Do you bubblewrap your children? I don't mean literally. I mean are you one of the parents who puts the decorative protective cover on the shopping cart? Do you go through a bottle of Purell once a week? Do you let your kids play outside in the yard, or do they only have supervised playdates at a playground that is fenced in?
Cuiseroo wrote this great post I read on Digital Journal about the harm we could be doing to our kids by overprotecting them.
Remember it is normal for kids to be curious, and as much as we don't want out kids to ever get hurt there are some things that they need to learn the hard way.
I'm not saying you shouldn't wash your kids hands before meals, and I'm not trying to say you should let them stay out all night. I'm suggesting that it is our job as parents to teach our kids that there is dangerous stuff out there without scaring the hell out of them. Our little kids need to develop immune systems and our older kids need to learn about how it hurts to fall off a skateboard and how the girl next door will break your heart. We need to prepare them for the real world. They are going to have to leave the house eventually.
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Photo by John Rennison, The Hamilton Spectator]
