Blame Nanny State on Baby Boomers

We’ve become a Nanny State and Baby Boomers are the reason.

Blame it on us -- the helicopter parents -- for creating an environment that at times has become too overprotective of kids.

The term Nanny State dates back to a conservative member of the English Parliament in 1965 to describe interference and protectionism by government.

Use of the term has blossomed to include everything from economic policies to regulatory practices.

In the context of kids, it has to do with society being so concerned about children’s well-being that we won’t allow them to do anything that might bring them harm … or even bring them close to being harmed, physically or emotionally.

The most recently example came from the state of New York, which sought to regulate organized recreational activities that it said carried “significant risk of injury.”

Those activities included Whiffle Ball, dodgeball, Red Rover, Freeze Tag, and kickball.

The state’s Health Department created the list, which includes archery, scuba and horseback riding, in response to a state law passed in 2009 to better regulate indoor camp programs.

But publicity about the list created a furor, and the Health Department has since backed off, saying it is compiling a revised list that it says will be “more sensible.”

That we even came to this can be traced to Baby Boomer parents who in the 1980s and 90s had children who they tried to keep safe from all kinds of physical and emotional harm and trauma.

When we Baby Boomers were kids we’d head off on a summer’s day on our bikes or on foot and we’d play ball in vacant lots, or go explore into the woods, or just generally screw around without a parent even knowing where we were.

We fell out of trees and broke our arms. We skidded off our bikes and got scraped. We played full contact Red Rover and survived.

But we put our guard up with our own kids and created playgroups, and supervised play, with scheduled activities filling up their days and our calendars. It’s like we put them in a protective bubble.

Trampolines now need safety netting. We don’’t have winners and losers in youth soccer or baseball -- games end in a tie. If your kid skateboards he wears elbow pads, knee pads and a helmet. A helmet is a required fashion accessory for riding a bike and skiing/snowboarding.

Yes, our need to protect our kids did some good. Yes, we saved countless of kids from injury. Yes, we protected them from the danger of child predators.

Yes, we did good hovering over our children the way we did. But did we do more harm than good in the process?

Are the children of Baby Boomers willing to take the risks that are sometimes necessary to take in a world that gets more competitive all the time? Are they willing to put themselves out there at the risk of getting scraped up?

Many of us Baby Boomers are now Empty Nesters and we’re taking stock of the job we did as parents.

Am I happy with the adults my children have grown into? You bet. I couldn’t be more proud.

Could I have done things differently? You bet.

I think now that allowing a few more risks, letting them take a few more chances, letting them get bruised or bloody in a game now deemed “risky” would not have been terrible.

Better to be safe than sorry?

Not always.

The eagles have nested

I’m trying to convince myself that watching an eagle’s nest for long stretches of time is not a waste of time.

I’m sure the 150,000 or so other people who join me at any given time of the day -- or night -- are trying to convince themselves of the same thing.

There’s a lot on the web that’s a total waste of time.

But I think that watching two bald eagles and their three eaglets in a nest 80 feet off the ground in northern Iowa is not one of them.

It might be that fact that the subject here is the bald eagle, our national symbol, once threatened with extinction.

Or it might be the fact that I just love raptors (I plan to come back in my next life as a red-tailed hawk.)

Or it might be the steely resolve these parents have in watching over their children. My happiest moments -- even as an aging, empty-nesting Baby Boomer --come from being a parent.

The live video stream of these eagle parents is courtesy of the Raptor Resource Project.

They placed and camouflaged a high resolution web cam in a cottonwood tree where the eagles live in a nest that is six feet wide and about six feet deep, about 1.5 tons of nest, if you can believe it.

It’s unique on a couple of levels. The bird’s eye view of the camera is such that it puts you right there, high above the banks of Trout Run, a stream that runs through Decorah.

Turn up the volume and you can hear the wind, which seems constant, and the occasional chirping of birds.

And there’s the occasional rustling of the eagles themselves as they shift position over the three little ones.

It is fascinating to see the pair exchange parenting duties.

I can’t tell the male from the female, but the other morning one parent was nesting, the other arrived. After a couple of minutes they touched beaks -- as if to say “OK, your turn” and they traded places, one taking the position over the brood the other flying off.

It's an intimate a scene as you’ll ever see.

And it’s interesting to see their diet. Over the course of several days I’ve seen dead rabbit, muskrat, crow and fish in the nest, picked apart and fed in little pieces to the hungry eaglets.

But mostly I’m impressed by the commitment to duty.

Steely eyed determination when it comes to my kids --it’s what me and the eagles have in common.

That and we both like fish (the rabbit, muskrat and crow, not so much).

Live video by Ustream

Another year of wait until next year

I put my UNH Hockey ball cap away on Monday, and replaced it with my Red Sox cap.

It’s what I do as I transition from one season to the next.

One of these days I hope to wear my hockey cap into April. That would mean that the University of New Hampshire Wildcats were playing in the NCAA Frozen Four.

The Frozen Four final is played in April -- this year in St. Paul, Minnesota, next year in Tampa, Fla.

But it wasn’t meant to be this year. As it wasn’t meant to be last year. As it wasn’t meant to be the year before that. And before that. And … well, you get the idea.

Forget what poet T.S. Eliot said about April being the cruelest month. He wasn’t a UNH hockey fun. Or a resident of northern New England, for that matter.

March tends to be cruel to UNH hockey.

It had led the Hockey East pretty much all season, but lost the regular league championship in the last two games of the season to Boston College. Then in the league tournament quarterfinals at the Boston Garden it lost to Merrimack College.

Welcome to March.

But the stars were beginning to align as the bracket for the NCAA tournament started to emerge.

We were going to be playing in the NCAA quarterfinals at the Verizon Center in Manchester, N.H. Also in the draw there were nemesis Merrimack, past nemesis Miami of Ohio, and Notre Dame, my wife Jane’s alma mater.

UNH would play Miami/Ohio in the first quarter final game; Notre Dame would play Merrimack in the second quarterfinal game on Saturday. The winners would play each other on Sunday, and that winner would go on to the Frozen Four.

The weekend meant that I got to walk around in my UNH hockey gear with my wife who walked around in her Notre Dame gear.

We filled out our hockey tournament brackets: mine with UNH as the national champ; hers with Notre Dame as the national champ. She wrote a column for her newspaper about how the weekend would test our marriage.

Indeed.

UNH beat Miami/Ohio. Notre Dame beat Merrimack. Which meant UNH played Notre Dame on Sunday for the right to play in St. Paul next week.

UNH lost. Notre Dame won. I lost. Jane won. Yes, we’re still married. Through thick and thin, wins and losses.

Sure, as March turns to April, I’ll root for Notre Dame next week when the Irish play Minnesota/Duluth in one national semifinal game. North Dakota and Michigan play in the other semifinal. And sure, I’ll root for ND if they make it into the national final on Sunday the 9th.

But my heart won’t be in it.

I’ll be thinking about next year. I’ll be looking forward to when UNH takes to the ice again.

I’m ever hopeful. I’m a Red Sox fan, after all.