Childhood lost

Randy Young

June 30, 2009 09:56 pm

— Say what you will about Michael Jackson, but if he represents anything — his life and untimely death should be a stark reminder to all of us about how precious the gift of childhood is for every human being.
Thinking back, I clearly remember little Michael dancing and singing with his brothers with a huge grin on his face. His voice so pure, his joy for performing exuding from his very being.
But as the years unfolded, his joy seemed to transform into something more closely resembling detachment and bitterness. The evolution of Michael Jackson into the near grotesque creature he ended his life as was squarely rooted in the fact that he never experienced anything resembling a normal childhood.
While other kids were in elementary school, he was traveling the world as part of the Jackson 5. After Jackson's teen years, it seems most of his time, energy and money was spent trying to recapture a childhood lost.
When his features began to naturally change from boy to man, he immediately started lifelong battle to defy nature with a series of plastic surgeries. What started as an attempt to make his nose more boyish reportedly ended with more than 50 operations that would eventually require skin grafts on his face covered with layers of makeup to hide the scarring.
Instead of a home, Michael Jackson built a theme park at a cost of millions. He called it "Neverland," based on the home of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys where children never had to grow up.
He once told a friend that he would spend hours riding his private roller-coaster to make up for the time he missed on them when he was a child.
During a more recent interview, he described how as a child he and his brothers would enter recording studios located near little league parks. Jackson would stand at the windows of the studios and watch with envy those kids running and playing baseball with their friends and families in the stands cheering them on.
He said he'd find himself there with tears rolling down his face, then go record for hours on end before performing at night in front of thousands of people he didn't know.
From all accounts, Michael's father was more of a dictator than a daddy. He would oversee the rehearsals of his children, belt in hand, and when one of them would misstep or sing out of tune, he'd lash out at them with a verbal tirade and the strap.
If you read about most child stars in their adult lives, few have anything resembling stability in them. The highlight, the zenith of their existence, came about too early in life for them to look at anything other than the life of celebrity — one based in everything but reality — to make them feel fulfilled. And, nearly none of them ever recapture it.
The glory days are earliest, their childhoods filled with fame. But everything declines from that point on. In other words, they live their lives in reverse. Children are simply not equipped to deal with adult levels of pressure and scrutiny.
The years of childhood are so brief, so fleeting. Yet they may be the most important years a human being has, and they must be treated accordingly.
We must teach kids responsibility, with an understanding of the basic rules of honesty, accountability and living in accordance to God's laws in disciplined, incremental doses as they grow. But while they are children, we also must let them draw, play, run, make mud pies, catch bugs, ride their bikes, swing, slide, chase butterflies and all the things that kids do — and, let them make mistakes along the way.
No, it's not easy to see children stub their toes. But how can the important lessons of life, many of them learned through failure, be learned if parents never allow kids to experience them for themselves?
As I said a moment ago, that doesn't mean we need to totally abandon structure for them. We can't. An unguided, haphazard existence in those formative years can be just as dangerous and disfiguring for the adult years as one overly regimented and suffocating.
That's where we as adults have to do our work on our children's behalf. Children must have responsible parents watching over them, disciplining them, lovingly and actively guiding them toward a well-rounded existence as a grown up.
They'll have the rest of their lives to be adults, and Lord knows most of us should have an understanding of how difficult that can be in the best of circumstances.
When you get right down to it, you teach your children the difference between right and wrong the best you can and then put the rest in God's hands. As with most other worthy things in this life, being a good parent means having faith.
The window of opportunity for them to see the world through a child's eyes and live life with a child's heart is here and gone in the blink of an eye, and once gone, cannot be recaptured.
I feel sure that if he were able to, Michael Jackson would be the first to testify to that fact.