Ageism in Parenting

There's a fairly excellent post up right now at Demand Euphoria, that has me all riled up about the inequities mainstream parenting place upon children. If you haven't read the post yet, let me briefly summarize:

Adult woman and mother is forgetful, she happens to forget her keys to both the car and the house and ends up stuck on her front porch in the rain with no way to get herself and her children in either the car or house. She calls her mother and discovers that the second house key is with her mother. Her mother,naturally, drops everything and rushes the key over to her daughter. No big deal right?

EXCEPT when it applies to children as the blogger reiterates with her tale of attending a parenting conference where parents were encouraged to REFUSE to bring anything their children had forgotten to them when at school or class.

Seriously?

Of course, the parenting rationality behind all of this is that, somehow, children will never learn to remember their necessary items unless put in situations where they will suffer due to their forgetfulness. Such as say, their lunch...or sports equipment.

You must be kidding me.

Why do we place such ridiculous expectations on our young? Why are they supposed to sit still, learn what we deem important, eat the food we choose for them, sleep by our bedtimes, refrain from loud noises, and, in sum, respect adults (specifically their parents) as THE authority over their own lives until the magical lawful age of adulthood?!

Yes, ideally, I hope that K happens to be very good at keeping track of his things, BUT, I in no way expect him to be perfect. I'M not perfect...why would I possibly expect such from my child?

But, beyond THAT, why would I possibly WANT my child to suffer in order to learn a lesson that will be (I guarantee!) learned in it's own time without my playing a harsh role?