US kids being raised as if they were Muslim women under the Taliban

[DuctapeFatwa]

..People generally acknowledge that there isn't much they can do about the "terror threat" and little prospect that their lives will be touched by terror....more visible cultural changes struck me as bizarre....the windows of Twin Lakes Elementary are now boarded with aluminium cladding that allows no light,...where we had played hopscotch and swung from the monkey bars, now children are led to sit on the asphalt. Even those in the upper grades are led by the hand..

..Children don't play outside after school..children are kept in...not even allowed to be alone in her fenced backyard.,,,crime rate has not increased significantly, nor have child abductions. Why then are American children being raised as if they were Muslim women under the Taliban?...

my former junior high school...shuttered and enclosed, it could be a maximum-security prison. Every student has to show identification to the guard...the best-armed nation on Earth...Americans should be mostly undaunted by al-Qaeda.

Yet, going by "terror alerts" emitted by the Government and seized by the media, it would seem that terrorists have succeeded in frightening a nation. They may be aided by several decades of over-reaction to the social malaise that is endemic to the poorer and disenfranchised parts of America. It seems that at least one generation has already grown up in the grip of largely irrational fears. A loss of equanimity and that much-vaunted value - freedom - seems to have been the cost.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/05/1073267964070.html

[BiggJawn]

1. You wonder about that too, eh?

Kids don't play outside anymore. "Too dangerous!" Says Mommy, "Too many STRANGERS!!"...

Mommy watches too much "Chick Channel", where every other movie is about male-on-female spousal abuse and every third flick is a heart-wrenching story about child abductions.

Anybody every have any numbers on just how many abductions acually involve strangers? aren't the majority related to a custody dispute?

When I was a kid, we tore out the back door after breakfast and we were GONE until lunch. No pagers, no "leashes", no cellies (Yes, the telephone HAD been invented and NO, it didn't have a crank)

Then after lunch, back out for more of the same until dinner, and then....

Yep, back outside until (gasp! Horrors!) the street lights came on...

We ran over field and pasture, hill and dale, we built tree forts in the woods, we rode bicycles MILES away from home....

Kids these days just sit inside where it's safe and let the Glass Tit drown out the sound of their arteries hardening...

And mommy smiles, because they're "safe"...

[judy]

2. Also, BJ, as I was reading your post...

It occurred to me that if they are stuck at home in front of the "Glass Tit", they will get to watch more Faux and CNN and MSNBC, and they will become little "Bush Pioneers". Don't you think ?

They will be unhappy, scared, just what Bushco want. Then they can join the Army to make themselves feel better.

[jpgray]

3. I was born in '83, and my experiences were the same as yours

But I fear that the obesity/complacency/ADD/depression epidemic has a lot to do with kids just sitting at the computer (that's changed since my day :)) or the TV. They aren't experiences such as you get when you are outdoors and *doing* something. Harrassing neighborhood girls and playing football/baseball/basketball with neighborhood guys was about all I did until I was eleven or so.

[silverlib]

5. I see some of this...

the halloween thing reall upsets me. Absolutely no child has been drugged or poisened by strangers - only by family members.

I do see fears about children going to far from home on bicycles, etc., but my grandchilren do walk two blocks to school in a large town, and I haven't seen any schools closed in like the one dicussed in the linked article. In fact, my four grandchilren run track and play outside every day.

I have a high schooler and she is a freshman on a closed campus, but that is because of drugs and because some would leave at lunch and not come back. Once the students reach senior level and have a clean disciplinary record, they may leave the campus at lunch. Now when I was a student in the 60's and we had open campus in a small town, we would cram 15 kids into one car and speed to the nearest small town, meet the boys, eat burgers and speed back. We were fearless and luckily lived through it. I have no problem with closed campuses. Where I live, closed campus does not mean you can not go outside during break or lunch. It just means you cannot leave campus. Before and after school, I see students walking home and riding the city busses, as well as the usual school busses. I pick up my daughter because I can, not because I'm scared.

In other words, I see the fear and I detest it, but I do not see it to the extent of this author.

I live in the South - is it different in other areas? (This is a sincere question.)

[BiggJawn]

16. People up here would be aghast...

That your grandkids walk TWO BLOCKS to school! Oh, MY! what if somebody scoops them into a van and takes them to Colorado and colours their hair? (it happens! I see it on "Lifetime" all the time!)

Seriously, there's moms here who stand with their kids in front of their OWN HOMES, waiting for the bus...

And we're conditioned to see boogeymen everywhere except the Oval Office...

[fairfaxvadem]

4. i'm told it's because of 2 working parents...

I've had the same complaint about kids. I spent my days out of doors. A little girl across the street was approached by a stranger on the way to school, that would have been in the early 70s, and tragically, a teacher's daughter was killed in their home, still unsolved over 20 years later, in my neighborhood. Things happened way back then tool. And yet, we were outside all the time, gone for hours during the summer and on weekends. My folks were pretty blunt: "don't let a stranger near you, run like hell, and use your head, and you better be home for dinner OR ELSE." I'm told it was okay back then because our mothers were mostly home. But I rarely see kids out even on the weekends it seems to me. Not being a parent I just don't know what to think. But my niece and nephew know the entire schedule of PBSKids, I can tell you.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I think there was less hyperactivity then because

kids walked to school for the most part instead of being driven. Even though rural kids rode school buses, they mostly lived on farms and got plenty of outdoor activity doing chores and playing around.

As I've noted before, for the first four years of grade school, my neighbor kids and I did a twenty-block walk every day, rain or shine or snow, and even if it went below zero: five blocks to school in the morning, five blocks home for lunch, five blocks back to school, five blocks home in the afternoon. We had two recess periods when we climbed the monkey bars, jumped rope, and played a rough approximation of soccer.

I, too, had the sense of freedom, in that in the summer, I could range anywhere on my block and to the areas immediately across the street from it on two sides. (The other sides were a busy street and a cemetery.)

I feel sorry for kids today. They're fussed over too much, over-scheduled, and over-protected.

[Valerie5555]

7. And isn't according to groups like PARENT or One World: For Children

the abductions of kids more likely to be PERPED by NONCUSTODIAL PARENTS in the event of divorce and stuff?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. And even when we're talking about real murderers

and abusers of children, they have always existed.

If you don't believe me, ask your parents about kidnappings or murders of children that occurred in their communities when they were younger. Some horrible crimes were committed, but none of them ever made the national news.

Now every such case is rehashed on CNN for days at a time, making people think that there are psychotics behind every tree. This leads them to overprotect their children, even though they are far likelier to die in a car crash with mom and dad than at the hands of a perverted stranger.

[WindRavenX]

8. Paranoia is patriotic!

:crazy:
We live in a world that has made us unhealthy (I wonder if it can be tied to the obesity problem) because we are so stressed from all the paranoia we have been fed from Bush Inc. We live in a world of fear, and this fear is literally making us unhealthy, IMHO.

[DemExpat]

10. Scary stuff this.......

and this image is repeated in most Western urban areas IMO.

It is the same here in The Netherlands, only when kids are teenagers here they have more freedom because they can get around on their bycycles and public transport.

I think it has a lot to do with less homogenous communities.....at least here in Europe where immigration and mixed nationalities has only made a clearly visible mark in the past few decades....
but the increased traffic (automobile) in cities here has also made free outdoor play too dangerous.

DemEx

[donsu]

11. think of all the pharms kid are on

that's a crime.

and the TV day and night telling you how you feel and that you should take this wonderful purple pill to make you feel better, just ask your doctor. talk about drug dealers!

[noonwitch]

12. My experience as a kid was also pretty much outdoor play

Unless the weather was bad. We watched some tv, especially prime time and cartoons, but we rode our bikes all over the hood, or we played baseball/b-ball or went swimming, in the summer. In my current neighborhood, the kids still play outdoors in good weather and ride bikes without wearing helmuts. My parents installed a bell on the porch that could be heard all over the area. When they rang it, we had to come home.

When I was in junior high, there was a guy killing kids in Oakland County, just north of Detroit. I went to camp for a couple of weeks in 1977 and again in 1978-there were kids in 78 from metro-Detroit whose parents just sent them to camp for the whole summer, figuring they'd be safer there. It became a national story and it was one of those events that made parents (not mine) panic. I was a latch-key kid long before there was such a term. My parents had no qualms about leaving a 6, 8, and 10 year old alone all day when there wasn't school. And you know what? Nobody ever broke into our house, nobody killed us, the only beatings we got were from our power-drunk 10 year old brother.

[spindoctor]

13. A society of fear

I really need to read that book sometime. It's just that I feel I already know the contents.

The past couple of weeks, my wife has been concerned about the "killer flu" that is going around and how it can affect our baby. I rarely watch the news, but for me this is a telltale sign that the flu-issue has been overexposed.

We had the "Summer of the Shark", the West-Nile virus, the killer bees, flying piranhas (no wait...that was a movie I think). Anyway, our media tends to blow events completely out of proportion and just like the other bullshit it feeds us, it is spooned up by its audience in large servings.
As a result, we are being overprotective of the things we value, like our children. Is that a bad thing? Yea, I think it is. Being in danger is all part of growing up, all part of the learning curve. Only once you grow old and have kids of your own, you become more aware of the everyday dangers that threaten you (and your loved ones). Only then do you first carefully scout the waters around Martha's Vineyard for any sign of an oversized fin. My kids? They just jump in the ocean. How foolish.

[Zenaholic]

14. When I was a kid...

...my old man didn't allow me to watch TV if it was nice outside. "Go outside and get some fresh air!"

Sometimes I didn't have anyone to play with or talk to or get in trouble with and I would just sit under a tree, or go to the playground, and use my IMAGINATION. I could spend hours doing nothing but imagining stuff. I was the 6 Million Dollar Man. Or Frodo. Or Godzilla. And when there was others to play with....man we could imagine up great senarios! I miss those days.

And that is what I think is really upsetting about children nowadays. I am afraid that there will be a whole generation that doesn't have that spark of imagination. If it's not on the telly or in a computer game it doesn't exist.

[DemExpat]

15. Inagination.....the only one kids will have developed is one of

fear and paranoia.... :scared:

Plus, how can you develop self-esteem and self-knowledge in front of a television or computer?

Welcome to DU, Zenaholic!

DemEx

[NewJeffCT]

17. sad

Television has created the atmosphere of fear. It's now so easy to hear about a murder across the country or a child abduction or somebody getting mugged that people think it's in their own neighborhood or the next town over.

My wife, very smart but fairly naive, came from another country as an adult, and her image of America from overseas was one of Americans constantly being victimized by violent crime. We live in a pretty quiet neighborhood, but it was not until our daughter was born almost a year ago that she stopped locking our interior bedroom door at night.

[lapislzi]

18. Paradoxically, kids who don't know how to be kids...

turn into grownup babies. My stepson just turned 18 and it's like having Baby Huey in the house! (For those of you who don't know, Baby Huey was a gigantic cartoon duckling in a bonnet and diaper--completely helpless!) He's been sheltered from everything by his mother, and now he has no social skills, no discernment, and, most dangerously, no common sense. He has no idea how to conduct himself, and now he's supposed to go out into the world? He thinks life is like a TV show or movie. The world's gonna eat that kid alive, and it breaks my heart. I would much rather watch the kid make his mistakes while I'm in the background watching. Soon there will be no safety net.

And being "safe" in the house is no guarantee of anything. Both kids would be online every waking moment if I let them. There is as much for a parent to worry about in the virtual world as the real one. I, for one, would rather deal with skinned knees and playground squabbles than...who knows what? I can monitor the 10-year-old, but the 18-yr-old will soon be beyond my reach.

So I kick my 10-year-old out of the house on sunny days and let her walk on stilts (without a helmet!) or catch frogs, or shoot hoops. I tell her not to eat anything bigger than her head, and that a uniform does not mean a person is safe to talk to. At 10, she has more common sense than the one who is legally allowed to vote.

Just because our kids have more toys in no way abrogates a parent's responsibility to parent.

Ummm...I think I've wandered off topic. But thanks for a provocative post (as usual) DTF.

[bobbieinok]

19. is there a study that says people are more fearful

the more they watch TV?

One of my brothers, who despises TV, always talks about such studies. He's not talking news shows, but that everyday there's a show about a mugging or a break-in or some such.

He claims that studies show that people who watch TV think that such things occur MUCH MORE often than they actually do.