I don’t know Julie Holcombe personally. She lives in Pennsylvania and I live in Georgia, so our paths have never crossed.
But based on what I read about her in the newspaper recently, I’m pretty sure she’s got my vote locked up for Mother of the Year.
A little background: Julie has two twin sons. They are 12 and in the sixth grade. They live in Yardley, Pennsylvania, a town of about 3,000, just slightly smaller than my hometown.
Each day after school, the sons – Ryan and Patrick – meet up with a group of friends in a field near the school. They call themselves “The Squad” and they do the things one might expect little boys to do. They play football. They roughhouse. They get dirty. They climb trees.
It’s the tree climbing that got them in trouble with another adult. A man, who never identified himself to the boys, told them they needed to stop climbing the trees. They could get hurt, he said. He even sent a security guard over to talk to the boys, and he later threatened to tell the boys’ principal if he saw them climbing trees again.
Ryan told the news media that the man told them they should go straight home after school, not hanging out and playing in the field.
This is where Julie comes in. When the boys told her what the man had said, she was angry, not because a strange man had approached her children, but because someone had the gall to suggest her children not be allowed to play outside.
I know I grew up in a different time. Kids face more dangers today than my generation ever did. But I also can’t imagine a childhood where I couldn’t go outside.
Of course we want our kids to be safe. But we can’t bubble wrap them and sit them in the middle of the living room, far from the sharp edges of the coffee table they might hit.
We often joked that my mother was a big fan of fresh air and she wanted us out in it as much as possible. But it taught us to use our imaginations. The refrigerator box Mr. Red brought us became a spaceship. We rode our bikes on the trails in the wood behind our neighborhood and we built forts. We caught turtles in the lake.
We were outside almost all day, coming inside whenever a thunderstorm rumbled through. We drank water out of the hose. If one of our mothers wanted us, she stepped out in the front yard and hollered for us to come, a system I still think is better than text messaging.
And yes, we climbed trees. The best tree for climbing was the magnolia tree in Mrs. Val’s front yard. I spent lots of time as a child climbing that tree, and I’m proud that none of the adults in my neighborhood told me I couldn’t climb a tree.
Julie Holcombe didn’t much like someone telling her children they couldn’t climb trees, either. She wrote a permission slip that both boys now carry with them.
“My kids have my permission to climb any tree they so desire,” she wrote. “In fact, I encourage it.”
She went on to say she was frustrated by how much time kids spend indoors with video games instead outside, using their imaginations and getting physical activity.
“So, from this point forward,” she wrote, “I respectfully ask that you let my kids be kids."
Amen, sister. Amen.
