guess I could have made it easier on myself I read an interesting article (here) in Maclean's magazine recently about how parents with the intention of protecting their children can actually stifle them and prevent them from having valuable learning experiences. It is an interview with Michael Ungar, a social worker who has written a novel about what he calls "bubble-wrapped kids". An excerpt:

In your book you talk about the phenomenon of the bubble-wrapped kid. What's a bubble-wrapped kid?

I'm talking about kids who are being denied opportunities to experience risk and responsibility. I began to notice in my practice a group of young people who were coming from quite stable, nurturing, middle-class homes, and they were showing up for one of two reasons -- either they were very compliant young people with depression and anxiety and an incapacity to take on responsibility or to show much common sense in getting on with their lives, or they were coming in with very dangerous, risk-taking behaviours that they had come up with on their own to cope with what they were telling me were very restrictive or overprotective environments at home.

Why do some kids become docile and depressed when they're not exposed to risk?

They don't develop the self-confidence to control their world. They tend to slip away, they do a lot more screen time. I think the solution to getting a kid back out there is to start with the parents themselves. You know, it's always a source of great insight to ask parents, "What were you doing in terms of risk and responsibility and adventure-seeking behaviours when you were whatever age? And what did you learn?" I was driving mopeds on the streets when I was 14. I learned how to control that kind of speed and that kind of engine.

Hmmm. When I was 14...? I don't think I was the risk-taking type. Unless you count this:
  | ¶ 11:17 p.m.