Over-cautious parents may hinder kids

OVERLY protective parents may be stifling the risk taking and decision making abilities of their children - the business people of the future, a leading educationalist warned at the weekend.

Professor Roger Downer, President of the University of Limerick, said young people today with their video games and highly protective parents may not be exposed to risk and decision making as his generation was.

“If they are not, then we all have cause for concern about the future,” he said.

In his skint-knees youth in Belfast, he said, they went out and did a lot of risky play-time things some of which would be considered dangerous today, such as climbing and falling off trees and riding bikes barefoot downhill.

“We learned to assess risk and the consequences of bad planning and bad decision making.”

Addressing the Limerick Chamber of Commerce President’s Dinner, Dr Downer called on companies to allow each worker give an eight hour working day to voluntary or community work. He said it would be a worthwhile initiative for organisations such as the Chamber of Commerce to spearhead.

However, he was critical of Ireland’s commitment to Third World Aid, which he described as only a drop in the ocean.

Multinationals, he said, must consider how they can help to create wealth in economically depressed regions of the world by transferring part of their global operations to the third world.