Won't You Be My Neighbor?

We were at had a conference with Karenna's teacher before she started Kindergarten this week.

I mentioned before that the teacher wrote nice postcards out to all the members of her class a few weeks ago, and Karenna like it so much she wanted to a write a thank you.  Karenna's teacher said that was the first "thank you" letter she ever got back.

The teacher also mentioned that while writing these cards out she discovered that one of the other teachers was out neighbor.  It got me thinking about our neighborhood:

There are not a lot of small children in our neghborhood.  Most neighbors are retired or parents of college-aged children.  You might think this is sad for my kids, not to have any friends in the nieghborhood, and I have to admit, when we moved in, we were hoping for some neighbor kids as well, but I have come to love our situation.

Being the only young kids on the street, our neighbors pay special attention to Karenna and Jude.  As they walk their dogs, they stop by and let the kids pet them. Everyone is always ready to say hello.

My kids have this extended family of neighbors who have "adopted" my kids.  In turn, my kids are not afraid to call out to them when they see them ont he street.  Or walk over to their yards and "help" water the lawn.  One day, I watched the neighbor across the backyard teach Jude to play ball for thirty minutes simply because Jude walked up and asked him why he and the dog had a ball.

I remember growing up in the 1980s when they taught us to fear strangers.  A whole generation of kids became isolated from their neighbors, afraid to interact with adults, even as they approached adulthood themselves.

Should we teach our kids to fear the adults in the neighborhood and miss the opportunities to learn from them?  Should model isolationist behavior in the name of protecting our children or should we teach them how to be neighborly?