My wife and I have three wonderful children. Like most parents, from the moment my firstborn was handed to me everything in my life changed. I went from being a career-focused newlywed who stays up all night on weekends playing AOE II, who goes on trips to Vegas and snowboarding with friends, who follows rock bands on their tours, to simply being a dad. That one word sums it up. I am now just a dad.
I still do some of the things I enjoy doing but it is almost always with the kids. They are my raison d'etre. I also do a lot of things that are just for them. I would not have thought I would enjoy that, a few years ago. But I do get great pleasure out of watching them compete in sports and academics, or just being with them. Who would have thought that the guy I described in the first paragraph would ever turn into the guy in the second paragraph!
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| Me, helicopter parenting |
Still, until recently I have been pretty "hands-off" with the kids. What I mean by that is, I try not to micromanage them. I have tried not to hover. I believe that one of the reasons I will so eagerly dive into something new and scary, the reason that appearing on Unidentified did not cause me a second thought, is because my parents did the same for me.
I was allowed to make mistakes. I was allowed to get hurt. In both instances, instead of running to Mommy for consolation, I sat in my blood, analyzed what happened, and figured out what not to do the next time. I try to do the same for my kids.
For example, a few years ago, my wife and I went to a barbecue at an old friend's house. Our three little ones ran out to the swing set and took over the place. We turned our backs and grabbed some chicken and potato salad. I cracked open a home brew beer that someone brought. It was like old times. My ear was cocked in the direction of the kids but I did not constantly watch over them. I chilled out and enjoyed myself.
Another set of parents took turns following their little one around the yard. The dad constantly had his hands up, a few inches from the kid, in case the kid lost his balance. The mom stayed a few feet away and looked scornfully at the dad if there was a close call. These are called "Helicopter Parents." They hover around their kid(s) trying to protect them from every little mistake, trying to make sure they never get hurt.
Helicopter Parents mean well. I do not disparage them for caring. It is just not my style. I have been asked by people like that, how do you ever know if the kids need your help? It is easy.
Whenever I hear a loud bang, I count to three. If I do not hear agonizing wailing by three, I know they are OK. You also learn, after a while, that there are different kinds of cries. There is the cry that says, "I need to go to the Emergency Room and get stitches," which will get me out of my chair. Then there is the cry that says, "I'm OK but I need a hug," in which case I call the kid to me.
When I hear shouting, I encourage the kids to work it out themselves. If they cannot, then I will preside over a tribunal but I would rather not. When my office doors are closed they know not to come in unless someone is bleeding or on fire. When I hear a knock I will mute the phone and ask them, "Are you bleeding or on fire?" It is never fire. If it is a cut I tell them to clean it and put a Band-Aid on it and I will take a look when my call or meeting is done. My kids are now good at administering first aid, just like I was, as a kid.
This parenting style has gone through a metamorphosis, recently. Living in Quarantine has forced changes in everything my family and I do. For the first few months of Quarantine, we wiped all our groceries down with Clorox Wipes before bringing them into the house. We quarantined our mail for three days in the guest room before opening it. We kept our kids from seeing any friends in-person. In a way, we became the Helicopter Parents.
An invisible marauder was trying to invade our home and infect all of us. Maybe it would not kill us but it could kill others we came into contact with. We were on High Alert.
That mentality has eased tremendously, now that we know more about how the Coronavirus is spread and we know which of our friends take it as seriously as we do. We have some socially-distanced get-togethers in the back yard or out at the Distant Social fire pit. We have permitted the kids to participate in limited, unsupervised social engagements. Sports will be starting soon. We will see how it goes.
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| The Distant Social Pit |
School starts tomorrow. We are keeping the kids home for Distant Learning. I would like for them to see their friends but they have gone this long, what is another month, or two? By then, either the schools will be closed again and we will know we dodged a bullet, or everything will be fine and the kids will catch up with their friends at that point. Kids are resilient.
Thinking about all this makes me wonder about aliens. Also, thinking about pretty much anything these days, makes me think about aliens. I wonder, are aliens Helicopter Parents?
Are Aliens Helicopter Parents?
When I ponder this question I am not thinking about what aliens do on their own planets. I could speculate but there is no way of knowing for sure, without asking one, and I am guessing they do not speak English. What I am thinking of is more related to The Marceau Paradox, "Why are aliens hiding from us?" We know aliens are here (at least sometimes) because we have thousands of eye-witness accounts and even some video. I have my own verified UFO sighting which allows me to take a step beyond the Fermi Paradox, Where is everybody?, and emphatically say, they are here, Why are they hiding from us?
Perhaps one reason may be because they are parenting us. Why? Maybe we are them.
Maybe, millions of years ago, people from another planet planted Homo Sapien here on Earth. Why? Could be that:
- Aliens depleted all their natural resources
- There was a pandemic
- They simply wanted to colonize another planet
For today, let us go with Door #2. It is a timely topic. Maybe a pandemic was raging across some other planet, out there in The Milky Way, and they took a group of the uninfected and transplaneted them here. They could have already been living off-planet, on a moon or a large space station, and were unaffected by the virus. They were still dependent on the home planet for food and other resources but were afraid to go back or accept any new shipments for fear of catching the virus. So they took off and colonized a new planet.
I am not the first to suggest that humans may have origins on another planet. I lean against that line of thinking because of evolution. We are so similar to other primates who came before Homo Sapien. And yet, there is a missing link. We know that we existed alongside Neanderthal and there is now evidence that Neanderthal DNA persists in some people today. I actually have a friend from college who is part Neanderthal. I spent a few days hunting with him at his cabin in Northern New York last year and he told about the DNA test he bought. Once I knew that, I could actually see it in his face. It was pretty cool.
The evolutionary record shows what led up to Neanderthal. Then it ends. Somehow, along the way, Homo Sapien just magically appears, alongside Neanderthal. How did that happen?
Going with the "we are them" premise, perhaps aliens wanted to colonize Earth but they were not able to live in Earth's conditions. They could have required a different level of oxygen or some other gas. Maybe their bodies were not able to process the amino acids and sugars required to derive nourishment from Earth's plants and animals. But with a little genetic engineering (a simple process for anyone with the technological ability to get from there to here, wherever there is) they were able to adapt themselves or their next generation, to be like Earth's existing primates - a more advanced version, capable of reproducing with the existing version.
Or vice versa. Maybe Neanderthal was adapted to be more alien-like so that aliens could reproduce with this new human, creating a hybrid. Or maybe Homo Sapien is itself the hybrid of Neanderthal and aliens. That would explain how we just magically appeared alongside Neanderthal one day.
Whatever the case, it is possible that there is a link between humans and aliens. I am not saying this is definitely the case. But if it were, then we come back to the Marceau Paradox. Why are aliens hiding from us? If we come from them (and we may or may not - just philosophizing) why would our "parent species" not want to make contact with us?
If aliens did colonize Earth because they were trying to get away from a pandemic then it could be that some of the folks who visit us still carry the virus and they do not want to infect us - a reverse War of the Worlds thing. Or maybe we were the ones with the virus, outcast, banished to a remote part of the galaxy. Now, aliens are afraid we will get them sick, in a true War of the Worlds sense.
More likely, they have better things to do. We children are here, playing on our Earthen swing set while our alien parents are flying around the cosmos, getting some chicken and beer, talking with the other grown-ups out there. They are listening for the cry when they hear a loud bang come from Earth. But otherwise they are doing their thing while we do ours. Essentially, aliens are not helicopter parents.
Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.
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