Our kids and our future...

[saram]

Our world is in shambles...

I remember when I was a kid and I used to have free reign of my life and be allowed to play with my friends until late at night--even on school nights.

Not now...

Now, we have drugs to deal with. Guns to deal with. Sex at younger ages than ever imaginable.

We, as parents, are so caught up in our worlds we have forsaken the most important thing in our world and our futures--our kids.

If you are a parent, spend time with them. Nurture them. If you have a daughter--teach her she does not have to be pretty, but teach her to empower herself with eduacation and knowledge. There is no reason for a girl to think she has to find a rich man--she should be empowered to provide herself with a world of her own and rely on no one other than herself.

Stop putting your kids off thinking about yourself or how tired you are. Lead by example. Share your thoughts. Become emotionally intimate with your kids. Share with them your life, your past, and your dreams. Get active, get pro-active, and take a cause up with your kids. Show them that one voice can be heard.

Tomorrow started yesterday, and we're already late...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfvTjFZBcVI

 

[seffina]

For some reason, this post reminded me of a short story I read in college. It was by Chris Daly and it was called "How the Lawyers Stole Winter."

 

[angharad]

Drugs, guns, and sex have all been around for quite some time. It's really nothing new. The issue is that parents aren't parenting, and none are confident in the job they're doing as a parent. Kids don't need to have all the trappings of adulthood. They don't need to be scheduled to within an inch of their lives, they don't need televisions and full-service telephones and laptops and iPods and 20 million lessons a week.

Let them be kids. Talk to them about what you expect from them, deal with the "sensitive" topics like drugs and sex, and let them just be kids.

 

[max]

A large part of the problem is that parents are, to some extent, kept from parenting because more and more of their time is spent at work.

A there's a deep fear of social and economic failure among parents, which turns them into helicopter parents and steam shovel parents.

Of course, driving this to some extent is our extreme reliance on credentialism = professional merit. However, I'm not so sure that an academic standout at the University of Illinois is not on a par with one from Cornell or Dartmouth.

Also, political correctness means your neighbors are unwilling to stand by your shoulder and support you, when they see your kid misbehaving. . . fear of lawsuits.