If you read the news, you read stories about oaf-rocked adults (ruined by being mollycoddled as children). I shall give the example of Evergreen State:

Well-meaning students came up with the idea of protesting discrimination by excluding white people from Campus for a day. Professor Bret Samuel Weinstein, an American biologist and evolutionary theorist, pointed out that 2 wrongs do not make a right. Rather than saying, "You are right. We did not think this though. We shall have to go back to the drawing board.", they responded, "¡He hates our idea! ¡Wa! ¡Wa! ¡Wa!". They threw a temper-tantrum. Young adults throwing a temper-tantrum rapidly turned into a riot. These students acted psychologically less than half their chronological age. They acted as though they were a decade younger than their age. This is what mollycoddling and helicopter-parenting does to the adults children become.

Before I continue, I notice that conservative children do not become oaf-rocked. This is strange since their parents teach them fairy tales about talking snakes as fact. One would expect these children to be oaf-rocked, but they are not. The difference is that conservatives corporally punish their children. 1 way to prevent children from becoming oaf-rocked adults is to helicopter and mollycoddle them, but beat them bloody too. I have a better suggestion:

¡Stop helicoptering and mollycoddling your children!

Soon in many countries, will be the best opportunity to free-range children all year:

Halloween approaches, despite what the fun-killers would have one believe, no stranger has abducted a child on Halloween in over 40 years and no stranger has ever poisoned a child using Halloween-Candy. Here is an idea:

¿What is more exhilarating for a child of only single-digit age than to run around town, after dark, with no adult, beg for candy from strangers, and eat the candy without an inspection?

This Halloween, kick your kids out after dark and tell them to have fun in the dark without adult supervision. The children will remember this as an highpoint of their childhood and they will not grow up to be oaf-rocked.

¿Do any of you have any comments or questions?

Addendum:

Some Statistics and other resources

Addendum:

I forgot to mention that it is a good idea for kids 5-10 years old to form groups of 5-10 kids when they trick-or-treat.

Update of 2018-11-01:

Once again, for 2018, strangers poisoned no children (never happened) and abducted no children (has not happened since 1973). We had 1 report of amphetamine-poisoning, but it is likely that the child got into the stash of amphetamine using parents (this is similar to a case of an uncle blaming the death a child on poisoned candy when the child got into his heroine a few years back). As a skeptic, I fight this Halloween-Hysteria, plus, it leads to oaf-rocked adults who cannot function as adults.

This is a terrible idea and I hope you are joking.

6640423

I am serious. You fear the boogymen of child-molestors and poisoned candy. The point of this group is to be skeptical:

"Do not accept anything without sufficient evidence; but when one has sufficient evidence however, accept the claim."

In over an 100 years, we have no evidence of strangers poisoning children to death. No stranger has abducted a trick-or-treater in over 40 years. These are facts.

If you're seriously suggesting that a bunch of college students rioting is due to them not being allowed to go Trick-or-treating unsupervised as children...

Do you have ANY statistics to prove this? Because that sounds kind of far-fetched. I'm going to be skeptical here.

Besides, I'd be more worried about children being hit by cars or something during Halloween.

Here's an article from Fortune from last Halloween about this problem:

http://fortune.com/2017/10/31/halloween-2017-trick-or-treat-safety/

Parents should still have their kids supervised during Halloween to make sure the kids don't get hit by a car.

Also, if you think it's just children raised by "liberal" parents who become unstable adults...oh boy.

6641002

¡Upvoting for being skeptical!

> "If you're seriously suggesting that a bunch of college students rioting is due to them not being allowed to go Trick-or-treating unsupervised as children..."

We mollycoddle and helicopter children and now, 19-year-olds act in a way I would not accept from a 9-year-olds.

> "Do you have ANY statistics to prove this? Because that sounds kind of far-fetched. I'm going to be skeptical here."

It is good that you are skeptical. I do not have full statistics. We do have a trend of mollycoddling and helicoptering. Many parents do not allow their children to play outside any more. Many schools eliminate recess:

Schools eliminate recess.

Many parents do not even let their children ride buses or walk to/from school any more.

> "Besides, I'd be more worried about children being hit by cars or something during Halloween."

> "Here's an article from Fortune from last Halloween about this problem:"

> " Halloween 2017 Trick-Or-Treat Safety "

You identified a real problem:

> "Parents should still have their kids supervised during Halloween to make sure the kids don't get hit by a car."

The risk of being hit by a car merely quadruples or so on Halloween. I would not deny children the fun of trick-or-treating over such a small bump in fatalities. Besides, I wonder how many of these accidents are from helicopter-parents driving their kids around or following them:

In my neighborhood, we have cars drive kids from house to house, making stops every 10 meters, and cars following kids around. I would ban driving and following kids around. What would reduce these fatalities other than banning the parents in cars is safety in numbers:

5-10 kids, all single-digit number of years old, with no adult, going from house-to-house.

> "Also, if you think it's just children raised by "liberal" parents who become unstable adults...oh boy."

It is not like we have a MAGABomber or someone who is so right-wing that he believes that Trump is left-wing shooting up a Synagog.

I speak of the new mollycoddled helicoptered young adults. We do not see the students at Liberty-University throwing temper-tantrums. Understandably, the stude4nts of LU have the much bigger problem of believing that the Flintstones is a documentary and that the Earth is flat. I know of 2 strategies which work:

• Start beating our children to keep them grounded in reality.
• Stop mollycoddling and helicoptering.

If you know a 3rd strategy, I am all ears.

First off, how do you even know ANY of those college students had helicopter parents? Or that said helicoptering influenced them to become adults who can't take criticism? Because THAT is something that has existed long before helicopter parents were a thing.

Also, way to use anecdotal evidence to try and interpret statistics in a way that favors YOUR biases. Not cool.

And finally..."beating children to keep them grounded in reality"...what the HELL. That does NOT keep them grounded in reality! All it does is scare them into not questioning their parents! It is a form of abuse meant to keep children in line and under the parents' control.

And believe it or not, mollycoddling is the same thing in spirit. Keeping kids under surveillance and denying them ANY independence is another form of abusive parenting meant to keep the kid under control.

The first is NOT a strategy to keep kids grounded. I don't know why you think it is, and frankly it disturbs me that you do think this is a viable strategy.

If you're asking for a surefire strategy of how to raise a kid to be a functional independent mature adult...pfft, If I knew THAT I wouldn't be wasting my time on a fanfiction forum. I'd be raking in the royalties from my bestselling parenting advice book!

6641036

I do not advocate hitting children. I would prefer not helicoptering and not mollycoddling. As for how I know what is wrong with young adults, I cannot know how they were raised, but they act extremely immature. I work with young adults who have no life-skills, never had to problem-solve, and are emotionally immature. They go straight from being helicoptered and mollycoddled to being legal adults and have no idea how to cope with life. After a few years, they learn and mature, but their parents did not do them any favors bu never even letting them walk to/from school or take the schoolbus.

If you want to complain about mollycoddling and helicopter parents fine. But don't try to bolster your argument with "evidence" like a college riot. And don't try to say things like "hitting kids keeps them grounded in reality".

A self-proclaimed skeptic should know better. Stick with actual evidence. Statistics, scientific journals, that sort of thing.

6640399
I just read your opener. I don't honestly have time right now to read all the replies, but I did want to give a little input:

• "Liberals" in the US are getting weirder and weirder. May have to do with the US never having had a liberal party.
• I have found that religious fanatics make for far worse parents than moderate liberals. Denying medical treatments and modern education, anybody? And religious fanaticism is usually the sole avenue of the Right.
• Letting small children run amok after dark is never a good idea in the real world. Even I, as a cyclist, have nearly run over kids let loose by idiot parents on bike paths.

But... Let kids be kids!

6641103

I do not believe that hitting children is good, but that is how conservatives get their children to believe fairy tales and how they keep them attached to reality after beating fairy tales into their heads. It is much better to not smother children. Strangers do not abduct 800 thousand children annually:

"Stranger Danger" to children vastly overstated

Strangers only abduct about 150 children annually. These parents smother their children for fear of boggymen. Halloween is the safest time for children (no children has been abducted on Halloween in over 40 years) because so many eyeballs are on the street that parents would torch any wouldbe abductor like the parents did to Freddy Krüger before one can say NightMareMoon on Elm Street.

Personally, I believe that beating fairy tales into kids as fact and then beating them some more to keep them grounded is child-abuse. I also believe that mollycoddling and helicoptering children so that they grow up as oaf-rocked is child-abuse too. The paranoia of Halloween nis everything wrong with parents nowadays. Despite what media would have parents believe, it is safe to play in the park with friends.

Post Scriptum:

After sleeping, I noticed that the number of children out after dark increase by 2 magnitudes, but the mortality-rate only quadruples. It seems that a kid on the street after dark on Halloween is about 25 times less likely to die in a traffic accident than on other nights.

6641177

We actually agree 90%:

• "Liberals" in the US are getting weirder and weirder. May have to do with the US never having had a liberal party.

Technically, the US has had Liberal parties, but they have not been successful. You might be on to something here; Western European Countries with liberal parties do not obsess about stranger-danger.

• I have found that religious fanatics make for far worse parents than moderate liberals. Denying medical treatments and modern education, anybody? And religious fanaticism is usually the sole avenue of the Right.

I agree.

• Letting small children run amok after dark is never a good idea in the real world. Even I, as a cyclist, have nearly run over kids let loose by idiot parents on bike paths.

Generally yes, but Halloween is the 1 time a year in the US when it is okay for 5-10 single-digit-old kids to run around as a group at night. In the US, it reaches the point where tweens (a marketing term for 10 through twelve) are not allowed to go to parks, playgrounds, and libraries without an accompanying parent or guardian in full daylight, despite being double-digit number of years old.

> "But… Let kids be kids!"

¡I totally 100% agree!

The "Stranger Danger" thing is not because of liberals. It is because of Reaganite and Bush "Tough on Crime" bullshit that permeated the Eighties. Which was then continued in the Nineties by the more Centrist Clinton administration. It's only recently that we're acknowledging that statistically it's people the child knows like friends or family who are more likely to hurt them.

And "stranger danger" is a thing in countries besides the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_danger

There is also the fact that maybe "stranger danger" is an applicable thing when it comes to online interaction.

And if you're seriously trying to downplay the risks of children being killed on Halloween due to traffic accidents...

Complain about "helicoptering" all you want. But are you really going to fault parents for wanting to make sure their kids don't get hit by a car?

6641600

I agree about 90% with your last reply. About the traffic, increasing the number of children on the street at night 100x but increasing the fatalities only 4x seems not all that bad to me.

The point is that more children are dying on Halloween night due to traffic accidents. Describing it as "not all that bad" because it could be worse is pretty disturbing.

The point is that there are a lot more risk factors at play on Halloween night that contributes to the spike in fatalities. Which is why adult supervision for younger children is still a good idea.

Do you really want to put it to the test to see if having less parental supervision won't mean more traffic fatalities?

I wouldn't call "not wanting my kid to be hit by a car while out at night on the streets" to be "mollycoddling" or "helicoptering".

6643478

According to the statistics you linked, fatalities only increase 4-fold. The number of children out infront of mine house between 18:00:00 to 22:00:00 is usually less than 1. On Halloween, it is over 100. So it is about 100 times as many children. A 4-fold increase in fatalities does not seem that bad. At any rate, children should be in groups of 5-10, with the older children (some as old as 9) watching the younger children. It builds character to give the older children real responsibility.

The point is that children being out on the street at night at all IS a risk factor for child traffic fatalities. Combine it with the rest of the factors and that's how you get more kids dying on Halloween night.

And no. A nine year old should NOT be made responsible for the safety of younger children. Why would you put a burden like THAT on them? If something happens and a kid is hurt or worse in their group, are you seriously going to blame them for it? The blame should go to the adult who figured this was a good idea.

There are ways to teach kids responsibility that don't require them being held accountable for another human being's life.

More kids dying on Halloween night is a bad thing and it should be reduced. Which means removing one or more of the risk factors. Which leaves a few options:

1: Don't let them out at all. Obviously the harshest method, but it'd definitely keep them from being hit by a car.

2: Have them wear brighter costumes and don't let them stay out too late.

3: Make sure they are supervised by responsible adults. If not yourself.

I want kids to have fun on Halloween. But I also want them to come back home safely.

6644670

Children have to do some dangerous things in order to mature:

If a parent refuses to let children use knives or the stove until the children become legal adults, it is not a surprise that these adults are afraid to cook. Those parents oaf-rocked their children.

Children need to learn to negotiate streets at night alone. Halloween is 1 of the best nights to learn this skill because the drivers are extra careful.

Do those parents let children use knives or the stove without ANY supervision?

Those are shit parents.

They should let them do it. But y'know, keep an eye on them while they are doing it. At least for the first few times. So if something happens they can take them to the hospital ASAP.

You realize you are advocating parental neglect and justifying it by claiming it "builds character", right?

And yes, parents should eventually let their kids walk the streets at night. They don't really have a choice in the matter. But there's nothing wrong with supervising younger kids during a night that is statistically proven to be more dangerous for them.

And no, adult drivers are not necessarily more careful on Halloween Night. It's a holiday. I've known plenty a teenager and college student and grown-ass adult who has gotten shit-faced on Halloween. And they drive.

Don't try to justify parents ignoring their own responsibility to take care of their kids with the excuse of "building character".

By your logic, parents who pass out drunk forcing their kids to take care of themselves and their younger siblings are the best parents in the world. Teach kids the responsibility of having to take care of an entire family when they aren't even out of their teens!

Why on Earth do you think responsible parenting is the same thing as spoiling kids rotten?

The solution to one extreme is rarely ever the other extreme. The solution to spoiling children is not to leave them to their own devices entirely. Parents have a responsibility to teach, guide, and protect their children. While also respecting their childrens' independence and the importance of responsibility. A daunting task to be sure with no guaranteed 100% perfect method. But nobody ever said parenting is easy.

6645705

Update:

Once again, strangers poisoned no children (never happened) and abducted no children (has not happened since 1973). We had 1 report of amphetamine-poisoning, but it is likely that the child got into the stash of amphetamine using parents (this is similar to a case of an uncle blaming the death a a child on poisoned candy when the child got into his heroine a few years back). As a skeptic, I fight this Halloween-Hysteria, plus, it leads to oaf-rocked adults who cannot function as adults.

6647162

You'll notice I have never once commented on poisoning. I KNOW it's bullshit. That's why i focus on traffic fatalities, an ACTUAL PROBLEM.

The only real threats to children Halloween candy poses to them are cavities, possible early on-set diabetes, and choking on them from eating too quickly.

I've tried to stay in good faith here. Do me the courtesy of not misrepresenting me by implying I'm one of those idiots who actually buys into the "poisoned Halloween candy" stories.

6647166

I am sorry. I Know that you do not believe in poisoned candy. I should have put that as an update to the article… not a reply to you. Sorry, but I was tired.