As I struggle to finish my book, I've been thinking about fear a lot lately, fear as the parent of regret.
Apart from an awareness of danger present in the moment, fear is the most paralyzing, enfeebling and deadening emotion that robs us from engaging fully in life. I've noticed that kids today are far more fearful than we ever were or so it seems. Paula Spencer writes
We Protect Kids From Everything But Fear
After 14 years and four kids, I thought I'd feel comfortable as a mother. Instead, I'm increasingly aware of a prickly new sensation: that I'm some kind of renegade. Who knew that buying potato chips would become a radical act? Or that letting my daughters walk home from school alone would require administration approval? How did I, a middle-of-the-road mom, become a social deviant?
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Watching my daughter's friends ogle my pantry, I realized there's one big, legitimate fear that I haven't heard anybody mention: what's the effect of our collective paranoia on the kids? Yes, these very kids we want to be so self-sufficient, responsible, confident, happy and creative (not to mention not food-obsessed). They're growing up thinking these weirdly weenie views are healthy and normal.
Walking out my front door that day, each girl happily clutched a plastic baggie stuffed with the exotic kid snacks that my daughter had doled out in pity. I may be a rebel mom, but at least I'm not afraid of a chocolate-chip cookie.
It reminds me of nothing so much as this Chesterton quote
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.