Too overprotective of our children?

Are we as a society getting too overprotective of our children? It is something that is getting to us more and more. This weekend made me think a lot about it. While we were happily indulging in one of two days that we go all out and throw caution to the wind, and many Americans buy large amounts of explosives to light up the night sky. I am of course speaking of the 4th of July. As I watched kids staring at the sky in awe. A group of parents annoyed me to no end. Why? Well because anything to do with fireworks is a death sentence.

Let me lay the scenario out for you. Kids running around enjoying the block party at the end of the road. Music is playing, grills are cooking hundreds of pounds of meat, all sorts of liquids are consumed. As the sun starts to set, and the block begins to get dark, all around on other blocks you can hear the fireworks going off. The men get a look of childish glee in their eyes as they go into houses and bring out some of the most dangerous toys we can buy. Fireworks.

As the festivities start various colored fire, smoke and noise begins to fill the air. Then the kids want to join in. So what do we do? Well we break out the sparklers. The joyous little sticks of sparkling fire. Now I know some children should not have these, hell when I was young I burned my hand several times, but your not going to give a 3 year old a sparkler. 10 year olds however should be able to responsibly handle them. Not these parents. Nope. I am almost sorry for the kids to have such over protective parents.

I look into my spouses stash to see what I could give the kids that would be fun, yet harmless. I found about three dozen party poppers. You know the things, you pull a string it makes a pop and paper strings come out. Well after about the fifth one goes off one of the mothers runs up and starts to yell at the kids for playing with fireworks. I pipe in and said I gave it to them, and she proceeds to yell at me. I throw my hands up and walk away. It was pointless to argue with stupid people.

So the kids get sad again, and I look around again for something for them to play with. I found the mother load of popits. You know the white balls of paper, you throw at the floor and they pop. Even the 3 year olds can play with. You would never know popits could cause such a meltdown. These mothers went crazy claiming the kids were going to get injured. Saying the things would blow up in their hands and such. I proceeded to take a fistfull of the things and slam my hand down popping a lot of them. Not even a red mark on my skin. So much for that notion. I feel sorry for the kids not getting a chance to be a kid.

I think this subject will get a double post. There are so much more I could go into.

Till next time,

Blogger X