12th grade children are now much more like children than the adults they had to be in the 1950s and 1960s. Why?

Rights of children to think and to be independent have been threatened more and more over time. I think the seat belt is an apt example of these changes. Though a seat belt with save you the 1% of the time you need it, as a child you are imprisoned physically and psychologically often left to scream in uneventful ways with no one setting you free. How many children have died in car seats locked in in the heat trapped in car seats? We hear about more every day.

Note: If this were the 1950s and 1960s children like myself not in car seats would simply have put our shoes on and bashed out a window with our feet. This was how we all were then in the 1950s instead of dying in the heat. It's better to be alive even if you get spanked for saving your own life by bashing out a car window. end note.

However, it's true this is much harder to do for children now because safety windows are better made and harder to bash out now than then too. So, maybe give your kids one of those devices to break out out a window and put it in the glove compartment so they don't die locked in the car one day?

This is just one of the changes today from when I grew up.

So, what I call the infantalization of our children is dangerous in the extreme to society at large in both the short and the long run.

Having your life threatened and surviving it like I did helped me to grow up more than anything else in my life. I had to realize that the next person to threaten me I might have to kill. This helped make me an adult starting at around 8 to 10 years of age.

When I was 4 years old all my front teeth were pulled by a dentist without novacaine. I was a trooper and endured something like this because my father expected it of me. My grandmothers had competed for my attention because I was the youngest and their last grandchild born pretty much (at least on my father's side). So, all this candy rotted out my baby teeth and they had to be pulled (at least the front ones). And I endured this without novacaine because I had to be brave for my father or he would reject me as his son. It was expected for me to always be brave by my father after I was 2 years old and not to cry no matter what happened. This was just the way it was in the 1950s a lot, especially with my Dad.

What I'm trying to say here is it's true many less of us survived all these things than do now.

But, if people cannot be self aware and grown up by 18 then what are we really doing?

We are becoming more "Inhuman" by the day when we infantalize our children and by infantalizing our children we are killing their future (and OURS). 

The other problem that I foresee is that this generation (more than any before) is extremely ripe for being overtaken by Artificial intelligence. 

What do I mean by this?

They will be the first generations to be literally outsmarted by Artificial intelligence which could bring the end of the human race in the next century.

Something to think about.