[CaptainCrunch]

I don't know if its as much helicopter parenting as it is lousy parenting.

Lets be honest, if a kid comes home from school and sits in front of a computer for four or five hours, his or her parents not only have a convientient way to get the kid out of their hair, but they brag to their friends about how good their little Billy or Becky is at "Puters". Little do they know that it takes no skill for them to hit the free pron sites, or load up World of Warcraft.

Parents are ok with their kids sitting in the basement for 4 hours playing on the Xbox cause it gives them peace and quiet to depressurize after work.

Right now in this age of I want to be the cool parent my kids can do what they want, or the T.V., Xbox, puter is the ultimate baby sitter, Parents are making kids fatter, dumber and less socially adept then they were 20 years ago.

The other problem is that parents have a sentiment that its a dangerous world out there and their precious babies shouldn't be exposed to this, but honesltly there's not a child molester in every neighbour hood, a Latino gang hanging out in the house down the street, and a drug dealer selling the X on the corner, parents have exageratted it in their mind to the point that its become mythic legend.

I went out to Toronto a couple of years ago and went out to my sisters farm. It was July and a absolutely perfect day, and my dad who was there, and my sister and her husband decided to go outside and chuck a kids football around (shockingly my day who's like 77 has an amazing arm and throws a great spiral for a guy that had never played the game in his life). Anyways my sister told her boys what we were doing (The kids are 7 and 14). The fourteen year old didn't want to play and on a really nice July night he sat inside the cabin and read a book, and my sister was ok with this. to add on this kid has no muscle whatsoever, he pulls memorized facts from books and then presents it like its a brilliant insight. He plays no sports, and when gym became optional he dropped it.

The other boy, the 7 year old wanted to play which was great. But the minute that the ball jammed one of his fingers he burst into tears, started wailing and ran to my sister and said he didn't want to play anymore and ran inside to play with his Ipod.

To be honest I was a little disgusted. I get that kids need to find their own way, but when I was growing up it was home after school to drop off your stuff, then in the winter you were playing road hockey til dinner which mom delayed til late, or went skating. In the summer we tore out of the house at 6 in the morning on our bikes with my mom yelling "Be back by sunset" after either giving us a bag lunch or a few bucks to feed ourselves, and we found a whole world to explore and play in with our friends. If we would have known about Calvinball we would have played that instead of pick up baseball or football.

Its not about parents being over protective its about parents being lazy a bit stupid and surrending to their kids to much.

Kids don't need to watch 4 hours or T.V. a night, or play video games or plunk away at the computers for all hours. Kids don't need to exchange a thousand text with their friend who lives 2 blocks away.

The Roman Empire collapsed because they became lazy and contented and moved away from being a driven society to being a hedonist society and they were basically bowled over by the lead hungry barbarians from the East. Its happening in the first world right now.