Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
When I was in Texas over the weekend taking a quick break from a whirlwind trip around the world, I went to one of the biggest shopping malls in Dallas to buy a birthday present for the CFO of our agriculture business.
The mall is called the Galleria, and it’s particularly interesting for shoppers because it has an ice-skating rink on the ground floor.
An ice rink might not sound like a big deal, but in a state like Texas that’s legendary for sweltering heat, it’s still quite a novelty.
Kids especially love the ice, and it’s common to hear them begging mom and dad for a 30 minute skate pass.
I was standing on a terrace overlooking the rink on Friday, busy firing off some emails to my staff, when I overheard one such conversation.
It didn’t even register until I heard the mother say, “Kaden – you can’t go ice skating… you might fall down!”
The words immediately passed through my mental filter as if someone had just shouted out my name across the food court.
You might fall down? Duh. It’s a ten-year old boy on ice skates. Of course he’s going to fall down.
I’m really not sure when this happened. I’m nearly 38, so I grew up in the 80s and early 90s.
When I was a kid, my friends and I used to ride our bikes all over town by ourselves until it was dark.
Today that would be enough for our parents to be arrested… or at least paid a visit by Child Protective Services.
My friends and I chased each other around and played that occasionally got rough.
Now even ‘Tag’ has been outlawed in countless school districts who consider the game physically and emotionally distressing to children.
I only remember having to have a few inoculations as a child.
The CDC website doesn’t go back to the 1980s, but it does show that in 1995, the government only endorsed shots against five diseases for children.
Today it’s 14, and the actual number of shots has soared.
Again, I don’t know precisely when any of this changed. But it’s painfully obvious how different things are now for kids.
Major cultural changes like this always start in the home with what parents teach their children… as in, “Kaden, you might fall down.”
What is the big lesson that this child is learning? Because, “Kaden, you might fall down,” could just as easily be, “Kaden, you aren’t allowed to take any risks or try anything that’s new and challenging.”
Risk taking is supposed to be part of the American DNA. The US is supposed to be the country that rises to major challenges.
And there’s certainly no shortage of challenges now.
The national debt now stands at $19.8 trillion. Social Security and Medicare are woefully unfunded, and many other government trust funds are flat broke.
The Federal Reserve has printed itself into near insolvency and created massive financial bubbles around the world.
Hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations now exist, debilitating small businesses and creating extraordinary disincentives to produce.
Socialist dogma is growing stronger.
The top 25% of income earners in the US already pay more than 80% of the taxes. And yet the bottom 50% wants you to pay even more of your ‘fair share’.
It’s madness.
Being comfortable with major challenges and risk taking is more important than ever. And they’re a big part of any individual’s success in life.
Taking a chance on a new job on the other side of the country, successfully investing in the stock market, starting a new business… all of this requires being comfortable with risk and challenges.
But that’s not what children are being taught.
They’re being taught that they’re made of glass, and if they try anything difficult they might fall down and hurt themselves.
That’s not how life works. Everyone falls down.
Not to sound cliché, but it seems far more important to teach children how to get back up quickly.
And more importantly, teach them to figure out WHY they fell down in the first place and HOW they can get better.
This is the “Can-Do”, risk-taking, pioneering spirit that made the United States the wealthiest country in the history of the world.
And if those values aren’t passed down to the next generation, they will absolutely disappear.
lol I used to ride my bike across the ice. And I dont mean as a novelty. I’d ride half a mile across ice. Yes there was quite a bit of falling involved.
Lordy, I grew up in the 60’s; am one of 8 children; we had a neighborhood full of kids. It’s a wonder we all made it to adulthood with all the stuff we did. Parents practiced benign neglect back then, and EXPECTED to make the occasional trip to the ER for stitches and broken bones. I raised my kids the same way. They’re millennials age-wise, but nothing like the little snowflakes you see in the nooz. I let them get knocked down plenty of times and they’re good at getting back up.
I can relate 100 percent. I must have lived in your neighborhood too. When we weren’t playing softball or baseball breaking the occasional neighborhood windows we were playing football or hockey, tennis, frisbee, motorcycle, bicycle, waterskiing, snowskiing, going off jumps, tying up neighbor kids while playing cowboys and indians & the like.
I agree with this. One of the problems, as I see it, is parents realizing that one single injury to your child could be enough to financially ruin your entire family. Healthcare is beyond expensive.
Only the poor who get free healthcare can afford their children getting hurt.
These kids along with the special snowflakes, have begun to get that rude awakening.
Their parents have failed them. They failed to prepare them for the REAL world.
You will fall down. You will fail. You will not win. You are not special.
Those parents that taught these hard lessons of life and how to cope with them, have children who will be the leaders in the future. Unfortunately, they are few.
We tried to fall down when I was a kid. I read your articles everyday. How can you be in a different country everyday?
It’s because the most overused word in America for the past decade or so is SAFE. Politicians use it incessantly, assuring you they will keep you that way. Safe lives are boring lives. How many generations of kids are going to look back at all the adventures they had playing video games?
When 9 or 10 yrs old, I would ride my bike miles away from home and my parents had no idea where I went. I never told them either or they would have melted down.
You can tell us.
We used to play football, tackle, no pads or helmets on a oblong cul-de-sac, with telephone poles as the goal line. The pavement was the sidelines. No broken bones, plenty of skinned knees and elbows, and occasional fat lips and black eyes. Lots of torn clothing, getting home after dark, and just a sigh and a admonition to clean up for dinner from Mom.
Hagar
You just described the football field in front of my house as a kid.
Did you live in Atlantic Beach? Were you that kid that got clothes-lined by guide wires?
Collingdale. I remember going deep, reaching out to grab the pass, and hitting a parked car dead on. We played wiffle ball, half ball and with a tennis ball on the same concrete fields using manhole covers as bases.
We used the beach to play home run derby. Mantle and Maris were neck and neck in their own derby. Never forget that summer.
Only a helicopter parent of a special snowflake would name their kid Kaden.
Kaden?
I remember telling my mom when I was around 10 I was going to take the .22 out shooting some birds. I remember clearly her outraged screeching:
“No you are not, young man! How could you even think of doing such a such a thing! You take the shotgun – that is for shooting birds. Just make sure you are back before 9. School tomorrow.”
Sigh. Times sure have changed. Not sure what they would have made of my family these days. Anyone hauling me or my parents off to social services would likely have risked ending up like so many birds.
Ice skating? Phfft. Knives, guns, explosives (Don’t come crying to me if you lose an eye/finger/leg playing with those things! Be back by 9.” my mom used to say.) were our playthings.
My neighbor lit off a quater sick of dynamite on one 4th of July, took a chunk out of the curb.
We had target shoots with bottle rockets, where the targets were our friends on mopeds.
Life has been good to me, but how far we’ve fallen is alarming. At age eight I made a deal with my Dad, I would work through the summer doing everything required and extra, (as a farm boy would) for 25 dollars to do with as I wished. Nothing abnormal here for that time.
I chose a single shot 22, ( which I still have) and a box of shorts, thus expending my funds. Dad, without fail always honorable, reluctantly agreed as to our bargain at the end of the summer, having not been privy to my scheme. We then went together to the local hardware store, and I’ve been a rifleman ever since. That was 56 years ago. I’ve since enjoyed countless hours afield with my rifle, and in due time have decorated my beautiful wife’s home with numerous trophy heads, and I’ve neither shot, threatened or otherwise disturbed anyone, at least with my rifle.
Playing war with bb guns.
Hehe,
We did that to. We’d wear our winter coats even in the SC summer to lessen the sting (that was about all our young minds could come up with for “safety”). I took a BB through the ear and put a BB into one of the neighbor’s lip that he carries with him to this day (still in there 30+ years later).
Stitches, scars, broken bones, a few instances of running from the cops, a few near drownings, minor vandalism, fires, bruises, a million miles of aimless wanderings, etc..
I had a great childhood and being older now with all of the lessons learned I cannot thank my parents enough.
No risk equals no reward.
Another angle to this mindset is ER visit injuries now require a $ 1K+ outlay vs. $ 200 30 years ago when the medical profession wasn’t a racket.
Yeah, that’s a good point. It reminds me of how bad things have gotten. Once, my brother threw a rock that hit me in the back of the head and split it right open. On a Saturday. My dad called the doc at home and he said, “meet me at the office and I’ll sew it up”. Our pediatrician made house calls. My parents bartered for (excellent!) care.
I avoided many trips to the ER with my kids by learning to do first aid at home. These days, too many injuries results in a visit from CPS as well (wtf? my mother would have lost custody of all of us!).
“Parents practiced benign neglect back then.” We would leave in the morning stop in quickly for lunch and then show up for dinner. Parents didn’t know where we were or what we were doing. Spent most of my times in the woods or in the creek. One time I was heating a bottle with various chemicals in it, water and gasoline over a bunsen burner. Thankfully, nothing happened. The gasoline was my dumb cousins idea.
Yesssss! The creek, the woods, the chemistry experiments! My brother and I spent hours and hours at the creek hunting snakes (venomous as well), crawdads and turtles. I was a teenager before I knew girls were supposed to be afraid of snakes, haha (I’m still not afraid). The most trouble I ever got in was not coming home when the street lights came on.
We must have grown up in the same neighborhood!
Raised in the country, you had to make your own fun. There were some organized outlets for wild youthful energy – camping with the Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts for gals, 4-H, chores of various kinds. Had a 3-speed bike that would take me the five miles to town, down back roads, even bicycle hikes (25 miles +) with the Scouts. Swimming in the pool in town, baseball and football for those interested, probably soccer now. I ran track in the 9th grade, the heaviest and slowest miler in the district – but I won 4th place (and my two points were the margin of victory) in the county races, the peak of my athletic career for sure! Coming out of junior high I went (Scouts again) 80 miles in seven days on the Appalachian Trail, then later that summer the mile swim. You’d never suspect it looking at my current beer belly, but at 15 I was a lean, trim hardbody!
Oh well, the PC folks have wussified the Girl Scouts and destroyed the Boy Scouts, without a real replacement as usual; don’t know how 4-H and Babe Ruth league baseball / Pop Warner football are doing these days, suspect reduced participation as well. You get what you reward, parents of computer-obsessed physically-weak children!
I took my five year old boy to learn ice hockey when he was age five. Most of the other boys could already skate, so it was tough for him, but he caught on to it pretty quick. In the process, even a few little tears a couple of times. Soon, time for the first game against the neighbour town . He said he would not go to play, “Because,” he said, “I will fall down.” So, we went to watch, where I knew he could see everyone “falling down.”
In four years, this beautiful boy was voted “best forward” by his fellow players. And got a nice award, which still hangs on our wall. A bit of life. His and mine. We still talk about it at times.