I fully agree with it. Our kids are over-protected these days. It’s an interesting and thought provoking article.

Life is a rough ride, and we are not necessarily preparing our youth to be tough enough to battle it out.

It's so easy to cherry pick anecdotes and spin them out of context to write the narrative one wishes. That's why the source of the heavy-handed story rife with anecdotes you posted was pointed out to you.

There’s one in every thread.

sued McDs and how it was all her fault.

Still, I don't think I would let my daughter do half the stuff I did when I was younger. Is that the right decision? I grew up fine and safe. The crime rate was higher when I was a kid but yet we believe today is more dangerous...

I am very conflicted on this subject.

There are devices to monitor where your kid is at. They can have instant communication with home if needed. Crime is down. Yet we’re still afraid to let them out of our sight.

That is why people don't want to leave them home alone even if old enough. Some TV show had a case where a kid left home alone was murdered by an intruder. The odds are that won't happen, but nobody wants to take the smallest chance.

My friends with young adult children, (in their early 20s), tell me that their kids are way more dependent on them, than they ever were on their own parents at that age. They talk or text with their kids every day. When I was in college, a long distance call to my mother cost a lot! Intrastate was more expensive than interstate, for some reason. We spoke once a week on Saturday or Sunday when the rates were lower & we timed our calls. Same as a kid. Mom & Dad weren't always just a phone call/text away.

...they want to give their kids all the things they didn't have when they were young. Which only exacerbates the fragility.

to be protected from themselves.

With commercials to reinforce the message about poisonous products. It left an impression. We really don't have coordinated campaigns like that today. Communication then made that movement possible because there was television and that's it. Local markets had to be willing to air those spots. Today everything is corporate and internet based. No one watches ads online if they can help it. The same methods no longer work.

and other items that were dangerous for kids.

When I was a kid my parents didn't have those type of safety precautions, both my brother and I got our stomachs pumped - me for drinking paregoric (that stuff tasted good!) and don't know what my brother ingested.

The Tide Pods is a teenage thing I think. Similar to the Cinnamon challenge.

I assume those were available back in the early 80s. I can't remember if we had them. I just remember the stickers and commercials.

(still do) and never heard of Mr. Yuk. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention because I wasn't a kid and didn't have kids at the time.

The big thing I remember when my kids were little was how dangerous water slides were because the water at the parks was absolute sewage, filled with bacteria. As a young parent it sure scared me away from them, even though probably only 2 kids nationwide got sick from the contaminated water!

Mr Yuk started in the 70s. It was still around in the early 80s because I remember the stickers before we move to where my parents live now. I don't recall them after that time though. I do remember the commercials though

I remember learning about him at school (K) and being given stickers.

Perhaps he needs to come back or Tide Pods need to be redesigned with his image on it.

the Internet has made the world a more dangerous place. Cyber bullying is just one more think we have today that wasn't there when my kids were growing up.

I'm not sure what the solution is for society as a whole, the best thing I can teach the children in my life is that there's more to the world than the junk that comes from Facebook and Twitter.

I'd hazard most given examples are merely concern over lawsuits rather than the "fragility" of one or another demographic.

You can download an illustrated copy of it from gutenberg.org, in Kindle or pdf format.

It is fascinating to see what boys did on their own in those days, and what skills they were taught.

Nobody was arrested for building a fort of wood chopped by boys in 1911.

Chopping wood was one of the chores country kids had to do all the time before they could go see their friends.

Okay, the books are from 5 decades ago.

We played in the creek and built lots of forts.

They are six and seven. I asked him when they'd go on their own. He looked a little askance at me and asked when he walked alone. I told him the 2nd day of kindergarten. Same was true for me as a child. I got walked to school once and that was it. He's a teacher and said that sort of thing would be reported under the xxxxx (some number) act. Huh.

Drives me nuts! We’re two and a half blocks away from the elementary school in a quiet, low-traffic neighborhood. When I suggest that a bit of independence and self-assuredness would benefit the kids she looks at me as if I’ve grown a second head.

how unbelievably rare it is for kids to be abducted by strangers. She probably thinks it happens much more frequently than it really does. Look up the number, you might be surprised yourself.

When you hear it said, "Over 8 million kids were reported missing last year!" (whatever the number is), they conveniently leave out the fact that almost all of them fell asleep behind the sofa or went for a walk without telling anyone or got out of the parent's sight in a public place.

always have their eye on the kids walking home alone fretting why and how
or heaven forbid a group
of kids who go to a playground alone
a good book imo
we got it to verify we were not bad parents . Said not really, helicopters are not so great
There are some areas that it would NOT be a good idea to have kids out at night etc. but we did not live in an area like that where there was shootings

there is another stanford alumini about college helicopters(yes ) . His experience with parents was on the boundary of surreal I can not remember his name . All this was a while ago but im sure its still out there

They are likely to also be "The Last Generation."

Kindergarden - Learned about gooseberries and pidgeons from a neighbor man. Learned to ride a horse from another neighbor.
1st grade - Mom gave us a sandwich and a thermas and told us to come home when we saw my dad's truck. Fell while climbing around an old barn and had my first concussion.
2nd grade - found crayfish in the creek at the end of the street. Fell off the roof of the garage; learned how to tuck and roll.
3rd grade - walked home from school to fix my own lunch.
4th grade - rode the entire bus route with best friend to see the city and people watch.
5th grade - took the bus downtown, with a friend or cousin, to buy a Beatles album at Penney's and eat french fries at the Kresge's counter.
6th grade - discovered Johnnie Cash and Patsy Cline by hanging out with a neighbor lady. Hit in the head with a baseball bat.
7th grade - discovered 'human' bones in a creek at a nearby park. Played marathon monopoly.

I don't have kids but hope that if I did I would give them as much independence as they can handle.

but, if having a playground set on wood chips saves a kid from a broken arm or wrist or a permanent injury, isn't it worth it?

Or, the often cited bouncy horse that used to be on exposed springs -

https://target.scene7.com/is/image/Target/52714392?wid=520&hei=520&fmt=pjpeg

if a few kids are saved from slashed legs/ankles or something even more serious because the springs are now covered, isn't that worth it?

I mean, growing up prior to improved safety rules for kids didn't stop Trump from being a heartless narcissistic asshole.

The point of the article is that we’re trying to protect kids from everything — even themselves. As a result we’re raising a generation of kids with no ability to look after themselves or solve problems or deal with others in a normal way.

with a sling if it was an arm and crutches if it was a leg.

That may not be the case now. Not sure, but I haven't seen it.

Oh, I suppose she could, but there a number of drug addicted homeless that hang out there. Same thing with the park. This is in a very rural area, with maybe 4 cops.

Her Kids are NOT fragile, they’re country as corn bread, but she’s not going to take ridiculous chances either.

The article has a point, but it also seems to long for mythical good old days. Does anybody remember that stupid show “Jackass” and how many kids injured themselves?

Are they carrying? Do they have lots of cash? Or is your oldest just trying to protect her kids from the harsh realties of life?

Last edited Wed Jan 24, 2018, 05:51 PM - Edit history (1)

this is in Forks, WA. You can expose your kids to as many tweekers as you want, but it shouldn’t be every fucking time they go to the fucking library.

Plus, my sister is a tweeker—they need life’s lessons they have an up close and personal

... all sorts. I remember as an only child I was frequently dropped off at the movies on Saturday afternoon when my parents went shopping. One time, in an almost empty theater, a man came and sat right next to me. I got up and moved elsewhere. No problem.

The library staff are not your babysitters. People leave kids at the library and retail stores as babysitters while they go run errands. There are real reasons why laws have been made like this, and if you've ever worked at a public library or a GameStop or bookstore, you'd know why.

...and Mom saying "Run along to the GameStop why I shop for underwear at Macy's." It used to be no big deal for kids to go to the toy store or the food court while Mom shopped. But then, we didn't know Judge Roy Moore was lurking around the mall.

... all kids should be taught this. When I walked to school as a kindergartner I knew not to go close to the car if someone stopped to ask me a question, and to run to the closest house if someone stopped a car and got out. It never happened, but I have no doubt that's exactly what I would have done, and I felt empowered by this advice, not frightened.

I did notice your smiley face. Maybe this was the wrong occasion to publish these thoughts, but there you go.

I work in a mall and not an hour goes by without some parent being heard screeching curses and abuse at their child. I see that far more often then this so called "too kind" parenting.

Were you a kid in 40's 50's 60's or even the 70's ?.
Looking back, it is hard to believe we made it, hard to believe we are still alive.

As kids, remember when we used to travel in cars NOT wearing seat belts. Cars had no air bags. Siting in the cars back seat in a hot summer day used to be a real special experience.

Our beds used to be covered with heaps of happy colours, lead based. There were no
special security caps on medicine bottles, power points or doors and we used to ride our bikes with no helmets on.

Remember when we used to drink water right from the garden hose, not from the bottle ?.

Do you remember how we used to spend hours building timber carts ? how we used to roll down the hill only to discover that we had no brakes. How we installed
hand made brakes only after hitting the bushes ten or more times ?.

Remember when we used to leave home early in the morning and come back only after the street lights have turned on. No one could contact us, we had no mobile phone....how unthinkable.

Remember when we used to fall and brake a bone or two, how we used to fight and break a tooth or two, with no lawsuits to follow. They were all just accidents, no one to blame, only ourselves. Remember ? accidents ? !!. And we got over it.

We used to eat cakes, bread and butter and drink only sugar concentrated drinks ? no one ever got overweight. Remember how we were always playing outside?.

Remember when we used to share a bottle of drink and no one got sick or died from it ?.

Remember how we had no computer or video games, we had no 500 TV channels, we had no video movies, no PCs, no mobile phones or internet chats. WE HAD FRIENDS !. We used to get outside and find them. We used to ride a bicycle together with them. We used to go to their home, ring the door bell or just knock and sit for hours and talk with them.
Imagine, without asking for our parents permission, us, out there alone in the "cruel" "cold world" with no one to watch over us. How did we do it ?

Remember how we used to invent games? With sticks and tennis balls.
Remember how we used to bet about "who is capable of eating a worm"?, and we did it although our parents warned us not to, remember how they used to tell us that the worms will stay in our stomach forever?. The worms did not stay in our stomach forever!.

Remember how we all tried to get into the baseball and basketball team and not all made it?. Those who did not make it just got over it.
Remember when not all students were smart and some stayed in the same grade for another year?. Tests were never custom designed no matter what the reason is.

Our deeds were OUR DEEDS, we knew how to live with them and bear the consequences. There was no one for us to hide behind. To think that our parents would rescue us if we got in troubles with the law was unheard of. Can you imagine? Our parents actually heed and were very supportive of the laws.

This generation has produced some of the greatest risk taking persons, problem solvers and inventors. The last 50 years has brought to the world an explosion of scientific breakthroughs, new opinions and theories.

We used to have REAL freedom of movement and ability to act, we had failures and success and RESPONSIBILITY. And we knew how to get over them all, gently but SURELY !.

Pass this to those who were not so lucky to grow up as KIDS, like we did before lawyers and governments started taking control of our lives...telling us that it is only for our own good.


=====================

... I'm glad we have seat belts and sugarless soft drinks and lead laws.

Kids were not required to be in cars in restraints or appropriate car seats, they roamed the interior of the moving vehicles. There was no vaccine for chicken pox. We have developed wall restraints for kids dressers. We have developed Amber alert. We have developed standards and background checks for daycare providers, we have developed construction rules for crib manufacturers.

While anything can be taken too far, we have also moved to address kids safety concerns. The article doesn't address a balance, it attempts to pooh pooh issues that have saved countless children's lives. Libertarian thinking in action.

That is not the focus of the article. Of course seat belts are good things. Of course. Of course it's good that kids don't get their heads caught between the slats of cribs. That's not the point. The point is the parents who never let their children out of their sight, and intervene to prevent the child from ever facing any challenge. No one advocating we go back to lead-based paint on kids toys.

There have always been some parents who never let their children out of their sight, and intervene to prevent the child from ever facing any challenge, and there have always been stupid laws that prohibit relatively harmless activities for being "too dangerous" or "bad for you". Are there more now? Sure. Are there too many? Probably. Even so, most of the kids will turn out just fine.

Previous generations had better spelling and grammar when they spouted their right wing talking points.

I assumed that they were sending in by telegraph, and apostrophes cost money!

They are not going to be "tough" enough. They are spoiled. Every generation.

Some of their siblings had died. Their parents were disabled.

I was sometimes changing diapers.

Poor, poor, pitiful me.

..some things don't ever seem to change.

Yes they do.

Hmm, teen boy wielding an axe on a public right-of-way in a populated area? Sure you want the neighbors to be cool with that?

It's a typical suburban population density (at least, typical for my neck of the woods in central FL).

Nice.

Tell us what Fox News thinks, too -- it is the same skewed garbage as Reason.

And the like.

And many are watched over so carefully, not allowed to eat stuff that fell on teh floor ... that kinda thing is actually good for kids in a lot of cases but parents are so freaked out about germs now they're actually hurting their kids with over-protection.

Also I believe it will be soon discovered that home-schooling is kinda terrible for kids (esp. if it's for their whole school life) because then they don't get exposed to the germs they'll be exposed to as adults and thus will fail to build immunity because that process happens as you develop not as adult. So they'll be sick a LOT more as adults and probably more likely to die from illnesses that normally just sicken like flu.

If I'd grown up nowadays my parents would have likely been jailed for irresponsible parenting even though compared to most kids I knew my folks were pretty strict and watchful.

I think I stopped having a babysitter around 4th or 5th grade after school and I'd just take the school bus home and go play in the neighborhood (helps that where I lived in elementary school was a very tony SF Bay Area suburb with very low crime ... most homes in that neighborhood now are worth well over $1M and many are $5M+ homes) and just had to be home at 6pm for dinner basically.

Even younger than that we lived in a very low-crime mountain town up river from Oroville, CA (talking 2nd & 3rd grade) and on weekends I'd meet up with my kid friends and we'd just go off hiking into the woods, sometimes exploring for miles away from home, no adult with us. I doubt many parents let their 3rd graders do that these days even in a town like that. Then again that town nowadays probably has pot farms and clandestine meth labs out in those woods and crap like that.

It might account for the rise in certain allergies, for instance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

I put one in a young boys hand outside the school to show him and other kids want to look tooand he turned around to show his mom a few feet away and she freaked . Got real upset and wiped his hands and arms down with some kind of wet nap and then took out hand sanitizer . I made sure she made him give me back the bug shell first because other kids wanted to see it and I only brought a few. She thought I was crazy .
They were little then . Now this kid has every allergy and asthma and is always sick on antibiotics and my kid doesn't see him much anymore because he can't do sports and other meets ups must be prearranged (as a teen.) though the mother even though he could walk over
I wonder if that germ bubble world had anything to do with it . I can't say but even if not , what kind of noncurious life and fear are you giving your kid when he can't hold a bug shell without plastic gloves ?

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/teneral-adult-seventeenyear-cicada-newly-molted-432677716
The shell is on the left

"The Fragile Generation"

More like "A Smarter Generation"

Derp.

Me and my siblings were near-feral children, more of us than my parents could handle. It's a wonder we survived, although we did suffer a few major injuries. I was a pyromaniac too, but I was always respectful of other people's property. I never burned anyone's house down, never started any wildfires, etc.. I started playing with rockets and explosives in the fourth grade and have some scars to show for that hobby. I quit rockets and explosives as a young adult, after an accident I realized could have killed me. Before that I kinda figured I was way too smart to do something stupid and life threatening. Looking back I did all sorts of stupid and life threatening things, well into my early twenties, and on a few occasions beyond.

One example of my feral childhood, was when I was in seventh grade. I'd gotten in trouble in class and the teacher had taken me outside to lecture me. I didn't want to be lectured so I simply ran off, jumped the fence, and I was free. Frantic school administrators called my mom who answered with some irritation that she was sure I was fine and that I'd be home for dinner. And I was. I could always occupy myself for hours wandering around in wild places watching wildlife and insects, turning over rocks to see what was underneath, etc.. I was naturally wary of people, so I never got into any trouble that way.

My kids, nephews, and nieces were raised with a little more supervision and a somewhat firmer hand, but they still had plenty of freedom, enough to burn a finger or two, but not enough to incinerate themselves. They have never been fragile in any way.

A few of my nieces are very accomplished horse women. When they were little kids I'd watch them bossing around these huge potentially dangerous animals and knew they'd never have any trouble asserting themselves.

But seriously, I never would have considered giving the children in our family as many opportunities to kill themselves as me and my siblings enjoyed. I don't need to hear some middle aged dude's nostalgia about his childhood. There were plenty of kids in my childhood who had helicopter parents, or whatever the hell you want to call it. They weren't allowed to play with me and my siblings, or come to our house. And you know what? Some of those kids grew up, went to great universities, got good jobs and are great people. And they avoided experiences I'd rather not have had. I got knocked around pretty hard at times. It's flaming bullshit that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Many sorts of injuries, physical or mental, never properly heal and burden a person for life.

more time for free-play. When I was in elementary school we had recess 3 times a day. We practiced social skills, problem solving, conflict resolution and learned how to balance competitiveness with empathy. Finland thinks free-play is so important it's part of the school day. They also have very highly rated schools. Preventing dressers from falling over on children and brain injuries from bicycle accidents is one thing but scheduling every minute of a child's day is quite another. When I was 17 I drove myself and my 16 year-old best friend to the beach 90 miles away for the day. We left by 8:00am and didn't get home before 6:00pm. There were no cell phones and we weren't expected to call and check in. My parents reasoned that in one year I'd be an adult and it was good practice.

Why not just call us snowflakes because we believe in things like car seats?

Teaching children not say hurtful things or committing microagressions (asking "where are you REALLY from", "you are so articulate) is not the same as not letting a child walk home from school alone.


I agree that CPS or child welfare is overused in harmless situations yet also seemingly absent when real child endangerment exists.
Two kids walking home from school, left in a car while a parent runs in the store (normal weather or with the car running), or playing in a park is not a reason for the police to get involved.

I grew up a latch key kid and maybe I am biased. Not gonna lie, had some things go down when I was a kid that as a parent I would be horrified today to find out happened to my kid, but it is important for children to rely on themselves.

This is not the same as teaching kids not to be racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic etc - whenever someone uses the First Amendment what about free speech argument - you know some offensive shit is coming.

they need to talk to the white boys on their side of the fence. The ones that can't handle a movie with strong characters who aren't straight white males. Look at the hissy fit they threw over Last Jedi

on his tool bench. SAWS + hammers & chisels. OMG! NAILS! stupid.

Yeah, let's talk about playground safety standards fucking children up while the Boomers are burning the country the goddamned ground.