I was raised a latch key child in an unforunate situation. I woke up at 5AM every sunday and delivered over 200 newspapers every sunday. It was either that or go hungry. Once I was 16 I got my SIN card and worked 24 hours a week while in fulltime highschool. I still graduated highschool with excellent grades.

Would life have been easier if I was born into a wealthy 2 parent family with a large income. Sure it would have been. Would I have the same work ethic and belief that if you’re willing to work hard you can succeed. Probably not.

The problem these days is that we “baby” our children. Children can’t fail in grade school anymore. They are moved up to the next grade anyways. We are raising a generation of baby’s. Children need to learn that life is not easy. You will fail. You will get hurt. It’s how you react when you fail that makes you a success.

Way off topic from the original post. But couldn’t help myself after reading some of these comments.

Postponing that realization until a girl - or, in rare instances, a boy - is ready to deal with the reality that for a few years they can make what looks like big money from selling their beauty may help. But I suspect it won’t unless the child is embedded in a matrix of love and respect. It is astonishingly easy to lose that matrix to school peers, online games, tween facebook encounters and a deep sense of alienation. Children need to separate from their parents; how they negotiate that transition reflects how they have been raised.

I have nearly no time for state induced “self esteem”. However, I am entirely convinced that a child raised in a loving family where the values are lived rather than preached will tend to do better then a latchkey kid or a child raised by his or her peers.

That means, I’m afraid, Mum at home. Sorry to be a Nazi and all; but it is virtually impossible for a woman to engage in the vital work of child rearing and, at the same time, “work”. Which, in turn means “less”. Less house, less new stuff, less on the Visa card, movies from the library not the video store, lattes made by hand, designer clothes from thrifts and such like. (We have an awesome Playmobil collection: about ten pieces are store bought, the rest .10 on the dollar at thrifts, garage sales and on line. You can buy a lot used.) If Mum is at home she can “gather” and teach her kids thrift.

The enemy of innocence is the peer. Who told you Santa was fiction? Mum and Dad? A teacher? Well, no, it was the wise ass six year old in the school yard. Who gave you the straight gen about sex (albeit incorrectly in virtually every detail), Mum, Dad, teacher, counselor - nope, it was a slightly sexually mature girl or boy behind a bush at your school. And who suggested that you might sell the simple virtues of innocence and beauty? I suspect, at the outset, a girl a little older and a little less wise but very “street smart”.

We cannot encase innocence in amber but we can gently push back experience. My eight year old - home schooled - devises scientifically valid means of Santa delivering presents around the world. (Faster than light reindeer and you’re done.) He suspects that the Easter Bunny and faeries are “made up”. He is, for the moment, entirely unconvinced by God. But he is certain that Santa is as real as his cat. I’d like him to see one more Christmas with Santa intact. Because if he can keep his mind that open there is little doubt that the greater mystery of Our Lord will touch him.

Hypocrisy or what.