I have no idea why el gato malo doesn’t like capital letters, but this bad cat has written an excellent screed against the whole helicopter parenting phenomenon. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:
the basis for a civilization of free people resides in the skills that children learn from the benign neglect of unsupervised play in an un-nerfed world
many things are better since the days of disco, but child rearing is not one of them.
i speak as a child of the 70’s.
this was our cathedral.
it was carnage. kids flying off, blood, bruises, fun.
there was not a parent or a teacher in the entire country that cared.
this was normal.
this IS normal.
childhood is supposed to have sharp edges and pointy parts.
that’s where the most important learning takes place.
today’s endless coddling and cosseting and suppression?
you are not going to like what it raises.
you can see this and laugh:
but is it even really a joke?
we have stolen growth from our children by nerfing their world.
we have addled their sense to the point where they wear masks (but not helmets) on a scooter. what does this tell you about their ability to assess risk?
nothing good, believe me…
when i was a child, this was considered a toy. these things are BIG, like the size of your shin.
it was marketed as “fun for the whole family.”
fun fact: it was.
it was bocce that could send you to the ER.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 