Posted on 11/20/2009 7:21:50 PM PST by HokieMom
The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding deficiency," hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field — "helicopter parents," teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and "Kinderkords" (also known as leashes; they allow "three full feet of freedom for both you and your child") and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don't come prepadded).
The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building — a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
please. garbage.
Children are given more free reign now than ever before as far as I can tell.
Kids are weinies nowadays.
Geez louise. Maybe Nancy Gibbs and other parents do all that stuff but most of us didn’t get into all of that.
Maybe it depends on where you live. Where I live, I see lots of what the author refers to. Over-scheduling with very little time for childhood where children are able to have some responsibility for their decisions. A book came out a few years ago, The Blessings of a Skinned Knee, which started to turn the thinking around. Away from padded, bubble wrap childhoods and more about letting children take risks and learn something from their decisions.
Because America is still pretty prosperous... give it a few years.. heh... they’ll be raisinf corn and chickens in the backyards for food.
Excellent. Now I can finally get pregnant!!!! YIPEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL.
Nancy Gibbs writes for Time. She’s obviously a liberal. Most conservatives don’t raise our children this way, but when you live in a blue or purple zone, you’re surrounded by it. Nice to see them coming around to our way of thinking.
or the age group. lol.
Foster a child’s — time alone to invent, freedom to make mud puddles, allow innovation to make toys from sticks, encourage a child’s to use his/her imagination, let a child ride imaginary horses, allow a kid to skin a knee or elbow... LEAVE THEM ALONE...
Helmets for kids riding bikes - disgusting !!! ... I rode a bicycle from age 5 to age 16 or beyond... ALL my friends did the same... we had unsafe bikes by today’s standards ‘coaster brakes’ for heavens sake.... YET not a single playmate I knew or even heard of had a serious injury in all those years. Today we have Stupid laws - stupid parents.
Please do! It’s your civic responsibility. America needs more FReeper children!
“Overparenting” is a farce - we NEED more quality parenting in our communities.
From the ages of about 10 through 16 or 17, I used to travel with my friends for miles and miles and stayed out (in the Summertime) playing Monopoly until nearly midnight. I and my friends made “forts” in the tall grasses of the empty areas next to the railroad tracks.
We produce plays that we would show to our folks, and charge a nickel to get in (even Mom!). Sheets on the clothesline made for a perfect curtain.
We would ride our bikes until well after dark and play tackle football at the schoolyard field. We decided what we wanted to do for play, and the TV was only scheduled for Friday Night Fright Night (with Seeeeeeeyymore). We would find bottles and buy a ton of candy and soda and turn the lights out and watch such classics as “Monster from the surf.”
Nowadays, it looks to me like the kids are bubble-wrapped at birth and scheduled to death until they grow up and are amazed that life doesn’t come pre-scheduled.
It doesn’t look to me like kids have much free reign. Yeah, they have computers in their rooms and the girls dress like tramps from age 10 on out, but kids are generally coddled, kowtowed to and protected.
I agree with this article completely. I don’t think it’s garbage.
I’ve lived in blue states all my live.. I’ve neither lived nor seen what the author describes.. The media exaggerates social memes and then tears them down.
So some people overschedule their kids, suddenly we’re supposed to believe it’s commonplace, and then we’re supposed to believe there’s a backlash against this imagined phenomenon.. Maybe they just lack the wits to face a world with real problems, and then to do their jobs and write about them.
I’ve lived in blue states all my life.. I’ve neither lived nor seen what the author describes.. The media exaggerates social memes and then tears them down.
So some people overschedule their kids, suddenly we’re supposed to believe it’s commonplace, and then we’re supposed to believe there’s a backlash against this imagined phenomenon.. Maybe they just lack the wits to face a world with real problems, and then to do their jobs and write about them.
I had six younger brothers and sisters. My parents didn’t “overparent”.
Me, I’m planning to use lots of benign neglect. My seven month old likes to wiggle around on the floor and eat the dogs’ tails. It probably won’t kill her.
“Children are given more free reign now than ever before as far as I can tell.”
You’re either young, stupid, or plain flat dumb.
Naybe you’re all 3!!!!
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