The Tragic Childhood We Inflict on Our Kids

There has been some debate recently that children who are over protected.

The definition of over protection being, in this case, not allowing children to travel on public transport alone or independently interact with other kids in any way - has resulted in a sad generation of over weaned, emotionally dependent kids who cannot think for themselves and are unable to make sensible judgements when faced with genuinely dangerous incidents.

There is some truth in this claim, stemmed from observing a clutch of mothers so enamored with their darling children they cannot bear to think of them being influenced in any way by lesser members of society, so they carry out all manner of ridiculous precautions to ensure their kids are sheltered from exposure to other people's lifestyles.

This echelon of motherhood (and sometimes fatherhood) hails as a rule from the upper middle class of society; families who enjoy a relatively well padded lifestyle and have the time and money to lavish on the supposed security and well being of their developing offspring. Their children are supervised from the moment they open their eyes in the morning until they kiss their sainted parents goodnight.
These children are conditioned from as early as four or five years old to believe most other children of their acquaintance are less privileged and less loved than they. All of this is a load of old clap trap of course but intelligent parents none the less subscribe to this hateful and damaging attitude.
No doubt it has the effect of making them feel they are doing their best for their children, making them feel valued and cherished and - god help us - more special than other kids.

These children go nowhere alone. They are ferried around by their mothers in expensive cars from one supervised play session to another, never really allowed to choose their own friends, never permitted to walk anywhere, always dressed in expensive labels and always programmed to believe themselves subtly superior to everyone else. The true effect of this nonsense is, of course, to alienate their children from the real world we are all, whether we like it or not, stuck with. These poor creatures grow up mentally stunted, socially inept and sadly unable to deal with life on a realistic level.
We are acquainted with only a handful of young men hailing from certain families within our acquaintance, ranging in age from about eighteen to twenty four years.

It is deeply saddening that out of this handful, at least three or four have fallen prey to the paranoia of their parents - usually mothers - and are unable to cope with a life that necessitates going out to work, going to University, interacting with other people, travelling around without Mummy to drive them.
So what happens to these poor young men and women who find themselves in this situation? What do they do with themselves during the long days? They sit looking at a computer screen, where they live a cyber fantasy existence, that's what.
The fluffy, graphically pleasing world of the cyber resident is a very dangerous place to dwell. Here, there is nobody to question how you behave and what you do for entertainment.

This is a safe world, not only from all outside influences but also from the cloying attentions of Mummy and Daddy, the creeps who left you with no alternative but to retreat into this web based cavern in the first place.
Some of these youngsters develop web skills of an incredibly high standard as young as six or seven and by the time they reach their late teens they are hooked on living in the only environment which affords them some privacy from a world otherwise dominated by their parents.

Of course everybody is happy with the arrangement.
Junior is occupied for most of the day and even late into the night; Mummy dearest can fool herself that Junior is learning new things all the time and is one day going to astound the world as a second Bill Gates (yeah right).

Most importantly, nobody has to interact with people deemed to be a potential problem, people with no money, people who might entice Junior to do drugs or sleep with girls - drinkers, smokers and ( ugh!), people who live in small apartments, yuk.

Everybody is ecstatically delighted, until Junior is suddenly 25 years old without any experience of life and without any social skills to speak of.
What are Mummy and Daddy going to do now? Buy some friends (carefully selected of course) for him? Encourage him to go out more and meet new people? (Usually at the homes of their equally anally retentive friends considered to be fit company for this family of misfits).

Buy him a job? None of the above would suffice as a solution because this young man is, by now, so damaged by his environment, so immune to the influence of other people who live outside a computer screen, and so inadequately equipped to interact with others, he finds himself on the outside looking in, in just about every social scenario he is presented with.

Super Freak Parents who fall into the category I have described are becoming all too familiar in our society and it is time for 'over parenting' to be recognised as a truly damaging method of raising kids and teenagers.