Kids must learn about life lessons before they are 30

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Venture to any elementary school at around 3 p.m. and you'll see parents surrounding the school waiting for their children.

Parents walking their kids to and from school is nothing new, but ask any parent why they're doing it today and the answer is unanimous - 'I want my kids to be safe.'

When Dinah Laredo was growing up in Toronto, she said she had a lot of flexibility and she walked to and from school starting from kindergarten.

Today that's virtually unheard of, particularly in the age of "helicopter parents" or "bubble-wrapped children," two phrases coined to describe a parenting style that seems to be the new norm.

Loosely interpreted, these phrases mean that many of today's parents are involved, maybe overly so, in their kids' lives.

"It's that micro-managing every aspect that is relatively new," said Sarah Chana Radcliffe, a Toronto-based author of Raise Your Kids without Raising Your Voice and a professional counsellor and parent educator for 30 years.

"The world is being perceived as a very dangerous place right now and kids are not playing outside or walking on the streets. ... I don't know if it's more dangerous than it was 30 years ago or not or if this is just mass over-protection going on."

Laredo has two kids, Jonah, 3, and eight-month-old Charlie, and she said her parenting techniques are much different from her parents in the 1980s. While she is protective, Laredo insisted she and her husband David aren't as bad as most.

"We feel our kids need to grow up in an environment where they know what boundaries are, but a lot of people we know baby-proof to the hilt. We didn't baby-proof every inch of our home, we let our kids explore and learn from their mistakes," she said.

However, when Jonah starts preschool in September, Laredo plans to take him to and from school and continue to do so until he is at least nine years old.

"I would love to let my son walk by himself but you just get so scared," she said. "It's not hard to pick up your kid and if it would prevent something from happening, it's just not safe now."

Radcliffe said much of this thinking comes from parents speaking to one another and adopting a pack mentality.

Laredo said it's not just other parents but also the media.

"It's not only blown up in the news, but the world is full of fearmongers who are selling fear to people. There are e-mails that go around saying there's a weirdo in the park, so I have to be conscious not to get freaked out about all that," Laredo said.

But it's difficult because from womb to birth parents are bombarded with safety suggestions for a new baby.

"The bumper pads in the crib, do they cause SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), do you let them sleep on their stomachs or is that too dangerous, but if they sleep on their backs will they get flat heads?" Laredo said.

However, Radcliffe said health and safety issues shouldn't be confused with helicopter parenting, which is micro-managing children's lives.

"We're talking about parents asking 20 million questions about what happened at school, intervening to protect the child from a so-called 'mean' teacher, making sure nobody hurts their child's feeling out in the social world," Radcliffe said.

But Laredo said because the safety mindset starts when children are babies, and when the kids become school age, the fear for their safety is merely a continuation of that mindset.

However, Radcliffe said it's almost like parents think their child would crumble during a painful experience or that the child will not be able to cope.

"And of course the more you protect the child from little bits of adversity, the less the child will be able to cope," Radcliffe said.

Laredo said when she was a kid you dealt with whatever happened, like the school bully teasing you. But today's society is different, more dangerous and neurotic, she said.

While today's society is being perceived as more dangerous, Statistics Canada states the overall national crime rate in 2006 hit its lowest point in more than 25 years.

Statistics aside, because of technology, access to information is easier than 30 years ago and because there's so much more information, parents are reacting to that overload.

So does this mean the next generation of kids will be incompetent, needy, insecure and fearful? Radcliffe said saving children from every hurtful experience and the consequences of their own behaviour can be harmful.

"You're not getting them ready for life," she said. "You need to give them space to grow up in while they're little and the costs are not huge. When they're 25 or 35 in a job and trying to use those survival techniques it won't work, they'll fall hard then."

Radcliffe said she tells parents there are character virtues that will help a child do well like courage, assertiveness and independence. Also, parents need to see the positive side of adversity rather than trying to protect children from it.

"You are helping them to become a strong person and building up muscles for life's journey," she said. "Going through painful experiences isn't just purely bad, it actually can teach many lessons. When you want to protect your child from every hardship you're actually in danger of making them a very shallow, unwise person."

Laredo, meanwhile, said she plans to weigh the real risks versus perceived ones and figure out a good balance for her children to make sure they are safe while fostering independence and confidence.

"For parents who just do whatever they're told and don't think about it critically, of course their kids are going to grow up more nervous, maybe with less self-esteem and it might translate into them not being confident in making decisions or not taking responsibility for their actions as much."