Eating in the shade and following dumb rules

My son wants to eat his lunch in the shade. It's a reasonable request, sure, but he's at summer camp and they have rules, one of them being that campers must always be in counselors' eyesight, including during lunchtime. As a parent who knows that kids don't always warn you before they run off to follow a butterfly or an interesting noise or for any number of other random reasons, the rule makes sense. But to a trustworthy 9-year-old, one who has no plans for desertion and who has never given them cause to think he'll escape, it's ridiculous. "It's so hot where they want us to sit," he said to me, complaining about their rigidity. "We're not going anywhere but under a tree." I get it, I do, but I also feel like this is about more than just where the kids eat lunch during summer camp. Call me Chicken Little if you like, but I worry we've created a society where people think they only need to follow the rules they want to follow — the ones they like, the ones they understand, the ones that make sense (to them). And I'm doing my best to combat that in the next generation, by raising children who know that their obedience doesn't require their agreement. I've told my kids that there are plenty of rules I don't want to follow but do. I don't want to pay more property taxes every year, regardless of whether we're benefitting from any theoretical increases in value. I don't want to fork out more for groceries every month because manufacturers are hedging against some future potential tariff hit. I don't want to get "pre-approval" from a health insurance company for treatments my doctor says are necessary. I don't want to stop at a stop sign when it's late at night and anyone with two working eyes could see no one's coming in the other direction. But I do all of those things, and more, because there are certain freedoms that you give up when you live in a society, and one of those is the freedom to ignore any rule you find personally objectionable. I've told my son that if the counselors were asking him to do something morally wrong — if they wanted him to lie or hurt someone, if they asked him to put himself in some kind of danger — then it would not just be his right, but his responsibility, to defy them. There's a bit of a judgement call in there for someone who hasn't yet even seen 10 turns around the sun, for I'm sure he finds it highly immoral that he's required to sit in the sun when cool, leafy shade is nearby, but he'll get there with time. Who I'm really worried about are the children (and let's be honest, increasingly the adults) who were never taught that lesson. I see plenty of parents cutting across waiting lines of cars to drop their kids off first (they, unlike the rest of us, are busy and have jobs to get to). I see innumerable folks walking dogs without leashes despite the law requiring one (their dogs never bite, growl, run away, cause fear, expel allergens or allow themselves to be bitten by other dogs). In fact, there is almost constant evidence that many of us think that rules were made only for other people — people who aren't as special, different or important as they are. I'm trying to create the opposite impression in my kids. They are special to their family, of course, but that doesn't make them especially exempt. Because rules, even the dumb ones, are important. Rules are the difference between a world where the strongest and the richest and the most powerful take whatever they want from whomever they want to take it and a world where anyone can be taken to account for wrongdoing. It's something we've known for centuries. Just ask Socrates, sentenced to death more than 2,400 years ago for impiety and corrupting the youth. His friends and followers, scandalized by the harsh punishment, arranged to bribe the jail guards so he could escape Athens. But Socrates was unwilling to flout the death sentence, even though he believed the law was being unfairly applied. His arguments refusing to flee form the basis for what would, much later, be termed the "social contract" theory, which is that by accepting the protection and benefits of living in a society, we also agree to be bound by its laws and regulations. It's a more sophisticated version of the "love it or leave it" slogan you used to hear shouted at hippies in anti-war protests. It's crucial to add a caveat to the motto, rendering it "love it, leave it or change it," if we agree that "ignore it" isn't an option. That's what I want my kids to understand, that though they're not all-powerful, they are not powerless, either. They can always make their case to the counselors. "Can we eat in the shade this time?" they might ask. "All of us, so you can see us?" And if they still don't like the answer, in a few years they'll be old enough to be counselors themselves. But I'm warning them: It's a thankless job to make the rules, especially if no one follows them. To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.