the way we raise our children: all wrong...

a friend of mine and i were recently having a discussion about the way our lives have turned out thus far; basically not how we had planned to say the least. then he told me about this article he had read, essentially blaming our parents for our misguided lives, not tell us the hard truths about how cruel life will be. i believe that we are the keepers of our own destiny and have the power to change it, but to what extent? were we misled into believing we really could 'be' or 'do' anything we put our minds to?...

"Now, this will be some unconventional stuff you are hearing. My basic premise is that we raise our children in a fantasy world composed of a bubble and that bubble bursts upon achieving adulthood, not always but often. When I talk about fantasy I am not referring to religious delusion, I am referring to the kind that is universally accepted by just about everyone. You know the sort; 'you can do anything if you try hard enough', as the base example.

We shower our kids with delusion from the moment they are born, creating a world for them that has virtually nothing to do with the adult world. Growing up in large part consists of coming to terms with the fact that the world is not as 'rosy' as many parents had told and created for their children. Indeed, for the most part it consists of disillusionment as one comes to terms with the fact that the world is often brutish, nasty, unfair and just overall unpleasant. We think to shield our children from this reality by mollycoddling them within a fantasy world but the truth is most children suffer a rather vicious shock when entering young adulthood as all the fantasies they were told dissolve and they are not left with the cognitive tools to deal with reality as it is.

What I am proposing is not that children should not be shown love and affection but that in showing those things, it be coupled with a healthy dose of reality so for example the next time little Timmy says he wants to become an astronaut, you tell him all the requirements that go into that (aeronautical engineering, years of study, etc.); make children aware that the outside world bears no resemblance whatsoever to the illusory world you have created for them and that when exiting the parental bubble they will be confronted with that world on a daily basis."