FOR OUR CHILDREN!

I saw something on the news the other night that I just can't seem to quit thinking about.  So much on the news is so disturbing, I sometimes wonder why we even watch it every night, but the piece I can't stop thinking about really has disturbed me.

It's about children.

They have done a study here in Manitoba and found that 43% of all school-aged children between the ages of 7-13 here in Manitoba suffer from some type of mental health illness.

My mind says, they have to be wrong - please - they have to be wrong!  My heart says - Oh Good God, what have we done to our children for this statistic to be true!  The rest of me is in complete and utter shock.

That's almost half of the school aged children in this province, and we are not even talking about teenagers!

My mind immediately starts running through families with children I know to be this age.  Children who I know, children I am quite sure have no mental health issues.  Does this mean that they too will suffer this way in their young life eventually?  Please tell me why?

And the "why" - well it is never mentioned along with the statistic... Why is that?

I have definite ideas about the "why" of a society in which children suffer from depression, suicidal tendencies, drug addictions, and everything else that mental health issues encompasses.

Perhaps the most obvious is that a lot of children no longer are allowed to be children.  To grow and develop mentally, cognitively, physically, emotionally, in the normal pattern of childhood.

They now have to be little adults, little clones of the society that doesn't have time to wait until the normal patterns of childhood have been successfully learned.  They have to fit into a world of movement, of rush, hurry, anxiety, stress, and they have to fit into that world as a functioning entity, whether they are capable of it, or not.

Open your doors and windows in the summer or go and stand outside in your neighbourhoods for awhile, and then come back in and report to me how many children you hear playing outside.  If you live near a daycare - you might get lucky - but I am quite sure if you don't, you will not hear much in the way of children noisily playing outside.

I'm not living in the real world, some would say - or  - MY God - how old fashioned!

Call it what you want, but there is a vast difference between children of my generation and children of today.  For one thing 43% of all children of my generation  between the ages of 7 and 13 province wide did not suffer from a form of mental health illness.

That says a lot to me - old fashioned or not!

My old fashioned belief, is we need to get children off technology to start - no bloody wonder they are depressed - look what social media does to adults!  They need to get off computers, cell phones and most of all gaming machines.

Children need to learn creativity - and in that I mean real creativity.  Teach children(boys and girls alike) to knit, sew, bake cookies, build a birdhouse, plant a garden, write a letter and send it snail mail, play a instrument, babysit.   Volunteer at nursing homes, volunteer at Children's Hospitals... give them chores and make sure they do them... let them play - real play - ride bikes, go for walks, play ball in the street, read books...

Children need structure, not electronic babysitters.  They need good nutrition, fresh air, fun, rules, attention, and love.  They need a Mommy or a Daddy or both....

What have we done to our children?  Whatever it is - we have to stop it now.... it's not working! 

We are destroying the best part of ourselves if we destroy our children...