Protecting "The Children"? OR

I read a disturbing story earlier this week. A study done in Chicago, showed that about 15% of the teenagers in the study believe they will die before the age of 35. The article goes on to say that it used to be that teens engaged in risky behavior because they believed they were invincible; but this new study suggests that today, teens engage in risky behavior because they believe they are going to die young anyway so why not take a chance or two. Reading this story made me pause to wonder what we as a society have done to our children to promote such a belief.

I've been saying for years that it is almost criminal how we no longer allow kids to actually be kids. We are so busy wrapping them in bubbles and cotton to protect them from every little bump, scrape, germ that we are creating a generation with unreasonable fears of everything and weakened immune systems. This doesn't even take into account what all the chemicals in our foods are doing to them.

Children today are drugged with our blessing, because somewhere along the line someone decided that normal childhood energy was a bad thing. Energetic kids are labeled with behavior disorders or attention deficit disorders and put on drugs that they will take for God only knows how long. The side affects alone should be a red flag for a parent. Does anyone really know of the dangers of these drugs?

Then there's all the cold medicines they are given for every little sneeze and sniffle. Kids are rushed to the doctor's office or emergency room for every little thing. Has anyone stopped to wonder what all this is doing to these kids?

I remember my childhood, and kids then (50's and 60's) were a hell of lot healthier, and fit, than the children of today seem to be. We weren't sanitized to death - we were actually allowed to get dirty, to run and play. If we fell and got a cut, unless we were in real pain, we just kept on playing and mom would wash it and band-aid it later when we went home. We weren't taken to the doctor for every little thing, mom tried to deal with whatever it was first, and if that didn't work, then a couple of days later she would take us to the doctor. Our mothers just seemed to know back then when a doctor's services were really needed.

When I was growing up, in New York City, I only knew 1 kid with asthma yet these days just about every other child has it. Today, it seems that more and more adult also have asthma. Am I the only one who finds that disturbingly odd?

All this, and it's just the beginning, makes me wonder if we aren't "protecting the children" to death.