the mouths of babes.....

...are frightening.

Emo was defined to me by one of my more cynical friends as "Emo's are the kids who CRY when they cut themselves." The whole phenomena of "cutting" baffles me. When I was a kid, it was virtually unheard of and generally considered to be a symptom of sexual abuse or some other heinous trauma to a kid. Now, kids do it when they get picked on for being different. Is it the en vogue affliction? The bulimia of the 2000s?

I was cleaning out my car yesterday, and came across a note written to Kid, a 6th grader. In it, her friend apologized for calling her a name, and then apologized for being a cutter. When I asked Kid about it, she said another of her friends was also a cutter because the other kids call him a bisexual. And she knew what that meant.

Yet another reason why my reproductive organs are on permanent hiatus.

It is impossible to raise an innocent in this day and age. If your child has any interaction with the outside world, they will be exposed to concepts, vocabulary, and violence that we wouldn't have seen until well into high shcool, or after. My sister might have the right idea after all. She homeschools six children under the age of ten (all hers). She has built-in babysitters for life, constant playmates inside the home, and no pressure from the outside. Hell, they never have to leave the house should they choose not to. Do I think that's healthy for the child when they're grown? Absolutely not. I think it does the kids a great disservice not to have any perception of what the world is like outside of their cocoon - as they get older. But where do you find the happy medium? And what will it be like for kids born NOW? It gets exponentially worse year by year.