I am proud of every scar, scrape, cut, bruise, etc I incurred during childhood. I never wore a helmet when cycling. I never rode in a car seat. I never wore a seat belt in a car until I was 11... when it became law.

"we have failed to prepare young people for life"
This is why there are people who come to the emergency room of hospitals for bug bites and sore throats rather than a real emergency.

Yes, please. :D It's one I made.

P.S. Done!

I keep telling myself that if a small human ever appears in my life I am going to do everything I can to give him or her as many of the freedoms I had when I was younger.

I had a much longer rant but I think that something like that is more appropriate to a journal entry of my own and less appropriate as a comment :)

Yeah, I would be adopting if anything and even then I'm not certain that I'd be able to cope with it. We'll see.

But I think that the article you linked only touched on one small part of a much bigger issue. The restrictions and ways that children are being stunted aren't just geographical, they're emotional and educational as well.

This "everybody wins and everybody is special" attitude that is prevalent does no favors for children when they enter a real world that is, quite frankly, brutal and unfair.

Then on top of that the "do no wrong" approach to raising children is impacting the educational system, too. There's a lot of news about parents who have taken it upon themselves to hijack the educational system and force teachers to only cover topics that are palatable to the most conservative, but less attention is given to the way teachers are strongarmed by their administration and the threat of parental lawsuits into passing students whose work should be failed.

I teach in college classrooms, often with full course responsibility as a faculty associate. By the time these kids reach college, they have no idea how to take care of themselves or assume responsibility for their own actions. Many of my students have obviously been functionally illiterate, and many others have seen plagiarism as a completely acceptable means of getting by. The really sad thing is that many higher education administrations refuse to back their teachers in cases of blatant plagiarism or other academic misconduct because of the constant threat of lawsuits by overbearing parents.

Look, you got my longer rant anyway :)

This is an awesome comment :)

i am sure some of my mom friends think i am crazy for giving my kids as much freedom to roam as i do. we live in a small town. they are never more than a 25 minute walk from home, and they have cell phones, both of them, and i pay extra for a tracking feature on them so i can just hit the find my kids app and boom, there they are. i think we coddle our kids too much right now and giving our kids freedom to ride their bikes, scooters, skate boards, whatever around and explore and play and have fun is a big part of growing up. my kids started going out on their own to the park 2 years ago at 8 and 10. at 10 and 12 i let them run up to the grocery store to get last minute things for dinner. i trust them to do it. they love the responsibility. when i was zane's age(12) i was baby sitting on weekends. now kids spend so much time in front of screens or being molly coddled it scares me. what's happened to good old summer fun?