#DWHabit - Word of the Day - Wondering

Today's wonderful word is "Wondering".  As a writer and a teacher I wonder about a lot of things. But, something my husband said this morning made me wonder how we became such a stupid society. I remember when I was a teen we would do dumb things. All teens do. We would see who could hold their head under the hand pump the longest while someone pumped water on their head. We found that as cold as the water was from our well it would be three to four times before you had brain freeze.  Never had to worry about ice in my water until I moved to Florida.  Then there was the challenge about who could drink a glass of water the fastest or who could drink the most water in thirty seconds. We always had races. Who could get to the top of a tree fastest or the top of the corn crib by climbing the boards up the side. Then there were the food challenges. Who could eat the most tomatoes in one minute or the most berries. The biggest hazards there were you could fall and possibly break a bone, or you could get sick from eating or drinking to fast or too much.

Today's kids and adults do some of the dumbest things without thinking about the true consequences. We had the ice challenge.  Not too bad. Then we had the cinnamon challenge and had to worry about burns from the cinnamon and aspiration from inhaling the powder. Now we have the Tide Pod challenge where kids are suffering chemical burns and even dying.  While some of my students discussed this on Friday one of them mentioned the newest thing was to put lighter fluid on your sleeve and light it and see how long you could stand the flame.  We had a long discussion about that.

This got me to thinking. When did we as a society become so stupid when it came to hazardous things?  I asked the student talking about the lighter fluid if they would run into a burning building and see how long they could stand there? She said no because she might get burned.  I then asked what she thought the outcome would be of the lighter fluid on clothing?  Her reply was she had not thought of that.  That is the whole issue.  We have become a society that tells our kids not to do something but not why.  When they ask why we tell them, "Because I said so."  I remember being a young mother. I had a baby in the top part of the cart and my son was hanging on to the side of the cart. I had to turn the cart around to get some meat so I told him to come up next to me. When he asked why I told him that I didn't want to run the risk of someone coming up and stealing him.  He was only three.  An older lady walking by slapped me and said to me. "How dare you terrify that child about something that isn't likely to happen."  I remember looking at her and telling her that I knew all too well it could happen. As a nineteen year old I remember our neighbor's granddaughter going into a store and she was stolen from the store. They caught it on video and they never found her or her kidnapper.  I would much rather have him terrified and safe than let him do his own thing ad lose him. 

Kids today don't think of the consequences because we shield them from them. We don't want to scare them.  I know this happens because I've been called to the office and talked to about scaring my middle school kids. How you wonder?  By telling them that if they didn't earn a certain number of credits they would not pass my class.  I was told that this was scaring them. The fact we had just had the guidance counselor in telling them the same thing and I was asked to remind them meant nothing because a parent had complained her child was scared they were going to fail.

I wonder what would happen if we became a society that not only promoted what a child could do buy explained the consequences of not taking steps to try to reach those goals?  We no longer hold children back.  At the end of the year when I figure grades I assign  points to their grades. Then I look at what the computer averaged and what their points came up to and have to give the the highest. This often means the student who chose to do nothing all year will pass by one point because we can't let them feel like failures.

I wonder. What kind of future can we adults look forward to knowing this is the kind of generation we are turning out.

What things do you wonder about?