CHILDHOOD - Are Our Children Being Over Protected?

This is a subject that I have commented on in the past.  Being 68 I can remember that during all my childhood was unsupervised play.  Baseball was a group of neighborhood kids getting together in a field; with our own ball, bats, and gloves, and no adults in sight.

It also included climbing numerous trees, and climbing up mountains, both with the attendant scratches and bruises.  One of my childhood memories is leaving home at 9:00am one weekend, climbing the mountains behind our neighborhood with a group of friends (San Gabriel Mountains), returning at sundown very happy and my parents going berserk.  Note they did NOT call the police, they were just angry that I did not tell them where I was going and for how long.

It is my firm belief that unsupervised play is the only lasting why for children to learn HOW to interact, to internalize proper social behavior.

As for risk, that is part of life and everyone needs to learn to deal.

"Should parents let their kids take more risks?" PBS NewsHour 5/9/2014

Excerpt

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  ..... How we watch over our children and whether the balance has tipped.

It’s the last installment in our series on Parenting Now.  Throughout the week, we have looked at a wide variety of issues that mothers and fathers contend with, including their changing roles, the way we raise kids, and the costs of child care.

Judy taped this conversation earlier in the week about how we deal with risks and safety concerns when it comes to our children.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  A generation ago, children walked to school by themselves and enjoyed hours of unsupervised play.  Well, times have changed considerably, and so have attitudes about the way we raise our children.

Journalist and author Hanna Rosin explored these issues in a recent cover story for “The Atlantic,” “The Overprotected Kid.”  It has sparked a wide conversation about how we keep our children safe, perhaps too safe.

And Hanna joins me.