Posted on 06/17/2015 4:35:26 AM PDT by HomerBohn
With all of the ridiculous new regulations, coddling, and societal mores that seem to be the norm these days, it’s a miracle those of us over 30 survived our childhoods.
Here’s the problem with all of this babying: it creates a society of weenies.
There won’t be more more rebels because this generation has been frightened into submission and apathy through a deliberately orchestrated culture of fear. No one will have faced adventure and lived to greatly embroider the story.
Kids are brainwashed – yes, brainwashed – into believing that the mere thought of a gun means you’re a psychotic killer waiting for a place to rampage.
They are terrified to do anything when they aren’t wrapped up with helmets, knee pads, wrist guards, and other protective gear.
Parents can’t let them go out and be independent or they’re charged with neglect and the children are taken away.
Woe betide any teen who uses a tool like a pocket knife, or heck, even a table knife to cut meat.
Lighting their own fire? Good grief, those parents must either not care of their child is disfigured by 3rd-degree burns over 90% of his body or they’re purposely nurturing a little arsonist.
Heaven forbid that a child describe another child as “black” or, for that matter, refer to others as girls or boys. No actual descriptors can be used for the fear of “offending” that person, and “offending” someone is incredibly high on the hierarchy of Things Never To Do.
“Free range parenting” is all but illegal and childhood is a completely different experience these days.
All of this babying creates incompetent, fearful adults.
Our children have been enveloped in this softly padded culture of fear, and it’s creating a society of people who are fearful, out of shape, overly cautious, and painfully politically correct. They are incredibly incompetent when they go out on their own because they’ve never actually done anything on their own.
When my oldest daughter came home after her first semester away at college, she told me how grateful she was to be an independent person. She described the scene in the dorm. “I had to show a bunch of them how to do laundry and they didn’t even know how to make a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese,” she said. Apparently they were in awe of her ability to cook actual food that did not originate in a pouch or box, her skills at changing a tire, her knack for making coffee using a French press instead of a coffee maker, and her ease at operating a washing machine and clothes dryer. She says that even though she thought I was being mean at the time I began making her do things for herself, she’s now glad that she possesses those skills. Hers was also the room that had everything needed to solve everyday problems: basic tools, first aid supplies, OTC medicine, and home remedies.
I was truly surprised when my daughter told me about the lack of life skills her friends have. I always thought maybe I was secretly lazy and that was the basis on my insistence that my girls be able to fend for themselves, but it honestly prepares them for life far better than if I was a hands-on mom that did absolutely everything for them. They need to realize that clothing does not get worn and then neatly reappear on a hanger in the closet, ready to be worn again. They need to understand that meals do not magically appear on the table, created by singing appliances a la Beauty and the Beast.
If the country is populated by a bunch of people who can’t even cook a box of macaroni and cheese when their stoves function at optimum efficiency, how on earth will they sustain themselves when they have to not only acquire their food, but must use off-grid methods to prepare it? How can someone who requires an instruction manual to operate a digital thermostat hope to keep warm when their home environment it controlled by wood they have collected and fires they have lit with it? How can someone who is afraid of getting dirty plant a garden and shovel manure?
Did you do any of these things and live to tell the tale?
While I did make my children wear bicycle helmets and never took them on the highway in the back of a pick-up, many of the things on this list were not just allowed, they were encouraged. Before someone pipes up with outrage (because they’re *cough* offended) I’m not suggesting that you throw caution to the wind and let your kids attempt to hang-glide off the roof with a sheet attached to a kite frame. (I’ve got a scar proving that makeshift hang-gliding is, in fact, a terrible idea). Common sense evolves, and I obviously don’t recommend that you purposely put your children in unsafe situations with a high risk of injury.
But, let them be kids. Let them explore and take reasonable risks. Let them learn to live life without fear.
Raise your hand if you survived a childhood in the 60s, 70s, and 80s that included one or more of the following, frowned-upon activities (raise both hands if you bear a scar proving your daredevil participation in these dare-devilish events):
1.Riding in the back of an open pick-up truck with a bunch of other kids
2.Leaving the house after breakfast and not returning until the streetlights came on, at which point, you raced home, ASAP so you didn’t get in trouble
3.Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the school cafeteria
4.Riding your bike without a helmet
5.Riding your bike with a buddy on the handlebars, and neither of you wearing helmets
6.Drinking water from the hose in the yard
7.Swimming in creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes (or what they now call *cough* “wild swimming“)
8.Climbing trees (One park cut the lower branches from a tree on the playground in case some stalwart child dared to climb them)
9.Having snowball fights (and accidentally hitting someone you shouldn’t)
10.Sledding without enough protective equipment to play a game in the NFL
11.Carrying a pocket knife to school (or having a fishing tackle box with sharp things on school property)
12.Camping
13.Throwing rocks at snakes in the river
14.Playing politically incorrect games like Cowboys and Indians
15.Playing Cops and Robbers with *gasp* toy guns 16.Pretending to shoot each other with sticks we imagined were guns
17.Shooting an actual gun or a bow (with *gasp* sharp arrows) at a can on a log, accompanied by our parents who gave us pointers to improve our aim. Heck, there was even a marksmanship club at my high school
18.Saying the words “gun” or “bang” or “pow pow” (there actually a freakin’CODE about “playing with invisible guns”)
19.Working for your pocket money well before your teen years
20.Taking that money to the store and buying as much penny candy as you could afford, then eating it in one sitting
21.Eating pop rocks candy and drinking soda, just to prove we were exempt from that urban legend that said our stomachs would explode e 22.Getting so dirty that your mom washed you off with the hose in the yard before letting you come into the house to have a shower
23.Writing lines for being a jerk at school, either on the board or on paper
24.Playing “dangerous” games like dodgeball, kickball, tag, whiffle ball, and red rover (The Health Department of New York issued a warning about the “significant risk of injury” from these games ) 25.Walking to school alone
Come on, be honest. Tell us what crazy stuff you did as a child.
Teach your children to be independent this summer.
We didn’t get trophies just for showing up. We were forced, yes, forced – to do actual work and no one called protective services. And we gained something from all of this.
Our independence.
Do you really think that children who are terrified by someone pointing his finger and saying “bang” are going to lead the revolution against tyranny? No, they will cower in their tiny apartments, hoping that if they behave well enough, they’ll continue to be fed.
Do you think our ancestors who fought in the revolutionary war were afraid to climb a tree or get dirty?
Those of us who grew up this way (and who raise our children to be fearless) are the resistance against a coddled, helmeted, non-offending society that aims for a dependant populace. In a country that was built on rugged self-reliance, we are now the minority.
Nurture the rebellion this summer. Boot them outside. Get your kids away from their TVs, laptops, and video games. Get sweaty and dirty. Do things that makes the wind blow through your hair. Go off in search of the best climbing tree you can find. Shoot guns. Learn to use a bow and arrow. Play outside all day long and catch fireflies after dark. Do things that the coddled world considers too dangerous and watch your children blossom.
Teach your kids what freedom feels like.
After that I never so much as took a pencil laying on the floor at school.
Did pretty much all of that as a kid.
My kids did too, except for the staying out all day. (I would even go down to the suburban creek about two miles from our house and have an overnight camp - by myself. I suppose that would have been around 6th grade!
When I was almost 16 I spent two weeks in the Tetons hiking by myself - with my parents approval. (Although mom DID get mad when she got a call from the sheriff as I had been picked up for hitch-hiking and they were calling to make sure I wasn't a runaway). I had promised not to hitchhike. Oh well.
Next to my house was a vacant lot...baseball, football or capture the flag. Yes football tackle without helmets or pads.
My dad was a chemical engineer so he told me what to do with the chemicals.. Mercury? I played with it...and lead, too.
Just scanning the list quickly, pretty much all those things are still done here. But then, we don’t live in a liberal-infested PC rat area.
Lawn Darts...? My brother threw one and it landed in my head. My mom yelled at my brother for not looking at me.I did get back when I did a ‘I shot an arrow into the air’ I did. The arrow landed in my brother’s head.
Or Smear the queer...
(GASP!) I miss the 80's.
True... I picked tobacco...Shade Grown under cheesecloth...it was hot...now immigrants do the work not pre teens.
My Pinto took on all comers...won a race against a RoadRunner and a AMX...(the Road Runner flipped the AMX driver got scared.)
My town had a soap box derby track we used it for races of go karts, bikes or motorcycles...
My dad, his friend and son (my best friend) used to go on fishing trips in dad’s 51 Chevy pickup. We boys rode in the open pickup bed, usually standing up on the rim of the bed leaning over the top of the cab with the wind blasting us in the face.
Imagine trying that today.
I didn’t see blowing things up on that list...
Dude, I completely forgot about the dry cleaning plastic bags with a little payload of Sterno in a metal bottle cap of some sort. Even back then those scared me. It was great seeing them go up, then you thought about the shit you’d be in if they came down in the wrong place.
When I was a kid I buggered up my knee falling off a bicycle in the street. Landed on a nice pebble just under my knee. The guy next door put in a couple stitches in his kitchen. He was an oral surgeon. Years later he took out my wisdom teeth (at his office). I think it cost my parents a bottle of nice Scotch.
Years after that, I found out he studied under the same Taeqwondo master as I had in college. And had a higher belt.
Unfortunately you’re right.
At one time I could hire as much help as I needed to bale hay for a nickel a bale plus lunch. And for that they worked as hard as I did.
Now days they want $10/hr and only work as hard as *they* want to.
I remember coating silver coins with mercury, they got really slippery after you did that.
As long as they don’t stay angry, I don’t see a problem.
I did all 25 things listed. I was 10 years old in 1969. I lived near Ojai, CA from 1968-1970 and in the summer we kids would grab out gear and head out to the river bottom near our house and camp out for days.
Next to the river bottom was a national forest. We’d explore like crazy. We took food and fished and made fires, etc.
Parent’s never worried. We’d show up back at home with cuts, bruises, needing tetanus shots, etc. And we’d catch snakes and sell them. Shot lizards with our Daisy BB guns to feed the snakes.
Me too!
We used to file down pennies to make them work as dimes in vending machines.
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