Article from Reason by Lenore Skenazy.
A mother in Woodinville, Washington, posted an advertisement on behalf of her 9-year-old daughter, Sarah, who was willing to do housework—laundry, dishes, etc.—for neighborhood moms who needed help. Six hours later, the cops showed up to make sure Sarah wasn’t being abused or worked to death.
That’s according to Christina Behar, Sarah’s mom, who wrote me a letter about the incident.
“Apparently the ad generated multiple phone calls from paranoid neighbors thinking I was using my child as a slave,” wrote Behar.
This should spark some discussion of what we lose when we treat kids as incompetent or endangered, even though they’re quite ready to take on some responsibility in “the real world.” As that New York Times piece on the relentless demands of modern parenting made clear, many of us, wealthy or not, spend a whole lot of time and cash on our kids’ extracurricular “enrichment.” Let’s remember that making some money, dealing with some challenges, and assuming some responsibility are enriching childhood activities, too.
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit: BeenAroundAWhile at English Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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Heaven forbid children get exposed to the real world until the graduate and they have no idea what is going on and end up on welfare – wait, that is the goal of government to force all to sip off the teat of government.
It is no wonder that today’s young adults have the crippled autonomy of a three year old. They are not exposed to situations of physical contributions to their households and grow up expecting that ALL menial tasks are taken care of by hired help, entertainment is all purchased, day to day chores are not done by the family unit, every waking moment of their lives is orchestrated by their parents. G*d forbid that they might get bored and have no outside influences to manage their “free” time.
My Brother and I, products of Americas Greatest Generation, were born and reared on the families small farm in the Texas panhandle (where the word “flat” was defined). Early on, 5 or 6, we learned the value of money. We did odd jobs in the barn, chicken coup, attending the live stock, …. you get my drift, for $0.25 an hour. Whenever we went to our small community of Hale Center (oddly enough at the center of Hale County) or Abernathy, we could spend our treasure as we liked. Both of us worked through high school and college during our spare time. Results, no student debt. Regards, retired engineer, Fort Worth, TX.