Gen-x parenting website

Hi Folks.

This may be off topic, or it may not. But, something went seriously wrong with parenting in the last twenty years (and I (of course) blame the baby boomers).

The baby boomers are /were the most risk adverse group of parents that have ever lived. I have watched baby boomer parents drive their kids to the bus stop. These are kids that are 17 freaking years old! The poor little dears my get jumped by the neighborhood pedophile at 7 in the morning on the way to the bus stop.

When I was a kid we all walked to school. From the age of kindergarten up. No one walked with their parents. Nobodies parents dropped them off at school. It wasn't done. You walked. Even if it was uphill in the snow. You still walked.

When I was a kid we went outside. Our parents didn't give a crap what we were doing out there just so long as we weren't in the house bugging them. I for one, think this was a good thing. This is different than being a latchkey kid.

Latchkey kids had no one there to draw on if there was a real emergency. They also could not go outside until their parents were home. (Well, in some cases....)

I stumbled across this website: Free Range Kids. It pushes to get parents to return to those ideas (the ones that most of us grew up with). Send the kids outside. Let them climb the tree. You get the idea. If you are a parent and you are paranoid then do a couple of things.

1. Stop watching the evening news. That's why your paranoid.
2. Throw you kid outside and tell them to be back in at 6 for dinner.