I personally wasn’t a very attentive parent. I was thrilled (in the 80s and early 90s) if my kids were away doing something and leaving me alone. I didn’t ask TOO many questions. I didn’t nag about homework – took too much energy. I didn’t think much about what they ate – too frustrating. I didn’t hassle them about grades – that was their business. I didn’t wait at the bus stop with them – I wanted to drink coffe and read the paper.

They seemed to grow up just fine. They have their complaints about me – you didn’t give me a good work ethic, you didn’t make me get enough sleep, you should have paid me for every A, yada yada yada. But they are gainfully employed and not in jail.

I did make them clean up their rooms. I hated the argument that it was their space to do with what they wanted. We all have our limits.

I’ve read that the media and news reports of crimes and abductions are completely overblown and don’t represent real levels of risk out there. This instills so much fear, perhaps completely unwarranted. Yet none of us can prove how safe the world is, so we err on the cautious side.

When I was a kid, we rode our bikes everywhere and had to find our own way back when we got lost (no cell phones to call for rescue). I’m proud of these experiences I had, when I look back on them. I’d love to encourage my child to ride bikes and explore aimlessly, but it would be alone: I never see other kids even riding bikes in the neighborhood or even walking to the store by themselves. This really saddens me.

Now for the veggies: hiding them is a bad idea. Often kids don’t like a certain food for a very valid reason. “It tastes yucky” is a good reason in my book. Adults don’t like to eat things that taste gross to them — why should kids?

Instead of food trickery, parents should be open to conversations with their kids about likes and dislikes. That way, parents learn more about their own kids, kids can find veggies they truly like, and there is no bond of trust broken. Win-win!

Like on the Web, an authentic, transparent conversation is the way to go.

Did I mention that I really like your post?

I eat them now. I’m not overweight or with serious health problems.

I don’t think making your kid sit at the dinner table for an hour chewing up and spitting out peas for an hour after everyone else has finished makes you a better Mom than the Mom that takes the seemingly easy way out.

The truth is forcing your kids to sit and eat food they don’t want to eat is keeping them infantalized as well. Don’t you want your child to make the right choices even when you aren’t there? If you keep the junkfood out of your home they will have no choice but to either eat the food or not.

The real problem is the family that offers healthy food for dinner, doesn’t ‘make’ the child eat it, but allows a bag of chips two hours afterward because the child is hungry. That’s a bigger no-no than hiding veggies in the food.

Or if you really want to concern yourself with America’s Fat problems…Why don’t we first battle the reason why America has become this way in the first place…And I don’t think that reason is hidden.

I often wonder about how my overprotective parenting tendencies will affect Kinsey as an adult. But then I remember one of my favorite quotes: “Have I been a bad mother? After all, my children CAN afford their own therapy.”

She raised us at the opposite extreme, on the guidance of our Malibu nutritionist. (How ’70s, right?) Ours was a primarily vegetarian diet with dinners dominated by brown rice with steamed broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. We were allowed a little butter and a “liquid amino” seasoning called Braggs, which is just as appetizing as it sounds. All our groceries came from co-ops and health food stores like (I still remember the name) Follow Your Heart in the Valley.

She wishes now that she hadn’t been so hardcore. On the one hand, we were extraordinarily healthy. (I can’t recall ever going to the doctor, except for check-ups, and the first time I ever took an antibiotic was as a teenager when I got an ear infection.) On the other, it was a total drag, and as an adult I still refuse to eat most of the staples from my childhood diet.

I guess the middle ground seems the most sensible route — sneak some stuff in, leave others out in the open.

And I don’t live in America, yet the same thing here. Parents fear can be seen in the streets. No kids, just every once in a while some of them on bikes – alone, wow.

And in my childhood it was like Toad explained. We went out in the morning, came back in the evening sometimes. And yes, some of us even got broken arms and legs. Wow, that was a pain.

And if I didn’t eat that meal, I could be just
left hungry until next meal. And here I am. All grown up and healthy. Even tough I didn’t eat some meals.

It is wrong to overprotect and I can’t be more sure of something. I see some young people that were born in 90’s comming into jobs these days or taking their first students jobs. They are spoiled, demanding and have hard time working as a part of a team. They would all like to be on the top, even tough they don’t have the abbilities yet. And mostly they don’t know how to fail. If you talk to them about their weakness, they react emotionally, even leaving the job. You can just praise them if you want to keep them.

And they grew in simmilar environment, since the 90’s were very “keep them safe” in Slovenia.

Another thing is their school-time. Teachers can’t say anything to them. They are so protected, that if a teacher even tries to give them a harder school-work, the parents come in next day with tons of unfriendly talk. Protecting their child. The nex thing – kids don’t take their teachers seriously.

Yet that ain’t protection. It’s about teaching them that there’s allways somebody watching them and taking care that nothing bad happens. And that just ain’t going to happen.

There will come times that they will be alone in their life. Prepare them for those moments. If you love them.

It’s not like the opportunity even exists anymore: keep your kids home from soccer leagues, ballet classes and the like and there just aren’t any kids around to play kickball with.

Which brings us to sports. I coach several of the Tadpoles teams, none of which keep score at the lower levels. And just who do they think they’re fooling? I mean of course the kids all Pkeep score! They’re acutely aware of every goal/basket/run scored, who did it and when. Legislating competitiveness away doesn’t mean it disappears altogether. It just moves slightly underground.

Part of our culture of overprotectiveness can be blamed on technology. Part of it on the fact that our parents weren’t aware of all the dangers out there (and that we are perhaps too aware: I often think we worry about things that aren’t real threats.) And part of it is due to the overwhelming desire to do better than our parents did, to be there for our kids and involved in their lives in a way our parents never were. (Remember, Strauss and Howe describe the self-involved parents of the 70s as one of the defining characteristics of Gen-X.)

As for food… I ate about 5 things until I was in college. Literally. I wasn’t a big eater so if all I ate were the mashed potatoes (I didn’t much like steak as a kid) I didn’t consider that a tragedy. Now I eat just about everything… the eldest Tadpole is a picky eater too. We were once at McDonalds (a move we pretty much limit to highway rest stops during road trips, fwiw, a move helped by the absence of fast food chains in our leafy upscale burb) and he was complaining about the presence of a pickle on the burger. My wife removed the pickle, but he took a bite and said “Yuck, you can still taste it.” Whereupon, bad parent that I am, I chimed in “I know! The juice seeps in and you can totally taste it.”
Old habits die hard, I guess.

No easy answers. If we had ‘em, we could make a fortune!

And in my day keeping score in any sports game was the point of the game.

I could go on and on, but I’m seriously gonna have problems with people who think we need to protect our children from competition and anything that might hurt their feelings. I have a 1 year old and a 3 year old, and I see lots of verbal fights with school officials and stupid parents in my future.