Living in our own shadows

Living+in+our+own+shadows

Welcome to high school; you rely on your parents for money, shelter, food, and most importantly, protection from things deemed “too upsetting” to view.

The community of Forest Hills is stuck in a vicious loop, along with many other schools across the country. Parents are overprotective of their children for far too long, and children grow accustomed to their coddling. Then, when it’s time for the children to leave the nest, they all experience a culture shock because they have never experienced the real world. Their parents shelter them from anything different than what they know; and then when those children decide to have their own children, they are raised the same way.

Just watching the movies Clueless, The Breakfast Club, or Mean Girls shows how children are in awe of anything different from what they know. Some people choose to adjust, some people choose to mingle with those similar, and some just stay stuck in their own little world.

Don’t get me wrong, we live in a great community, and the bubble isn’t a terrible thing. I love the fact we live so close to one another and many families from our school intermix, but ignorance should not be the price paid for our bonding.

Parents should encourage their children to travel, see new things, and do things that make them uncomfortable. Parents should not censor the ugly parts of life like hate, violence, and poverty from their children; after all, these are standards of life. The sooner parents teach their kids about things they don’t experience first hand, the more well rounded they will be. Simply put, if you choose to shelter your children, in the long run, it will not help them. They may feel safe and comfortable for a limited amount of time, but the minute they leave, the false facade of a perfect world will disintegrate before their eyes.

However, the way parents raise children is not the only problem. Often, teenagers choose to not participate in activities different from what they already know. You go to school, then go to class, and talk to the same people, go to lunch, and eat with the same people, and then go home and mingle with the same people and do the same extra-curriculars.

You may see it as a daily routine, but it is more similar to an unrelenting cycle. We are humans, not robots. If teenagers do not work on going outside of their comfort zone, they will forever be stuck as the people they are. You won’t learn how to grow or accept new situations if you never put yourself in those situations in the first place. We all sometimes live in our own shadows, and we stay behind what we know. But learning how to get out from under the shade is a key part of life and helps more than we could imagine.