On Fri, 17 Mar 2017 14:26:37 -0400, dick balaska wrote:

> I am very disappointed with my generation.  As a teen in the 70s, we had
> the most freedom of any generation of kids *ever*.  And we turned that
> into being the worst overprotective helicopter parents.

Indeed - I was a teen in the 80s, but I feel the same way.  I was talking 
to someone at a brewery this evening who it turned out grew up not far 
from where I did in Minnesota at about the same time - remembering that 
during the non-winter months, we might have ridden our bikes to school, 
even though it was *gasp* a couple miles away.  Today, parents are 
sometimes accused of *child abuse* for allowing their kids that kind of 
freedom.

It's fucking stupid.

How do we expect our kids to be sane in today's world if they aren't 
allowed to take risks and if they aren't allowed to fail?  I fear for an 
entire generation of people who are given "achievement awards" that are 
really "participation awards" because everyone has to feel like a winner 
- and then they get their first job, fuck up *really badly* and get fired 
for it.  How do you cope with something like that if you never learned as 
a kid how to?

Some will go out, get a gun, return to the workplace, and shoot a bunch 
of people - probably before shooting themselves.

It's pretty obviously not a good thing for mental health.  Everyone needs 
to learn how to fail with grace - and that failure is often a great 
teacher.

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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