Thursday, November 26, 2009

Maybe its Just Me

Ok, so I get that it might just be me that feels this way. But this get's the ol' "Hell Yeah!" arm pump from me.

From Time magazine (of all places) Helicopter Parents:The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting (page 2)

Dear Abby endorses the idea, as she did in August, that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them. That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing. Once the kids make it home safe and sound, you can delete the picture and take a new one the next morning.

That advice may seem perfectly sensible to parents bombarded by heartbreaking news stories about missing little girls and the predator next door. But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with "How can you let him go to the store alone?," she suggests countering with "How can you let him visit your relatives?" (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) "I'm not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn't be prepared," she says. "But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources." Besides, she says with a smile, "a 100%-safe world is not only impossible. It's nowhere you'd want to be."


Go read the whole thing

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Saje said...

I heard something interesting recently along the same lines. In the last 25 years, there have been no deaths in North American schools from fire but we still do drills and outfit every school. Fear is a funny thing.

Seriously??? A DAILY photo? Could you be any more neurotic??? That is over the top!!!