ROTHENBURGER – We’re making things too easy on our kids, and it’s not fair

WE’RE RUINING OUR KIDS, turning them into a bunch of confused, pampered wimps.

We fight their fights in sports, in their education, in every aspect of their social development. We give them no credit, and it’s not fair to them.

At a youth baseball game near Denver this week, a brawl broke out among parents over an umpire’s call. The players were seven years old, the umpire 13. The moms and dads stormed the field and started throwing punches at each other.

In Canada, we prefer to get ridiculous at minor hockey games instead of baseball but the root cause is the same — getting too wrapped up in what should be our kids’ business, not ours. We make everything about us, not them.

We’ve been working on it for a long time. I’m convinced it began when we came up with the term “level playing field” in the mid-1970s. Suddenly, everybody wanted a level playing field. God forbid we should ever have to go uphill.

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Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and newspaper editor. He publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.