Good guess on how this latest giggle-inducing, gross-out big seller came to be, I’m sure. 

Well said about the rest.  Kids just aren’t allowed to have fun anymore, are they? If they are expected to take life so seriously now, imagine what stressed-out, humourless wretches they’ll be as adults?  Sad.

No, kids aren’t allowed to have fun anymore. Unless it’s organized fun. Those who do are seriously frowned on by the PC police.

I hope that this up and coming generation (the ones coming along behind your daughter and my son) take a leaf out of the 60s game book and turn into the next rebellious generation. Our generation, unfortunately, forgot all about what we stood for and what we learned back in those years of tumultuous social revolution.

Is this where I’m supposed to complain about how no one plays pick-up games of baseball any more?

Seeing all those overregimented, overprotected, overscheduled, overcommitted kids saddens me greatly.  I’m not a parent, so undoubtedly I fail to grasp the downside of letting kids choose their own activities without parental guidance interference.

The recent advent of municipally-constructed skateboard parks—unsupervised, open just about all the time, apparently unconcerned about potential liability—is a very good sign IMHO.

You won’t get an argument from me. The lad engaged in hundreds of games of pick-up baseball and street hockey, along with two summers of tree house building and a few more of skateboarding. Then there were the many afternoons spent in creative play with the little plastic army men where my living room was turned into a battlefield of opposing armies. Creative play is a good thing. Unregimented, unsupervised creative play. Just for the sake of play. I fought tooth and nail for his right to unscheduled, non-organized play.

And you know, I think he’s turned out pretty well.

We have a skateboard park here. It was kind of funny. The kids were told they could have one (a really nice one) if they and the concerned adults could raise the money for it. The town didn’t think for a minute that they would. But they did. Pretty quickly, too. The town carried through on its promise and constructed the thing in back of the middle school. I’m sure it’s insured to the hilt, but the town also discovered that having the park reduced the skateboard traffic downtown to a mere whisper. And that, of course, makes the tourists much happier, which makes the local merchants much happier. So it all turned out quite well and no one can remember now why there were so many objections to it in the first place.

I’ve got a bipolar sort of perspective about this...one letting the kids just loose to find safe fun works if you’ve got all the other parents working from the same page...but you don’t and the things that a few other parents allow their kids to do will cripple one’s sense of trust.

On the other hand, I cringe big when I read the stuff that kids are forced to endure in the name of protecting them.  When I first heard about the road kill candy I thought ick...but then I remembered how much fun kids had with all manner of gross stuff, including those stupid garbage pail kid cards from the 70’s or 80’s.  If we stifle everything crude, rude and socially unacceptable we’ll end up with a bunch of kids in big rebellion about everything including the issues that are important...they’ll never learn to distinguish that which is wrong from that which is just icky.

So much for the Road Kill ick factor. Kraft had a rethink about the issue and halted production of the road-kill-with-tire-tracks gummi candy. The candy animals are safe for another day.

I agree, Karan. If they are shielded and protected from every last thing that might tarnish their innocence, how in the world are they going to cope when they are sprung loose into the world? A valuable part of growing up and learning how to think critically is being exposed to different situations that force one to think critically.

Kind of like sorting oneself out through the school of hard knocks. Which, once upon a time was thought to build character. Or something. I think kids need enough space to make their own mistakes.