“Free range parenting” is all but illegal [1] and childhood is a completely different experience these days.
...
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 [2]: basic tools, first aid supplies, OTC medicine, and home remedies.
Via Instapundit [3], “The Last Rebels: 25 Things We Did As Kids That Would Get Someone Arrested Today | Zero Hedge [4]”
They can't even make a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
Sigh.
The free range kids are going to eat the other kids alive. Not that that's a bad thing.
Of the list of 25 things we used to do as kids, I've done most of them (not playing ``dangerous games'' like dodgeball---I was smart enough to avoid that as the other kids were out for blood) but really, nothing in that list is out of the ordinary.
I'm blaming the 24-hour news cycle for this.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470574755/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&
[2] http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/dorm-room-preppers-the-next-
[3] https://boston.conman.org/