Safe Child Syndrome
I found an excellent article by Beth Hawkins about over-protective
parents. I’ve gotta say that I’m glad that my parents
weren’t like some of those in the article. Sure, they’d
some rules which were a bit over-the-top (the ones about leaving the
street before one’s 10th birthday, and about going near the lake
are about the only ones I remember now), but for the most part they let
us play like normal kids. I remember going for picnics in Jamestown and
Williamsburg, exploring
creeks and marshes with my brothers,
getting horribly dirty and having loads of fun—and as I remember
it they mostly trusted that we couldn’t get into too much trouble
on our own. And we didn’t.
Sure, accidents happen. But they’re very rare. And might it not be worse to produce a stilted human being never capable of fully maturing than to take the slight risk of allowing some harm to befall?
