How to Keep Your Children Safe Without Protecting Them to Death
There's a fine line between protecting your children from harm and smothering them. There's also a fine line between making an effort to promote security, and fear mongering.
There are numerous methods to follow when you're embarking on raising a child. There are blueprints, plans, systems and gurus in the field too. You'd think that there was enough advice out there — floating around on paper and on the ether, as the old folks used to say — to make sure that every child, in every walk of life, was raised successfully and without any hitches at all.
Well, that's just not so.
While child mortality may have been higher in years gone by, that doesn't mean that parents were worse 50, 60 or 100 years ago. That child mortality rate is mostly impacted by one thing, and that is medical science. Advances in medicine, both preventive medicine and medicine designed to repair or treat injuries, diseases and symptoms after they have arrived, takes credit for this, not parenting itself.
Overprotective parents have done nothing to increase the success rate of today's children. Several sources, including Psychology Today, spend a lot of time talking about it.
Overprotective "helicopter parents" are destined to create adults out of their children that can not relate to others in a healthy way; can not negotiate for their own needs and wants; and, who will lack the knowledge and confidence to assess risks and take them as needed.
The odd are against kids: 40,000 US schools no longer have recess; organized sports are managed by adults; toys are designed by and for parents instead of children - all adding up to the fact that playtime is dying and parents seem to be wondering why.
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