"Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which self respect springs." ~ Joan Didion
When I'm out and about, shopping, walking the dog, or whatever, I've noticed the increasing number of obese kids.
Now, I know there are multiple reasons for the prevalence of this phenomena,among them, the sedentary lifestyle brought on by the ease of access to video games and home computers. There also appears to be, in spite of Michelle Obama's anti-obesity, eat healthy campaign, more and more kids who don't eat healthy.
Or do they?
School cafeterias have gone to, what I believe, ridiculous lengths to force kids, at least while they are at school, to eat nothing but "healthy foods", but it seems to me the more they push healthy eating on the kids, the fatter they get. What do they do? Eat the healthy food at lunch, and then come home and pig out on Ho-Ho's?
This observation is slightly off topic, but over the years, I've noticed most vegetarians look physically unhealthy, and yes, obese, too. I wonder if perhaps healthy eating is not so healthy as the so-called experts would have us believe.
Then there's low self esteem. That certainly would help create a poor self image in a child.
Listen. I want to make it clear that I have no scientific studies or research to reference here. This is only my own observations and theories. I cannot prove anything. This is just me and my "out of Left field" perspective sort of thinking out loud, in text, so to speak.
OK. So we have a sedentary lifestyle combined with unhealthy eating, and low self esteem. Could there be other things?
I am beginning to think there is one more demon hiding in the closet.
Political Correctness.
Throughout the last couple of decades our society has been pushing sensitivity training on kids They've also been obsessing over kid's self esteem. Perhaps they have pushed this agenda overboard just a tad?
Have we become a little
overmuch sensitive?
No doubt we need to do what we can to help a child feel good about himself, but shouldn't some of the responsibility fall to the child? What I mean is, we want the child to want to feel good about himself. Right? If there is an issue with his self esteem, shouldn't we encourage him to make some changes in his self image himself instead of merely accepting him as he is to spare his feelings?
We, as a society, are so busy trying not to hurt his feelings, that we have forgotten to pay attention to how all our efforts are affecting him.
Stay with me here. I'm about to get radical.
To set this thought up, I'm going to ask my older readers to remember back to your school days. Do you remember the
"different" kids? How were they treated by the other kids?
That's right. They were picked on. And, dare I say this out loud? They were
bullied.
Look. I understand how being bullied makes a child feel. I was bullied as a child because I was short. I mean
really short. When I was a Sophomore in high school, I was so short I had to sit on a phone book in Driver's training. I was the shortest kid in High School when I was a Junior, including the girls. I didn't have my growth spurt until between my 11th and 12th grade years.
Did I have low self esteem?
You bethcha!
But, you know what? I learned to
deal with it and I grew out of it.
But being short is not something one can change. Obesity can be cured. And, while I'm on the subject. So can a host of other things that can negatively effect self image. Obesity, hygiene, and, homosexuality.
When I was in school, fat kids, dirty kids, and kids that acted like a fairy were bullied unmercifully, and guess what? If they didn't want to be picked on, they lost weight, they took showers and washed their clothes, and the effeminate boys stopped acting and dressing like girls. And tomboys started acting and dressing like girls.
If they didn't, they got bullied further.
I knew a girl in elementary school that was bullied because she was dirty. Apparently, she learned how to solve that problem, because by high school she was very popular with the boys. Do you think, back in the sixties, she received sensitivity training? Do you think her bullies did?
Not in the sixties.
I think if we want our children to grow up with an improved self image and be more normal adults, we need to stop coddling them. We need to allow them to stand on their own two feet and fight their own personal demons. And we need to encourage them to buck up and stop being so sensitive.
We had lot fewer fat kids in our school in those days. We had a lot less dirty kids. We had very few homosexual kids.
As radical as it sounds, I think being bullied was an important factor in straightening up some of these low self esteem issues. It forced the bullied kids to change themselves for the better.
Perhaps we need to give the bullies some leeway. In a sort of backwards way, they have helped make America strong.
