The ‘me’ generation needs more exercise
A truly horrendous situation has already been spawned by the parental practice of asking children ‘what to you want?’ instead of using adult judgement for that purpose and insisting on compliance.
It isn’t fair to children, or to the young adults who suffer as a consequence.
Allied to stupid binge drinking, there is much more pain in the pipeline for families, teachers, workplaces and sport.
As well as being misled by naive psychologists in their handling of youngsters in recent years, parents have been shortchanged by having fewer children - one, two or, at most, three.
Those with large numbers of youngsters could not afford the luxury of ‘what do you want?’
Besides, lessons gained from dealing with the older ones helped them to deal better with the younger ones.
Two factors additional to the ‘me’ culture and binge drinking are set to lessen the playing of games like hurling.
They are the weakness of adolescents’ wrists due to too little manual work - for example, shovelling as in old-style farming and building - and the weakness of their leg muscles due to little or no cycling.
Yet the cure for these weaknesses is straightforward: cut out the binging, belt discarded car tyres with hurleys each day and pedal high-pressure exercise bikes at home regularly.
Joe Foyle
Sandford Road
Ranelagh
Dublin 6
