“When I was a child, I thought as a child,” is an old proverb which at one time was also the philosophy society lived by when rearing children. This was the golden rule practiced by parents, schools and child development experts in understanding that the childlike behavior of children was an intrinsic fact of life; they are not adults.
They were not expected to think like adults, behave like adults nor exhibit rational, acceptable adult social skills, maturity or conduct-they were children and so they were allowed to think and behave like them.
That has all changed over the past thirty years, change accelerated at an alarming rate as we entered the twenty first century. It has become almost universally accepted by parents, schools, child psychologists and even law enforcement that children are, in fact, simply miniature adults and we demand of them to act accordingly.
A child who is unable to conform to this new societal standard of acceptable adult behavior is immediately labeled “mentally ill,” and is either punished, medicated or forced into psychological treatment. Read More
