I came across this article the other day and I thought I would share it with all of you. I thought it was funny and too true. We can be such over paranoid parents, and it is hard to relax, but what is that doing to our kids?
It is a longish article, but I thought it was worth a look. It might give you the excuse to relax a little and not feel guilty about it. (I'm not trying to incite any riots on to vaccinate or not, or put the fear in you about visiting family over the holidays, just something to think about)
This was my favorite quote from the article:
That advice may seem perfectly sensible to parents bombarded by heartbreaking news stories about missing little girls and the predator next door. But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with "How can you let him go to the store alone?," she suggests countering with "How can you let him visit your relatives?" (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) "I'm not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn't be prepared," she says. "But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources." Besides, she says with a smile, "a 100%-safe world is not only impossible. It's nowhere you'd want to be."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395-2,00.html#ixzz0XQHOdPXZ
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395-2,00.html#ixzz0XQHOdPXZ
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