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Sherwood's Soapbox

Overprotected kids.

As a society we are ruled by fear. We read of some kid who ran afoul with a child preditor. We lock up our kids.

It is a powerful instinct to protect our kids. But it's running amok. The media panders to our fear. They sell papers, gain ratings when they get people to sit up and take notice.

Furthermore, we hear news sooner after it happens, making it more urgent. We hear news from further away, presented as if it was from next door.

Let's take murder. Now depending on where in North America you live the murder rate runs from about 2 per hundred thousand people per year to around 8.

If I live in a town of 5000 people, I can expect a murder every 10 years. I feel pretty safe. Oh, when one happens, I may lock my doors (if I can find the key...) for a while.

If I live in a city of 5,000,000, I can expect two a week. I no longer feel safe. Every day the police beat page has stories about several ongoing murder stories.

Perception becomes reality.

We hear of a single kid that fell out of a tree and broke his neck. So we no longer let our kids climb trees. A kid gets killed on a snowmobile, we stop our kids from snowmobiling. One kid drowns swimming at the local quarry. We keep our kids out of the water.

Instead we should be teaching kids how to climb safely. Snowmobile safely. Swim safely. How to think about safety in specific high hazard situations.

We have a rash of obesity in our kids right now. I overheard a conversation between a Big Brother and his young friend. They were talking about the new playground equipment that the city had put in. The old stuff had been taken out as 'unsafe' "You want to slide?" "Nah. This new stuff is no fun."

One kid dies in some freak accident. Half a million kids can't have fun.

I think this is wrong. Sure fun and danger have to be balanced. But the price of absolute security is absolute boredom.

Another way to look at it. Our kids are fat because they don't tear around the neighborhood on their bikes (Might get killed by a car) don't play in the parks (might get picked up by a chicken hawk.) So we prevent two fatalities as kids. And thus we doom 10,000 to die of heart attacks at age 40.

It's the hardest thing you can do. Let them go. Let them learn. Try to teach them ahead of time, but sometimes the world's hard knocks are the best teacher. Indeed, for some people knocks are the only teacher.

They will come home with skinned knees and skinned hearts. And each time you will give them a bandaid, a shoulder, and a big hug. And a little later you may talk about the lessons to be learned, and how to make different mistakes next time.

Kids learn by making mistakes. (You did, didn't you?) Kids learn by having close calls. If you keep them from never making a mistake, if you keep them from trying anything dangerous, they will learn neither fear, nor courage.

And they will never grow up.

That may be part of what's wrong with our society.

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Read, laugh, send me a line and tell me why each idea won't work. Convince me and I'll issue a retraction, and grant you a kudo for correcting my ignorance.

Send email to soapbox@sherwoods-forests.com

Note that, unless you tell me otherwise in your letter, I may publish it, or quote it in a future rant