Something's changed.

I really do remember going to school in the bitter cold as a kid. It surprised the heck out of me when school was canceled for two days because it was so cold. I doubt the buses had any trouble starting since our Passat is notoriously finicky about the cold and it started after a long, cold day outside on Tuesday and Wednesday. I understand that a lot of families rely on the bus for school transportation and that the the current state of the economy has left many families struggling to appropriately outfit their kids. I can't, however, imagine that the benefits of closing schools could have possibly outweighed the struggles to find alternate child care for kids of working parents.

I know lots of kids come to school dressed inappropriately for the weather - shorts and jerseys on a subzero day?? Should the schools really be held responsible for parents' unwillingness to enforce standards for appropriate dress? Even Love and Logic would warn against frostbitten knees as an appropriate consequence for making a bad wardrobe choice. Right?

Are we raising wimps or are parents getting wimpier? I remember riding to school in Montana in a red plastic sled pulled by one of our trusty Saint Bernards - not necessarily because it was too cold for the Wagoneer to start but because it was AWESOME. Good boots aren't cheap but neither are Wii consoles and premium cable and there are a whole lot of kids who have the latter but not the former.

Hey, in the end, I didn't mind a couple of freebie days with the kids. They got a long reasonably well given the cabin fever and C had a chance to catch up on some practice and to get ahead in math. R and A finished all of their homework. I did laundry and made a nasty batch of fresh mozzarella - I need to read over the instructions again because clearly, something went terribly wrong.

I just can't help thinking that, in our attempts to protect our kids we're doing a pretty lame job of teaching them to handle adversity. I guess we'll see how it plays out when this generation begins to reach the workforce. I'll be crossing my fingers.