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Angelo Dias's avatar

My father and stepmother died 7 years ago in a car accident, leaving me (at the time 27), Lucas (26), Theo (6), and Arthur (6), four brothers (we don't believe in the concept of _half brothers_) that were left to fend for themselves. We're, respectivelly, 34, 33, 13 and 13 now.

Lucas took into his own hands the raising of the kids, even doing a legal stunt to keep the parenting rights — the laws say the grandparents keep the kids and, well, Lucas didn't do law school for nothing.

While the kids' parents raising was very different from mine and Lucas' — our mother, dead in 2007, was much more into the "let the kids play" than Andreia, father's new wife — so when everyone was gone Lucas insisted in changing this educational model. The kids were meant to break their arms, scrape their knees, hurt their feet and come home covered in mud after a rainy day. That, for Lucas, was safe play. Staying at home playing videogames was dangerous.

Now, both the kids — taller than Lucas and I, in the start of dreaded teenage years — do _everything_ by themselves. They ride their bikes to school and back, they get groceries at the market, they visit the nearby skatepark, they go to their english classes. We're in Brazil, so this kind of independence is difficult to see and it's also dangerous.

But danger, as Lucas says, teaches. One of these days Theo fell from his skateboard and hurt his hand and knee. He walked home, bleeding a little, to take a shower and tend to the wounds. He didn't cry or complain "I'm hurt, I fell". He was angry because the road had a bump, and now his hand would hurt for some days. And that's it, let's throw in a bandage and good luck, that's life, let's go.

I'm proud that they are growing tough and ready to face some of life's challenges, and pretty sure they are tougher than most of their friends. I hope we're not raising boys that are afraid to cry or that think feelings aren't nice. Teenager years suck and Lucas and I have no clue what we're doing — we never chose to have kids and now we act as father-and-father to our brothers.

All we've got is hope.

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Ragged Clown's avatar

I grew up in the 70s and had endless freedom. I came home to an empty house when I was six because both my parents were working and travelled much further than the grandfathers in Sheffield.

I wanted my kids to have the same freedoms as I had but they were just completely uninterested. We specifically moved to a little housing development with dozens of kids to play with. It was next to a forest on the side of a mountain but my kids never left the house ever because of video games. No kids ever left their houses.

Imagine what the next generation of parents — the ones who never left their houses as kids — will be like…

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