Will we survive?

Mollie Hemingway writes,

If you’re teaching your kids more about safety than you are about honesty, kindness, respect for others, responsibility, gratitude, integrity, cooperation, determination, social skills, enthusiasm, compassion and manners, you’re doing it wrong.

Mollie had just received some emails from her Obama-voting neighbors warning her that some children ages 9-11 were, unsupervised by parents, trying to earn money by mowing lawns.

Mollie wrote them back an email of her own:

“My brother and I did lawn mowing jobs—completely unsupervised by our parents, though with their encouragement—from a young age. There are, as with all things, health and safety risks. But we learned how money and business worked. We developed a work ethic. We interacted with our neighbors and honed our yard work skills. We gained independence and confidence. And we made money! It’s all about trade-offs. In our case, the positive far outweighed the negative. Also, as it happens, I could use some lawn mowing as our lawn mower broke down. So if anyone sees these young entrepreneurs, perhaps they could be pointed our way.”