Originally Posted by
Dhalin
There's a difference between, say, saving your kid from an intruder, or trying to keep the kid reasonably safe, and something like "we can't let our kid ever see violence/bad language/etc because it is a bad influence!"
There's a difference there.
No, I'm not saying that a parent should just stand there while the kid jumps out in front of a moving vehicle or something.
What I *am* saying, though, is that we shouldn't hold their hand every step of the way, and do everything for them. Some things they have to learn on their own, without constant prodding and hand-holding from their parents.
How many things have you heard "oh, we can't do that, its bad for the kids"... like movies, or video games, or what-not? We don't allow kids to make their own decisions, we don't allow kids to learn things on their own.
Like... school playgrounds. When my parents were kids, they had jungle gyms, slides, and swingsets. Nowadays, they got what, 5-foot tall slides? Anything higher is a danger to the kid? No jungle gyms, that's for sure. A kid might slip and fall, you know?
And in highschool, mom spoke of girls being able to practice on a pommel horse, uneven parallel bars, and similar equipment. When I went to school? Rings were the only thing the school could do, otherwise it is "too dangerous" and "we might get sued if someone gets hurt"... *rolls eyes*
And that's the whole nature of the USA these days, right? Everyone sues everybody for every little thing. God Forbid we put the responsibility with the person who did something stupid and screwed up... if someone climbs up on a ladder the wrong way, or tries to stack two ladders ontop of each other, and winds up breaking his leg, the guy sues the company if he can find any one of those warning stickers missing.
Same concept applies to kids -- kids aren't being given the chance to build a sense of responsibility for their own actions, because parents take away everything that could possibly be a danger in their lives, while forgetting that kids need to learn how to avoid danger in the first place, rather than the parent whisking them away whenever any tiny amount of it is present.
So a kid climbs around on a jungle gym, slips, and breaks his leg. The leg will heal over time, and the kid learns a valuable lesson. But, no, they take the jungle gyms away! Now, the kid will go out into the backyard and try climbing a tree and wind up falling and breaking his leg... or, wait, maybe he climbed up a bit too high and broke his neck instead? What are we going to do then, cut all the trees down now?
There's a difference between actively protecting (and teaching!) your kids and trying to shelter them from every small little speck of danger that could possibly come their way.
Same concept applies to Anti-bacterial everything being used these days. Many people have absolutely weak immune systems because they try to kill *everything* with anti-bacterial soap, anti-bacterial hand lotion, anti-bacterial hand sanitizer every time they touch anything. Their bodies get used to the lack of any hostile organisms and becomes lazy. Then, the time comes when an organism slips through and their bodies are nearly defenseless and they get deathly ill over something so simple that a person who isn't a germaphobe would shrug off with nary a sniffle.
You can't shelter someone from all danger. It only makes them weaker and dumber in the end run.