Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for June 01, 2012

Clayton is helping the world by eating the peanut butter cups. Studies have shown, that cases of peanut allergies more than TRIPLED between 1997 and 2008!The prevalence of combined peanut or tree nut allergies in children was 2.1 percent in 2008, compared with 0.6 percent in 1997. Source: http://www.livescience.com/8268-peanut-allergy-cases-triple-10-years.html..That article goes on to say that they aren’t sure WHY more kids are allergic, but that it’s caused by ‘extra-sensitive immune systems’. Well, MY PERSONAL THEORY is that parents are molly coddling and babying their kids.Up until the invention of the Nintendo other such devices, moms and dads had no problems (really) with their kids being outside, playing. Hell, I KNOW it was expected of me! (unless I was grounded.) BUT starting in the 1990’s, with parents born in the 1970’s, children were taught that the streets were ‘unsafe’ and ‘dangerous’. So they were kept indoors. Parks became empty. Streets were silent. Bikes were left in the yard. Kids didn’t go outside, and weren’t exposed to the various different allergens that exist in the ‘outside world’. Also, starting in the early 1990’s, builders started going to great lengths to make houses ‘air tight’. They used improved methods for keeping outside air out, and inside air in. They started installing HEPA filters on furnaces. They started using tape and ‘liquid nail’ along the seams of vapour barrier, they caulked the hell out of window sills and around baseboards. They sealed air in and they sealed air out. Builders have made perfect little “bubble houses”. Kids spend more and more time inside (I would say 90% of their days!) and do not get out enough to be exposed to things like kids of my generation (Gen X.). In conclusion – I feel sorry for parents, who are slowly killing their children while trying to protect them.