There are so many reports of the fragile mental health of those attending post-secondary education and how colleges and universities are having to enlarge their mental health services at great cost. Why is this happening and needed?
Are we treating childhood as a disease and protecting our children to the point that they never discover their own strength and resilience?
This CBC http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/prote...hood-1.4297653 article explores some of this.
Quotes:
The latest contretemps over children not receiving 24/7 supervision in Canada comes from Vancouver, where Adrian Crook, a single father of five, found himself under investigation by B.C.'s Ministry of Children and Family Development.
His offence? Allowing his four oldest children — ages seven through 11 — to ride the bus unsupervised. Crook took pains to ensure his children were prepared for the 45-minute transit ride to their school, going along with them at the beginning to make sure they were capable of handling the trips themselves...
Crook learned (well, we all sort of learned) that it is apparently verboten for children under the age of 10 to be left alone for any amount of time in B.C., whether indoors or outdoors. Moreover, two provinces — Manitoba and New Brunswick — prohibit leaving children under the age of 12 unsupervised. Ontario law goes further, prohibiting leaving children under the age of 16 alone...
It is a far cry from the situation in Japan. Akiko Kitamura Suzuki is well familiar with letting children take public transportation unsupervised. A Japanese teacher in Tokyo, Suzuki is the mother of two sons, ages four and seven, and the elder of the two began taking the train alone this year.
"A little nervous" is how Suzuki described both she and her son to me in a recent interview, although he soon became a confident rider.
Getting her son to take the train alone was not simply a matter of dropping him off at the station and hoping for the best. Rather, as is common practice, Suzuki rode with her son on a few occasions before shadowing him from greater distances — much like Crook did with his children. "When he didn't need to check back with me about anything, he finally took the train alone," recounts Suzuki...
Incessant helicopter parenting and/or state intervention deprives children of important learning experiences and instead fosters a sense of learned helplessness. Rather than following the Japanese model and encouraging children to confidently take on new tasks, the trend in Canada is to leave them smothered and fearful."