I believe we have become so self absorbed that we expect others to always make us happy and that isn’t anyone’s role in life. Just my feeling on that… others can add to your happiness and even take away from it BUT you have to make yourself happy. Who else knows better what does than you?

Also, another “novel” idea would be doing something for someone else. But these types of actions have to be taught to children,too. Well, that is my “2 cents” whatever that is worth.

Like your blog, Meg!

Maybe it’s just that I teach in an area where entitlement is a given, but I can’t help wondering when accountability is supposed to kick in for the kids and their parents. Here’s a good example: When told his son was throwing dirt during an assembly, the response was that the school had not kept him appropriately engaged. Now that was last year and that ding dong father is no longer my problem but in a few years, when the police come to the door, is he really going to try that line on them?

As to your observation about trust, the 80s happened. “Adam” happened. Remember what happened at Toys R Us when it was time to go, you resisted so I pulled you and you cried “Help! Help!”. I was lucky I wasn’t arrested.

Stranger Danger lessons pushed curriculum aside overnight. I had an episode where I had to report a possible child abuse case based on a detailed drawing the child had made. I asked the woman from Children’s Services how they verified facts. She told me they asked the children. When I asked, “But what if they lie?” I was told, “Oh, children never lie”. Now I love children, I’ve had four of them myself and taught probably a few thousand, but the sense of right and wrong is not an instinct, it’s a developmental thing that you hope is a) taught at home and/or school and b) sinks in and stays with a child. Kids lie. To keep themselves out of trouble, to get something they want, for whatever reason. Giving the authority to a child to put someone behind bars….was scary then and is scary now.

So anyway, I don’t think it’s not always that we trusted kids more, it’s that we trust other people a lot less. What we do do more now, is protect children even from themselves, from the consequences of their own actions.