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This should be required reading by everyone who works with children in any capacity.

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"expanding nanny state"

More political nonsense calling out some other political nonsense. Capitalism and the gross inequity in our societies, the plundering of our planet, its resources, profit over people in all aspects of life, is a fundamental driver of the crises our kids are now facing.

You are right to call out drug companies, but they are capitalistic, purely profit driven. The nanny state has nothing to do with that. their lobbyists pour cash on all politicians. America and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow drug makers to directly advertise to its citizens/consumers (i.e. tv ads w/all the ridiculous possible side effects at the end).

The rise of sports gambling is another example of how money, not the nanny state wins at the cost of a healthy population. Look into the figures of how many young people in college are becoming lost to gambling addiction. Baseball, good old fashioned American apple pie baseball is thriving on gambling. As viewership declined, real-time gambling has boosted viewership. Not to mention the astronomical profits and salaries that sports now garners. This is reflection of society we all have been brought up on dog-eat-dog capitalism where in order for there to be winners, there must be losers. Not only that, but all the profits go upwards to fewer snd fewer hands.

What has deregulation brought other than making things worse for consumers? All the consolidation and less choice? Rife for cartel price fixing behavior.

Our kids see a world destroyed by greed, constant images of quick wealth, lauding billionaires meanwhile wages for actual workers stagnated. A planet dying, climate change creating unpredictable havoc.

Go read about Denka and cancer in Louisiana. Or about PFOAS and how profits always tower over the health of people.

Nanny state? My god how disconnected and myopic you are. A broken record that is part of the problem. You don't believe in a healthy, educated, informed population. You don't believe in fairness and equality. You just want to complain with your own politics and idealogy driving you.

Billionaires only exist because they fed off all the working people. Main street and wall street separated a long time ago, The fact that the markets are doing quite well while the greater population as a whole struggles is completely over your head. Have you looked into the margin expansion and record profits supermarkets have been making? Do you know how much consolidation has occurred in the space?

And u think the nanny state is the problem? SCOTUS ruling that corporations were people didnt bother you? All the congressionial stock trading (dems repubs lib, u name it) doesnt bother you?

You think our kids dont see weve left them in an economic hole where they cant afford to have families and decent lives because hedge funds got into real estate a while ago? You think they want to work at McDs and Walmart without access to affordable healthcare? All these companies feed of cheap labor, dont pay living wages and guess what, that creates a population that needs a "nanny state". You seem to be okay with an economy where profits are privatized and

losses are socialized but you want to aim your ire at all the people trying to fight this dystopian future? You think our kids cant see through the bullshit pull up your bootstraps myth that some of us are stuck on and have been brainwashed into by all the greed?

You think greed cares about community or our kids? Get real.

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I’m very glad you end with a message that community and a stable and reassuring home environment are the answers.

Kids should not struggle with paranoia from too much screen time, or emptiness caused by a lack of trust in the stability and routine of the home.

This learned helplessness through excessive medicalization and detachment from our ancestral origins and land has done so much damage to almost everyone I personally know, myself included. Too many people have given up trust their own judgement in the presence of authority (doctors, professors, celebrities, influencers, politicians, etc).

I keep saying to my spouse, the more unskilled we are, the better consumers we’ll become. Just like the big industries want it, so we can become their guaranteed sources of income, all while they leech more of our willpower.

But all of this commodification and isolation is unsustainable, emotionally, technologically, and ecologically.

I’m going to implement the habits you suggest, such as accepting my emotions as natural reactions which can help me move forward, instead of staying stuck feeling helpless.

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It’s too bad that the author chose to throw in their prejudices such as maligning ineffectual school policies as “cultural Marxism” and insisting on “faith based traditions.” Unfortunately, schools have no influence over home environments, which are essential to children’s healthy mental health development. However, schools by law they are required to receive and care for those children regardless of the deficiencies of the home environment. The problem here is larger than what schools alone can address. Parents struggle to meet the psychological and physical needs of their children under an increasingly toxic and oppressive economic system--the current unrestrained capitalism. Call me Marxist. And faith-based traditions have traumatized many walking wounded today who pass that trauma along in those very traditions. Leave political labels and religion out of this. We can love and care for children without political boogeymen or an imaginary guy in the sky.

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