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When I was a kid, if i screwed up I knew it. If I didn't know it, someone would help me understand. Sometimes that required education. While a board of education was not employed often, the switch was used to get me to switch my bad thinking and behaviour to something better, when needed.

If you got first place, you earned it.

If you came in last, you earned that, too.

1-2-3 got ribbons, 4 & 5 in big horse shows, but if you didn't win. place, or show, you just weren't a winner.

We were not helicoptered over, we played in the mud, the creek, we occasionally stepped in animal dung with our bare feet (ick).

We didn't have all that safety gear, but we had been told to use some common sense until we had some. We got spanked for climbing riverbanks and diving off of bridges. Very few of us didn't make it to be old enough to drive, even though some of us didn't live long past that. The rest went to the funeral and learned...

We were told not to intentionally hurt people's feelings. On occasion we did, and had ours hurt, too. Sometimes that got sorted out with a good old fashioned fistfight, sometimes not, but when someone had 'won' (something that didn't involve killing the other guy, just making your point), you usually shook hands and came out of the experience either friends or with a little more respect for the other guy.

We were well loved but seldom mollycoddled.

Those 'bad' things that happened to us were all part of growing up, part of being a kid--something kids aren't much allowed to do any more. They are expected to be little adults, to know about the birds and the bees before they grow hair 'down there', and aren't allowed to just play without someone making some big deal over the toys they choose, or how they play, or the roles they adopt while playing--and Freud forbid they actually point a finger at each other and say "Bang!".

No wonder by the time the little nippers turn 20 they are flavorless jello. That is what their parents wanted.