I don’t know if people on other
computers can tell I sometimes write in different fonts, but in this case I am
using “cracked” because it seems to fit the feel I want for what I am going to
say.
Last night we had a traditional Halloween
evening, our house had some decorations, we had Halloween music playing, and
children and parents came to the door to collect their treats. We live near a poorer neighborhood so many of
those children come around too. It
might be I am just getting older and more out of touch, but there is to me a
very scary trend with Halloween. I
assume it is necessary and now expected but so many more parents have to
accompany their children to the door to insure their safety than when I was a
boy.
It is sad this has to be, but a
much bigger concern, like an order of magnitude bigger, is what will the long
term affects be on those children, where they come to depend on their parents
for every decision and are never allowed to set out on their own?
Last night I held a Frankenstein
head holding a mouth full of candy for the kids to reach into and take
from. It made noises, said funny things
and had eyes that blinked red lights. I
understand how 6 and younger children would be a bit scared, but more times
than I could count the 14 to 16 year olds were scared to reach in. That scares me! The fear of the new and unknown being
manifest in those young people who are growing into adults does not seem a good
thing to me. Are we adults setting them
up for failure?
6 comments:
It seems that todays parents are a longer necessity in their children's lives than in my day because there is a greater need to protect them from harm, but by protecting the we are also making them more dependent on "our judgement" than allowing them their own independence.
I wonder if things are actually more dangerous (based on data) or if we are just more sensitive to the existing danger.
Either way, we pass along to our children many things. Fear is one of them. If parents are so afraid for their child's safety that they must accompany them on activities like this, maybe they need to do things which are more secure so that they don't transmit their fear. Or better yet, maybe parents need to take a close look at what is making them afraid and deal with that so that their kids don't have to.
back in my day, any kid over the age of 9 who went trick or treating with a parent was laughed at.
but again, at that time most 9yr olds had at least one older sibling to be with. today, not so much.
maybe today's parents are taking the place that our big brothers and sisters used to assume.
There seems to be an interesting change in the society. We hear on a nightly basis of child abduction, abuse, and parental disregard. There are Amber alerts, new stories of criminal neglect, parental mistakes and worse. A good parent is forced to take all that into consideration each time an activity involves their children. If they don't and something bad happens you can expect the police, child protective services and perhaps the DA will be calling on them. So the kids with caring parents are protected until adulthood and they go out on their own. My experience is that when not allowed to take small risks and learn small consequences early they are more likely to take large risks without thought of the potentially lethal consequences when there is no one there to control them. Either way a parent turns there is no right choice.
"Either way a parent turns there is no right choice."
I disagree. There are still right choices. There probably aren't easy choices, though. I think a lot of these choices are made well before the kids are leaving the house or even before they are born.
It's true that society is no longer reinforcing traditional parenting methods and is even undermining them in many cases. But parents don't have to give the television free access to their kids. They don't have to give their kids to public schools 40+ hours a week. The options might not be easy, but they are options.
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