Originally Posted by RickB View Post
Sorry Ben, I was not the one who suggested that the guy who let his kid jump overboard in 6-10' seas was making up the size of the waves. I take him at his word ... you can call him a liar if you like but I just call it really bad judgement, right up there with keeping the family onboard while anchoring in the path of a hurricane, or intentionally sailing into one.
More and more this sounds like a future Robin Walbridge, defended by those who don't know any better and probably on the road to killing someone.
Your out of line
My two cents, OK more like two dollars
Yesterday, I was on the Fifth Ave bus. Getting on with me at 96th st., was a mother, probably about 40 you, and her daughter, maybe 2 y.o.
I sat opposite them for the next 30 minutes. After a while it became painful, because the kid was acting like a kid: she wanted to hold the bag they had, she then wanted to eat the yogurt her mother had, she then was mimicking sounds of the automated announcement “please exit at the rear of the bus”.
The problem was the girl, while precocious, was just being a kid. It was the mother who was embarrassed by her kids, behavior, noise, etc. So she kept admonishing the kid to act “correctly”. This then escalated to tantrum type behavior, but thankfully only for a minute before the next thing came up.
So, then, finally the mother relents and lets her have the yogurt, but then proceeds to feed her like a real baby. Why, because she was afraid the girl may spill it. A valid concern, but my not allowing the child to do anything, she was in effect teaching her all the wrong behaviors.
The conclusion that many studies have revealed, is that older parents, while far better financially and economically, are actually worse for the child’s growth. They know too much, so they become too protective and are embarrassed by actions that are normal.
On a related note and the point of this story, is that teenagers are an invention of the 20th century. For hundreds of thousands of years, there were children, who became adults at puberty, 14-16 years old. One of the reasons were are having troubles in middle and high schools, is that we are treating kids like children, when they are not. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying kids have any sense, but am saying that if you protect them from everything, they will not learn. The consequence of that is that we have growing generations of adults who in their 30’s and 40’s still act like kids, because they were over protected when they should not have been.
Learning comes with risk and sometimes even loss, injury, etc. If you remove that, you end up with no learning.
Coincidentally, I am just reading book hat mentioned a 19 year old, who was the first captain to sail a crewed sloop around the world in 1794. I wonder what he was exposed to at 17?
So my point, just because we can protect our kids from risk, doesn’t mean we should. (Just look at the raising of the drinking age, 30 to 40 years ago, and the unintended behaviors that has developed)
Lastly, to make a judgment on behaviors, based on a few line description that was written for another purpose, is probably not that reasonable.
Thankfully, I came from a generation in which my parents let me grow and learn. In NYC, I was taking the city bus, alone, to and from elementary school by second grade. Nowadays, there are long lines of SUV’s idling outside, waiting for their kids, and more of those kids will die in car accidents, than ever died taking the city bus alone. But then, now we can, so we do.
Richard