Community Corner

Please Don't Help My Kids

A Patch blogger's post about not helping her children on the slide is being debated across the country.


A Patch blog from Alameda, CA, called “Please Don’t Help My Kids” has struck a nerve with readers across the country.

Posted in September, the blog has taken off over the past couple of weeks as it has found a second life through social media sharing. The blog has 124,000 Facebook recommendations and 833 people have tweeted the blog.

The blog is an open letter to other parents at the playground. The blogger Kate Bassford Baker’s basic request is for parents to not help her daughters on the slide. She wrote that she wants her daughters to do things and learn things on their own.

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Learning to walk up the slide’s ladder is the first step to learning new things and overcoming obstacles, she wrote.

“Because, as they grow up, the ladders will only get taller, and scarier, and much more difficult to climb. And I don't know about you, but I'd rather help them learn the skills they'll need to navigate them now, while a misstep means a bumped head or scraped knee that can be healed with a kiss, while the most difficult of hills can be conquered by chanting, ‘I think I can, I think I can,’ and while those 15 whole feet between us still feels, to them, like I'm much too far away,” she wrote.

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Read "Please Don’t Help My Kids" by clicking on this sentence.

What do you think? Do you agree with the concept that children should do these things on their own or do you think it’s unwise to allow children that freedom?

Want to respond to this blog in your own post? Just go to our homepage and click "start a blog." Who knows: maybe your thoughts will go viral, too!


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