Don’t teach kids to fear the world
<i>&quot;...children should be at least 10 years old to play unsupervised in their own front yard, 12 years old to stay home alone for an hour, and 14 to be unsupervised at a public park.&quot;</i><p>By the time I was 10 I was allowed to be unsupervised and to get on a bus to a railway station, purchase a ticket for an intercity train that took me the better part of 100 miles away to another city then alight there at a major railway junction with many platforms and from there catch a suburban train to my final destination where my grandmother lived. However, before I could get to see her I had to walk several miles to her home and this involved crossing a very busy four-lane arterial highway.<p>I was no exception, as this was the norm for kids of my age. Moreover, such things were never a big deal for us kids, it was just the way things were back then. We gave such concerns little thought if any at all.<p>This - unlike millions of today&#x27;s  kids - is why my generation were and still are a much more resilient lot and not afraid of the world than is the present younger generation.<p>In my estimation, overprotecting kids rates on a much higher scale of child abuse than some[1] matters which are normally associated with it.<p>If you are a modern-day parent and overprotecting your children then you need to think twice about the damage and harm that you are causing them. It is very difficult to acquire resilience if it&#x27;s not acquired very early on in one&#x27;s life, and those who don&#x27;t are often forever handicapped.<p>_<p><i>[1] Of course, that excludes any form of sexual abuse, it&#x27;s inexcusable and unacceptable under any circumstance.</i>