With all of the ridiculous new regulations, coddling, and societal mores that seem to be the norm these days, it’s a miracle those of us over 30 survived our childhoods.
Here’s the problem with all of this babying: it creates a society of weenies.
There won’t be more more rebels because this generation has been frightened into submission and apathy through a deliberately orchestrated culture of fear. No one will have faced adventure and lived to greatly embroider the story
Kids are brainwashed – yes, brainwashed – into believing that the mere thought of a gun means you’re a psychotic killer waiting for a place to rampage.
They are terrified to do anything when they aren’t wrapped up with helmets, knee pads, wrist guards, and other protective gear.
Parents can’t let them go out and be independent or they’re charged with neglect and the children are taken away.
Woe betide any teen who uses a tool like a pocket knife, or heck, even a table knife to cut meat.
Lighting their own fire? Good grief, those parents must either not care of their child is disfigured by 3rd-degree burns over 90% of his body or they’re purposely nurturing a little arsonist.
Heaven forbid that a child describe another child as “black” or, for that matter, refer to others as girls or boys. No actual descriptors can be used for the fear of “offending” that person, and “offending” someone is incredibly high on the hierarchy of Things Never To Do.
“Free range parenting” is all but illegal
All of this babying creates incompetent, fearful adults.
Our children have been enveloped in this softly padded culture of fear, and it’s creating a society of people who are fearful, out of shape, overly cautious, and painfully politically correct. They are incredibly incompetent when they go out on their own because they’ve never actually done anything on their own.
When my oldest daughter came home after her first semester away at college, she told me how grateful she was to be an independent person. She described the scene in the dorm. “I had to show a bunch of them how to do laundry and they didn’t even know how to make a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese,” she said. Apparently they were in awe of her ability to cook actual food that did not originate in a pouch or box, her skills at changing a tire, her knack for making coffee using a French press instead of a coffee maker, and her ease at operating a washing machine and clothes dryer. She says that even though she thought I was being mean at the time I began making her do things for herself, she’s now glad that she possesses those skills. Hers was also the room that had everything needed to solve everyday problems: basic tools, first aid supplies, OTC medicine, and home remedies.
I was truly surprised when my daughter told me about the lack of life skills her friends have. I always thought maybe I was secretly lazy and that was the basis on my insistence that my girls be able to fend for themselves, but it honestly prepares them for life far better than if I was a hands-on mom that did absolutely everything for them. They need to realize that clothing does not get worn and then neatly reappear on a hanger in the closet, ready to be worn again. They need to understand that meals do not magically appear on the table, created by singing appliances a la Beauty and the Beast.
If the country is populated by a bunch of people who can’t even cook a box of macaroni and cheese when their stoves function at optimum efficiency, how on earth will they sustain themselves when they have to not only acquire their food, but must use off-grid methods to prepare it? How can someone who requires an instruction manual to operate a digital thermostat hope to keep warm when their home environment it controlled by wood they have collected and fires they have lit with it? How can someone who is afraid of getting dirty plant a garden and shovel manure?
Did you do any of these things and live to tell the tale?
While I did make my children wear bicycle helmets and never took them on the highway in the back of a pick-up, many of the things on this list were not just allowed, they were encouraged. Before someone pipes up with outrage (because they’re *cough* offended) I’m not suggesting that you throw caution to the wind and let your kids attempt to hang-glide off the roof with a sheet attached to a kite frame. (I’ve got a scar proving that makeshift hang-gliding is, in fact, a terrible idea). Common sense evolves, and I obviously don’t recommend that you purposely put your children in unsafe situations with a high risk of injury.
But, let them be kids. Let them explore and take reasonable risks. Let them learn to live life without fear.
Raise your hand if you survived a childhood in the 60s, 70s, and 80s that included one or more of the following, frowned-upon activities (raise both hands if you bear a scar proving your daredevil participation in these dare-devilish events):
- Riding in the back of an open pick-up truck with a bunch of other kids
- Leaving the house after breakfast and not returning until the streetlights came on, at which point, you raced home, ASAP so you didn’t get in trouble
- Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the school cafeteria
- Riding your bike without a helmet
- Riding your bike with a buddy on the handlebars, and neither of you wearing helmets
- Drinking water from the hose in the yard
- Swimming in creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes (or what they now call *cough* “wild swimming“)
- Climbing trees (One park cut the lower branches from a tree on the playground in case some stalwart child dared to climb them)
- Having snowball fights (and accidentally hitting someone you shouldn’t)
- Sledding without enough protective equipment to play a game in the NFL
- Carrying a pocket knife to school (or having a fishing tackle box with sharp things on school property)
- Camping
- Throwing rocks at snakes in the river
- Playing politically incorrect games like Cowboys and Indians
- Playing Cops and Robbers with *gasp* toy guns
- Pretending to shoot each other with sticks we imagined were guns
- Shooting an actual gun or a bow (with *gasp* sharp arrows) at a can on a log, accompanied by our parents who gave us pointers to improve our aim. Heck, there was even a marksmanship club at my high school
- Saying the words “gun” or “bang” or “pow pow” (there actually a freakin’CODE about “playing with invisible guns”)
- Working for your pocket money well before your teen years
- Taking that money to the store and buying as much penny candy as you could afford, then eating it in one sitting
- Eating pop rocks candy and drinking soda, just to prove we were exempt from that urban legend that said our stomachs would explode
- Getting so dirty that your mom washed you off with the hose in the yard before letting you come into the house to have a shower
- Writing lines for being a jerk at school, either on the board or on paper
- Playing “dangerous” games like dodgeball, kickball, tag, whiffle ball, and red rover (The Health Department of New York issued a warning about the “significant risk of injury” from these games)
- Walking to school alone
Come on, be honest. Tell us what crazy stuff you did as a child.
Teach your children to be independent this summer.
We didn’t get trophies just for showing up. We were forced, yes, forced – to do actual work and no one called protective services. And we gained something from all of this.
Our independence.
Do you really think that children who are terrified by someone pointing his finger and saying “bang” are going to lead the revolution against tyranny? No, they will cower in their tiny apartments, hoping that if they behave well enough, they’ll continue to be fed.
Do you think our ancestors who fought in the revolutionary war were afraid to climb a tree or get dirty?
Those of us who grew up this way (and who raise our children to be fearless) are the resistance against a coddled, helmeted, non-offending society that aims for a dependant populace. In a country that was built on rugged self-reliance, we are now the minority.
Nurture the rebellion this summer. Boot them outside
Teach your kids what freedom feels like.
I did them all and than some
My kid wanted to fly the confederate flag , our heritage is from the south ,and family members fought in the civil war but we live in Yankee land , and there are the Nigs that just dont get that a flag had nothing to do with the fact that NONE OF THEM WERE EVER SLAVES .. sorry i digress
I didnt care , but friends of her’s talked her out of it due to the “wrong attention” she might get , < see, conditioning from her peers.
granted i dont want my kid dealing with an ignorant ill informed baboon on a rampage , at least not until shes old enough to pack a deterrent to stupidity
What do you mean by ‘none of them were ever slaves’? Are you saying that they were never the lawful property of their owners? Please clarify.
they would have to be over 100 years old ! I correct myself 150 years old
This marked the start of the Civil War, which caused a huge disruption of the slave economy, with many slaves either escaping or being liberated by the Union armies. The war effectively ended slavery, even before the Thirteenth Amendment (December 1865) formally outlawed the institution throughout the United States
know anyone still alive from 1865?
maybe i should be more clear..None of those alive today were ever slaves, and chances are none of their immediate family were either
im not condoning slavery .. my subject was about the confederate flag , and the misconception that it signified slavery
un-funny thing is.. we are all salves now
I beg to differ. Are you arguing that all of us who are not of the elite, regardless of color, are not living in a condition of slavery as I am writing this?
please read my last line
also understand it is almost impossible to cover everyones views on this subject or catch all the possible side notes to fit an argument into this discussion
but yes Henry Im quite aware of my slavery , but again that wasnt the subject i was trying to convey
Mommas dont let your cowboys grow up to be babies
13.Throwing rocks at snakes in the river
—>>> 13a. Throwing snakes at rocks in the river
There was a lot of old culm banks around here, lots of coal. We used to get giant boxes like from washing machines/dryers/refrigerators and get in them and slide down these huge banks of ROCKS, yes I said ROCKS IN A CARDBOARD BOX. Giant culm banks of ROCKS with a SWAMP at the bottom.
BLACK POWDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I was in school we would take your guns there all the time.
To sell or trade,or work on them.
Shop class would have 8 to 15 guns around all the time.
Making new stocks or mounting scopes or customizing them, making gun racks. The parking lot had trucks with gun racks and guns in them.
Kids would have shotgun shells in the coats. Knives in the pocket.
Use to shot sling shots at thing at lunch.
There was no drugs in school, some kids smoked and that was it.
Now that schools have no gun,knives and there are full of hard drugs and kids today could not start a lawnmower if they had to.
Sledding on car hoods.
Tying ski rope behind a corvair on a frozen lake and cracking the whip on saucers.
Bonus if you rode to the lake in the trunk and the top was cut off making it a convertible.
Double bonus if you stopped at Penguin Point for hot chocolate and all the hops thought you were cool….8-9 kids and an adult in an open air corvair in freezing weather…..
My whole family would be up on child endangerment charges today…
I Did all that stuff when I was a kid. Except the part about the river snakes. We only had ground and pond snakes…lol.
“13. Throwing rocks at snakes in the river”
Didn’t throw rocks, but I actually caught a snake swimming out of the river. It was a Gopher snake at the Kern River, and it swam right up to me. Took it home & kept it for a pet.
Snakes aren’t very exciting as far as pets go, though.
Age 4 (yes i said age 4!)-walking home about a mile with another 4 year old girl from ballerina dance class (folks I sucked as a ballerina!) because my mother (as well as hers) couldn’t pick us up from dance class.
Age 4–walking around the block to the neighbor’s house behind ours, and their basement doors were open and they weren’t home so I go into the basement and wander around, and they come home and hear me downstairs so the husband finds me down below in the basement and when he asks me my name I say “Davey Crockett” (I was wearing the Crockett coon-skin hat)…he walks me around the block to my frantic mother…
Age 5: walk home from kidergarten alone
Age 6: at camp, hike in the woods for a couple of hours and find my way back to the cabin…my dad almost grounded me for that
Age 10: ride my bicycle (no helmet or course) five miles to my aunt’s house, and when she says go back home since my folks might worry about me, I ride another mile or so to the department store (just to see if I could ride my bike 6 miles, then 6 miles home)
Age 14, 15, 16, 17…walk two miles home from school many times just to get exercise, and on two occasions I let some pedophile or whatever pick me up just so I could scream bloody murder when he tried to abduct me…did I mention I was a free-range kid extraordinaire?
Age 17…nearly got raped twice because again I walked on the wild side…
God had my back then, and He has my back now!
My own two kids which I homeschooled weren’t quite that adventurous, but still…
You know what really gets me? When I see a parent with their child on a leash! Most often in a supermarket…
Again about my homeschooled kids (and we live in the mountains, in a POA even)…when they’d go into a supermarket with me they’d stay close by most of the time but sometimes I would wander off and they’d be left wherever, and I’d find them, and then I’d be told by another shopper just how well behaved my kids were even though I wasn’t with them…
Sometimes I think folks put their kids on leashes just so they don’t have to take responsibility bringing them up properly and just taking the lazy way out…and speaking of HOAs/POAs–how many of those subdivisions even let folks let their kids play outside not in their back yards anyway? When I went to visit my son/daughter-in-law who had my grandson, I saw ZERO children playing in the streets outside! Only place I saw children playing was in the HOA play park (and no dogs allowed, on leash or not on leash…nearly got fined bringing my son’s leashed dog into park…)
I absolutely HATE it when I see a parent who has their kid on a leash. I see some of them here in Dallas sometimes. Do they really want to bring up their kids like dogs? What kind of sick people are they? That’s your kid, for cryin’ out loud! He’s a human being, NOT an animal.
Ahhh. The good ole days. We made a raft with barrels to keep it afloat and would go to the swamp and shoot water moccasins with 22 pistols right in neighborhoods. Me and a buddy used to go into the national forest with our 22 riffles and shoot a brick or 2 each of 22’s at huge cliff hanging icicles. That was until the authorities stopped that. We used to go to the city dump at night where it was open war on the millions of rats there. Most of the time there would be 20 or more people including peace officers all having fun and getting practice. Another fun time was sledding in 6 man toboggans where the ride was a mile long and the walk back up the hill was good exercise. My buddy boy neighbors used chemistry to make a bomb to blow up the neighbors fence post. The blast blew it to smithereens and knocked a couple of us down even though we were running away. No big deal, no police, he just paid to repair the damage. I broke each of my legs at different times fighting/wrestling with friends. All in fun. I’m helping raise my young grand boys with my adventurous heritage.
As time progresses you can bet that before long the things that are still not illegal soon will be. There needs to be a cleansing of the parasites that are infecting this country and nothing less than that is going to change a thing. So where are all of these so called constitutional sheriffs at anyway,with their noses up DHS ass,that’s where.