“The Overprotected Kid”
by: Hanna Rosin from The Atlantic
Commentary by: Sam Smathers 4th
This
article talks about how parents now days are super protective of their kids.
The world has not gotten more dangerous but parents are now super protective of
their kids comparatively to parents in the 70s. Why is this? What is this doing
to our kids?
Kids don’t
know what fear is. I grew up playing under the watch of my mom in my backyard;
I grew up on inspected swing sets and playing with rubber balls on asphalt.
There was no danger or adventure as a kid. I have no idea what living in the
wilderness is like; I have no idea what living unsupervised is like. I would
argue that this, this not knowing, is the reason today’s youth is so angsty all
the time. We grew up being watched, we grew up with people breathing down our
necks, telling us what grades to make what sports to play, how to live our
lives. We don’t have the option to make our own decisions anymore, you can
google what to do with your summer as a junior in high school and there are
people, that are seriously trying to tell us how to spend our summers, when the
summer is all about summer nights that fade into early summer mornings. Summer
is about being bored and sweating and meeting a cute boy, it isn’t about sat
prep and building a resume, what has the world come to? We are not supposed to
be preparing for tomorrow today, we are supposed to be living for today? If we
live for tomorrow every day of our lives than we will never live for today, and
that is supposed to make us happy? This parenting is why kids drink, and smoke,
and sneak out, they rebel because for once they want to do something they want
to do. And for the first 16 years of our lives we are constrained in safe
places, cut off from danger and our desire to fulfill human wants. Eventually the
need to be free overfills and then we run away and smoke and sneak out to see
the stars. We need to fail and mess up and cry and break bones. We need to make
mistakes and screw ourselves over and we need to do it now. Because right now
is the time to fail, right now we have a safety net of people that can help us
get back up, but if parents keep their kids fastened down to the net of
security forever than when we leave the net and we fail for the first time, we
get our heart broken for the first time because our parents never let us talk
to boys for fear of heartbreak, than what will we do? Keeping your kids from
living only screws them over later. Parents should be encouraging their kids to
stay up late and play beer pong, not study and go to school, parents should be
aiming to foster what their kids want, and that sounds ridiculous and angsty,
but anyone can go to school. Anyone can make good grades, learning is easy and
anyone can do it at any time in their lives, but right now, right now is the
only time to be young, the only time to do dumb things and kiss cute boys,
right now is the only time to make bad choices for the sake of making bad
choices. Right now is the time to forget about algebra and AP English, right
now is the time to mess up because there will never be a better day than today,
because yesterday is too late and tomorrow isn’t a guarantee.
Love your commentary. I totally agree. No one remembers the nights they had a good nights sleep! But then again I don't remember my weekends lawl
ReplyDeleteIs is absolutely necessary for parents to allow their kids to fail so that they can become better from the failure. However, much of our parents' actions that seem restricting are usually meant to keep us from making a decision that would be a detriment not only to our college or high school lives, but to the rest of our lives.
ReplyDelete