Desensitization: A Backwards Concept?

Why should the term desensitized automatically assume the pejorative context? Why not that the concept of sensitization assume that disparaging distinction? Perhaps it would be prudent to adopt a position necessitating the piling of shame on the person who would over-protect and shield their children from the real world, thus causing them to be less likely to be able to develop proper coping mechanisms and intellectual techniques for dealing with exposure to certain provoking sights, sounds, and concepts in order to function effectively in this world. Is it appropriate to praise the sequestering away of children from reality in the name of “protecting them” from things of which parents disapprove? Are the negative effects of such actions justified by the sum of perceived positive effects? Does that even matter? Should there be a hard-line position that that is categorically wrong? I haven’t entirely made up my mind, but I think I’m onto something.

In case you take me wrongly, I would not condone acts like cutting off an infidel’s head in front of a two year old (or at all, for that matter). What I am saying is that many people go too far with this, both parents and supervisors of children alike. How does a kid learn that their actions have consequences and that those certain things they do mandate the assumption of certain risks and that those risks need to be assessed along with the potential benefits of such actions? By, for example, letting them ride a bike and crash a few times, that’s how. The same applies for situations that they won’t find whilst under the protection of mommy and daddy, being everything in their adult life. There’s a reason momma bird gives the reluctant baby bird a kick out of the tree, and it isn’t because she doesn’t love it.