Home Alone

As many of you know, one of the Christmas traditions on my wife’s side of the family is to have a trivia contest based on a “Christmas” movie during the family party where I am the originator of the questions and sole judge on responses.  Forget the presents, tinsel, and eggnog, this is a yearly battle and the competitive side emerges.  This year, the movie is Home Alone 2.  This 1992 gem is a sequel to the original Home Alone starring Macaulay Culkin.  If you haven’t seen this, well, you would do poorly in the trivia contest.  The story is about a young boy who gets separated from his family at the airport, gets on the wrong airplane and ends up in New York City while his family is headed to Florida.  Kevin (Culkin) manages to find food and lodging using his Dad’s credit card.  Once again, he meets up with the “Wet Bandits” in the Big Apple.  The rest of the movie has Kevin outrunning and “outpranking” the bandits using ingenuity and pure kid power.  Our three kids laughed their little “pahanchas” off watching this when they were 9, 7, and 3 (now 33, 31, and 27).  I wish I had that time back. 

How many of our kids are “home alone” on any given day?  The answer is simple – more than you think.  The days of the nuclear family, Ozzie and Harriet, The Brady Brunch and 7^th Heaven may not be over, but are on life support.  This means that most families are two wage-earning families and prevents parents from being home with the kids as often as they would like. Also, check out the percentage of single family homes or “split” homes…you may be shocked.  “Latch key” kids are much more common today than in the 60’s when all of the Dads on my block worked shift work and the Moms took care of all of our needs.  None of this is my point.  My point is that kids, at least many of them, are naturally inquisitive.  Often, we stifle that trait because we box them in with restrictions and never allow them to go off the reservation.  Think about it – when was the last time you gave a “Tiered Assignment” with many possibilities or allowed them to develop their own projects?.  When was the last time that you simply gave the rubric and let them explore…outside of the frame work?  Maybe even coloring outside the lines while stepping out of the box?  While it is important to teach the critical content, there is also a place for exploration.