Don't Tell Your Parents

Issue 255

New York City, 2015

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When I was about eight or nine I read a book about how to trick adults that left me perplexed. In one chapter—on techniques to hide objects—it said that adults detest kneeling. An adult, I learned, will look through an entire room several times before they reluctantly drop to the floor. So the book stressed that hiding an object underneath your bed or on a low shelf is more suitable than you might assume. This was fascinating. Inconceivable, really. What was wrong with the ground?

In my memory, the book contains pictures, explanations, perhaps even diagrams, and the chapters are all about subterfuge, with the adult world as a puzzle to solve if you’re looking to be successful in your mischief. The principle to inculcate was straightforward: adults see a different world. What you perceive—as a rambunctious, active, child—isn’t what adults perceive. When they say no, or when they’re uninterested, the divergence comes from different perceptions about the day rather than mere disagreements about what’s right. Perhaps this was the first spy book that I ever read, as the objective in each chapter was to insert yourself into a new role, to inhabit a foreign sensibility, to see through different eyes. And I understand now that the chapters about persuasion and deceit and schemes were simply a way to entice children—so that the book could, covertly, teach empathy.

Part of the book’s conceit, and part of why I believe it worked, is that it offered children a doorway: here’s something that you don’t know but I’m going to show you. For a species that’s curious, this seems like a good method. You can even apply this framework to the compelling nature of adventure and detective and action stories—I want to know what happens next is pretty much indistinguishable from I want to learn how this works. Yet my sense is that there’s been a shift over the years in how children’s entertainment is marketed, and that the idea of a portal, this notion that there’s some secret that the children don’t know, is less common, or at least less direct.

What I remember from Saturday morning television shows and books from our school library is that a good portion of them contained an invitation that could be roughly translated as don’t tell your parents. Nothing was actually secret about these shows and books, but the message offered a seduction, some excitement, about an unknown world, as opposed to what I often see today: a suggestion that the entertainment was created specifically for the children, that the adults are uncool, that childhood is what’s trendy and where the secrets remain. Somehow that seems like a peculiar message for adults to convey to children. It certainly looks smarmy and ingratiating, but it also isn’t that charming for the children—because there’s no possibility of charm if you’re not led somewhere new.

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Of course the changes in entertainment say a lot more about adults than it says about children. When I see a clip for a new film that’s targeted at children, the ingratiation from the adults, the sense that they’d rather be children and they’re comfortable displaying this emotion in public, often permeates the message. Beyond being ridiculous and sad, it’s also a poor technique for attracting children. Rather than revealing something that’s transgressive, the transgressive element is the adult’s desire to be childlike—which seems like a horrendous way to attract a child’s attention, or, incidentally, respect. Perhaps there’s some humor in how this results from a lack of empathy, as the adults, in a quest to relive childhood, overlook what children would actually want.

You don’t have to look far to see failures of empathy—when someone interprets another person’s behavior based on a faulty map, based on a map that assumes everyone shares the same values and standards and perceptions. It is remarkable, I sometimes think, that we don’t fight all day long. With the trouble we have in comprehending how others perceive behaviors you might think there’s actually a peculiar shortage of murders in our world. The concept of mirroring in foreign relations describes the mistake—the customary, reflexive mistake—of judging other actions based on your own motivations. And plenty of generals and presidents make decisions that seem inexplicable—unless you’re able to fully inhabit their actual motivations. Maybe foreign relations is the right analogy when it comes to childhood, too, because dealing with your parents is a little bit like having diplomatic status in a police state—they’re not supposed to kill you, but they can monitor your movements, or restrict you to an embassy, even if you don’t understand the logic.

For adults and children the dynamic is reversed—children can’t comprehend adults, adults can’t comprehend children. The only difference is that the adults should at least attempt to remember what it was like in those earlier years; they can’t inhabit that earlier persona, but they can, ideally, recognize that what they perceive today is different. That every sound and sight and experience is interpreted through a lens that no longer covers an adult eye. Whether that means that adults take this information and prod children toward new perceptions, toward maturity, or whether that means that adults take this information and accept the difference, even relish the youthful, cheerful difference, obviously depends on the moment.

All that I really know is that earlier this week I came back from the pool and dropped my swim goggles. It was late and dark and I heard but didn’t see the nose piece scatter across the wood floor. I turned on all the lights, looked around, and then mumbled to myself, because I knew that I would need to bend down and start examining the entire floor if I was going to find them, and this was not what I wanted to do.