If you’re looking for me to tell you whether the Amish way of raising children is better or worse than my way or your way or the “English” way of raising children, you’re wasting your time.

I have retired from the notion that I know what is best for other people, or can tell them how to live. I don’t miss it either.

I’m actually learning more than I have ever learned by just listening. If you believe the news, that is a dying tradition in our country.

Last week, I drove Moise’s son John and his wife and two children to the bus station in Glens Falls, N.Y. He and his family was going on a two-day trip to visit old friends.

He is actually the youngest male Amish person I’ve gotten to talk to at that length, and I thought it might be a rich opportunity to get a sense of what it means to be an Amish child.

I was right.

I know John pretty well, he is articulate and curious, and friendly. Like his father, his life is centered around his work and his children. He runs a successful lumber operation on the Miller farm and was at his father’s side for every minute of the barn raising and many more chores.

Like most of the Amish people I’ve met, he is not reluctant to talk about the culture he grew up in and how he sees his life in that world.

The Amish are neither confused or defensive about their world, and they are happy to try to explain it, but are not to defend it. That, the deacons say, is God’s work.

A few minutes into the ride, I asked John, who was riding up front with me, about Rumspringa, a well-known Amish tradition of permitting their children once they turn 16 or so to live outside of the community without Amish restrictions.

After a period of up to two years, so the legend goes, he or she must return to the community and decide whether or not they wish to return and live the Amish way for the remainder of their lives.

Every book I’ve read about the Amish – about a dozen – talks about Rumpsringa as a powerful and important rite of passage, one in which all Amish children get to sample the forbidden fruits of the outside world – technology, photography, music, TV, the movies, the freedom to dress, drink, have sex with somebody they aren’t marrying.

And be forgiven and welcome to come home.

I thought it would be a great starting point to talk to John about what it’s like to be an Amish male child, just as I spoke with his sisters recently about being females children in patriarchy.

I was especially interested to know if he took advantage of Rumspringa.

John shook his head and laughed. “Oh, I’ve heard of that, ” he said, “I think it applies to unhappy children who run away and leave a note behind.” He said he didn’t know anyone who had done it, in his sect or any other.

I was surprised, as every single  book described it as an important universal coming of age ritual.

“In our sect,” he said, “you would not be allowed to do that. It might be those other sects to it, but I don’t think so.”

“Did you ever wish you could live outside of the Amish church?” I asked. “Did you ever want to experiment with the outside world and the things other young English people have?”

“No,” he said simply. “Why would I?” John is in his early 20’s and already has three children. He said his childhood was happy, full of games, lessons, times with his father, work to do.

As long as he could remember, he said, he worked with his father and learned from him – how to saw wood, plow a field, refresh the soil, butcher animals, teach horses.

“I have nothing bad to say about what anyone else does,” he said, “but I would never leave the family for two years to live in the outside world. Ther is nothing there for me.”

He said when he thinks of his childhood, he thinks of his father, and his mother, and his brothers and sisters.

“Everything my father did,” he said, “I did. I had good friends I met at gatherings and picnics and games. We hunted and fished together, played kickball and our own kind of soccer.”

Apart from Rumsinga, which he thought sounded wildly exaggerated and rarely actually done, his descriptions of childhood for Amish males was a cross between hard and continuing lessons about work and responsibility, and idyllic time in the woods fishing, learning about animals, swimming, hunting, and studying nature.

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Because the Amish do not preach or proselytize, the growth and survival of their community depend on having an abundance of children, as was also true with the American families who went west to farm the land a couple of hundred years ago.

Since no one could afford to hire help, they depended on sons to help them, daughters were rarely considered for such work.

In the Amish culture, babies are welcomed, cherished, and adored. Children with disabilities or mental health issues are considered special gifts from heaven and are especially welcomed into their families.

In many Amish communities, infertile couples are helped to adopt children or provide foster care for non-Amish children through government and social service agencies.

Amish mothers prefer having Amish midwives assist them at birth, although they will go to hospitals if there are any special medical concerns or issues.

All hospital bills are paid by the Amish church.

Infants are welcomed as blessed new members of the community. Until they are older or another child comes, they sleep in the same rooms as their parents are brought to the table for their meals and attend church services on Sunday.

From the very beginning of their consciousness, they are given work to do and taught about the importance of family.

Even their youngest siblings hold them and play with them, and cheer them up when they are unhappy or cry.

The Amish view every new child as a gift from God, blameless and vulnerable, caring for them is a sacred duty given them by God.

The biggest difference, agreed John, is that Amish homes are not child-centered. “As soon as we walk, we are taught to work and given responsibilities,” he said.  “Everyone works, everyone is taught to love work and have to do and also taught by observation how to do it.”

I’ve noticed this many times while visiting the Millers. Children are not watched and supervised every minute. I do see them helping out all the time, picking up rocks,  cleaning debris, checking on the gardens.

There is no equivalent of a “helicopter mom” in the Amish world.

In the Anabaptist world, parents are taught and told that they have a moral responsibility to watch over the souls of their children, for “this is the chief and most important care of the godly, that their children may fear God, do good, and be saved.”

An Anabaptist leader named Memo Simons argued that although worldly parents might desire for their children “that which is earthly and perishable, such as money, honor, fame and wealth,” true Christians have a duty to “ring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

One Amish mother visiting the barn raising told me that she wasn’t concerned about her children running away or leaving the faith.

If you raise your children lovingly and well, she said, they won’t leave the Amish world.

Very few of them do.

John told me he had never once thought of leaving the Amish church. “I have everything I want and need here, “I always did,”  he said.

He has no interest or uses for cellphones, Ipads or computers, he’s heard of Facebook but never seen it and for years thought Twitter was a bird.

As soon as his children walk on their own, he said, (two were asleep in the back), they will start learning how to work and what their roles are in the community.

John said that when he approached adolescence, he and the family were constantly visiting other families and bringing him to church events.

This is where he met the woman who became his wife. Gender differences, says Amish scholars, are mostly ignored until school age, brothers are as likely to play with sisters as anyone.

Socialization, said John, begins around age six or seven when children start attending school. Even then, home is where Amish children really learn how to prepare for the Amish Way.

When children are not in school, they are with their families, doing chores with them, sitting down at meals with them,  and siblings and grandparents. In do doing, they learn the practical skills that will enable them to earn a living, stay at home and raise their own family.

In adolescence, girls begin to help their mothers, boys start working with their fathers. “My father had a lumber mill,” John said, “and he loved plowing the fields. I came with him and learned from him. I have a lumber business now and I  help him plow the fields and with whatever else he needs. He did that for my grandfather, and I will do it for him.”

In Amish communities, he said, the daughters tend to do what the mothers do, the boys do what the fathers do.

Generally, boys help their fathers, girls help their mothers. If there are not enough “big boys” around, girls will take over the outside labor. Boys may watch younger siblings, or help with cleaning and laundry, depending on what is needed.

“We didn’t have a lot of boys in our family, ” said John, “I spent a lot of time in the kitchen and tending to the vegetable crops. I was happy to do different things. We don’t compete with each other, we help each other.”

According to The Amish, by  Donald  B. Kraybill, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, and Steven Holt, Amish teenagers between the ages of fourteen and sixteen or seventeen, after finishing the eighth grade and joining die Youngie (young folks),  begin to assume adult roles but are not given adult responsibilities.

John says these are called “the quiet years,” where they are taught how to live in the real world and learning things that go beyond what they learned in school.

This is when they travel to meet other boys and girls their age, courtesy of Amish-funded youth groups, and make some adult decisions: whether to become baptized and join the church and whether and whom to marry.

Almost every teenaged Amish child I met, boy or girl, has a boyfriend or a girlfriend, who may live nearby or be someone who lives far away.

Amish, young and old, are passionate letter writers, many teenaged relationships are conducted through letter writing. Letters are their social media.

When they are 21, all Amish children get to decide if they want to seek work outside of the family, or if they wish to work within the family. If they stay, as many do, at least for a while, they must be paid for the work they do.

John said he loved the life he lived as a child. He loved working in the fields with his father, fishing with his friends, learning how to till the soil, and spending time with his family. He loves the life he is living now.

He loved and still loves riding to church in a buggy while everyone in the family is singing hymns of joy. The services are full of songs. He wouldn’t describe it or any life as a perfect life, he said (that would be arrogant and bragging), but as a good life, a life of meaning.

John learned early on how joyous it is to work and learn almost every day of his life. He can’t imagine leaving the family for two years to play video games and drink.

That’s as far as we got before we hit the bus station. It might be a while before I spend that much time alone with him. I told him I enjoyed it and thank him for sharing his experiences with me.

Next time, I said, let’s talk about school.

We shook hands and he told me he enjoyed it and would be happy to do it again.