I'm absolutely thrilled at my new found gem to thrive on my words treasure : Mollycoddle. India Knight whose brilliant write up on pg. 6 of Sunday People, NST seems to indicate the mollycoddled brood are overprivileged wimps with no social skills who are desperately in need of exposure to the real world if they are to become fully rounded adults.

Here's the checklist :
1. Kids who are chauffeurered everywhere for all occasions .
2. Maids waiting hand on foot to feed, bathe, tie the shoe laces of your 5 year old !
3. Outdoor camps,jungle trekkings,mountain climbings is a sin due to the lack of air-conditioning and the risks of Enchephalitis.

No,I dont have a 'kakak' and I'm all for the great outdoors to prevent kids morphing into Shitakes in the air conditioned comfort of their security alarmed, CCTV protected abode. How can we not be cautious in this Stranger Danger age when even allowing your kids to play in the local park under supervision would spark illusion of lurking paedophiles armies, jumping out and snatching them?

Gone with the wind were the luxury days when childhood wasn't considered to be a kind of risk-laden illness and we could have faith in the intrinsic-goodness of other people.Well, to quote the author, Mollycoddling may be farcical, but at least it's safe.

Where do we draw the line then? How do you raise responsible, independant children without having to brood & attend to their every hardships and trials of lives?

For now, my stand is this, although allowing them to take the bus occasionally(just for fun) with my 63 year old mom would precipitate acute cardiac arrythmias in me but it would broaden their horizons of their views on people, not only with their own kind in the church or school or family and not to be dysfuntional as a person once out of their narrow, native perimeters. I dont want them to hang in the ghetto but : I want them to know how to behave with all sorts of different people,not just ones like themselves- how to practise gratitude anywhere, anytime irregardless of social status, age or colour, how to be kind in gestures and words , to maintain their intergrity at all times and care for the dignity by respecting without showing prejudice.

This ,to me, matters as much as academic achievement.