY had to walk to school and I was spoiled for getting a ride. But what this sounds like when you're a kid is that I wasn't good enough to get a ride, I didn't deserve to get a ride, and I should have to walk as punishment for being such a bad and unworthy person. Of course, all this did was make me more determined to get a ride! They were talking about walking in a tone that made it sound like punishment and humiliation, and I didn't want punishment and humiliation! It was like the Tom Sawyer fence thing, but backwards.

When adults complain about Kids Today, they often use language that has that effect. They say Kids Today are Spoiled and Pampered. They say they need to Get Some Responsibility. They say parent should Make Them walk to school and get a job.

But why not say the parents should Let Them walk to school and get a job? Instead of talking about it like punishment and humiliation, why not talk about it as liberating? Because it is liberating, in an age-appropriate way. You get a bit more agency than usual. You get a bit more privacy than usual. You get to do something a bit more grownup than usual and prove to judgey adults that you can do it.

Please pay attention to the nuances here: I'm not suggesting taking things that are objectively unpleasant and just slapping positive names on them, like people who insist on calling a job loss an opportunity for personal growth. I'm not suggesting taking things that are objectively unpleasant and just telling kids they're lucky to do them, like people who tell kids they're lucky to have overprotective parents. I'm not trying to be like Calvin's father and tell you that drudgery and unpleasantness builds character. I'm just thinking about my younger self, coveting the freedom of the characters in her young adult novels, and then being treated like she's bad for not having those freedoms, or that those freedoms are humiliations.