Friday, February 10, 2012

PARENTING THE SLIPPERY SLOPE




If you have been living under a bridge the past couple of day's your probably aren't aware of this video from a father who decided to post a video response to his teenage daughter who posted a rather nasty post on her facebook wall about her parents and all her chores she has to do.

Many people have been feeling some kind of way about this video this video has been seen world wide and has hit major news venues some have even went so far as to call this verbal abuse and a form of scare tactics.  I've watched the video and maybe I'm slow or just don't see it but there was no verbal abuse there was no abuse of any kind the father simply did what he had to do end of story.  Now look I've taken the early childhood classes and I've listened to the teachers indoctrination's about children and all that good stuff that is espoused in the books obviously these people never had kids of their own because when you are around kids they aren't like kids in books. I've grown up the eldest and have watched three sets of teenage brothers each one worst than the last not that they were terrible but the youngest brother is just....I digress.

I don't see what the father did as terrible matter of fact I see a father that's getting it right. Here is a father with some sense, children and teenagers are not ENTITLED to luxury they aren't ENTITLED to a lot of things that they have but they get them because parents so generously give them not because they have to but because parents love them for the most part. I didn't get my first laptop until I bought it for myself, I didn't get my first cellphone until I had a job and could afford the phone and the bill myself. When the father shot the computer let's be clear his daughter did not buy that with her own money. He bought it gave it to her and she used it so technically he loaned it to her. Furthermore she was disrespectful and wrong and I know how that running to facebook and posting little snarky messages but trying to block family members go that shit is not cute and teenagers are far to stupid to realize that what they post on facebook lives forever once its out on the internet it gets a life of its own. The things you put on the internet will bite you in the ass one day but when you are a teenager you don't think like that you're strictly in the moment hell even some adults don't think like that.

This whole notion of being friends with your child and letting them express themselves (in a negative and destructive way of course) and just run buck wild and lash out and have no sense of direction is bizarre to me. The courts have mandated that you can't physically spank your child because that's abuse there is a huge difference between spanking and beatings. I have seen the debates and the new school of parents who are against spankings who say that makes your child aggressive, that it damages your child's self esteem, that it makes your child hate themselves really people all that because you spanked your child now their whole persona is ruined. COME ON, my parents were old school we all got spankings none of my siblings have been to jail, on drugs, none of us deal drugs, are strippers or none of that ratchet lifestyle. We had a healthy sense of fear and respect for our parents and we knew to behave or there would be consequences. Now kids don't have that they don't know what respect is, they don't fear anything they do whatever because parents allow it, encourage it. When I moved to the suburbs I never even knew that children were allowed to do some of the things they got away with, boyfriends moving in sleeping in the same bed getting teenage daughters pregnant WITH NO JOBS but it was cool because why not, kids getting drunk with parents home hell parents getting the liquor for the parties, kids smoking weed with their parents I didn't know that was even how you could live as a teenager but I knew better then to come home and think it was going to be like that in my household like I knew in my household that type of stuff didn't fly.

Now we have children who don't like being told what to do, they don't like how their parents discipline them so they call child protective services their damned selves and let me share a little story with you. I know a woman who is going through that right now her teenage daughter didn't like how her father was dealing with her so she called child protective services TWICE the second time her and her brother where removed from the home. Now her brother is a mothers boy always has been and hes shy and timid a rather mild mannered kid imagine him being ripped from his home because his sister felt like she didn't want to her dad to tell her what to do and discipline her. So now they take the kids out of the home send them to two different foster homes to live. Well the girl is about that life she is switched to another high school and she immediately slides headlong into bullshit, she's smoking, drinking, wearing short shorts, then she get's jumped into a gang now she's a gang member, she's tatted up, and she is now full on living the life of a female gang member. Her brother had run away from his foster home twice so his fathers people came and got him but he is no longer allowed to have contact with his mother. I'm just giving you a snapshot of what can go so very wrong when the courts don't work with parents, parents that are actually present in their children's lives and trying to keep them on the straight and narrow. Meanwhile you have other parents that are actually harming their children, with sexual abuse, drug abuse, real physical abuse and whatever else there should be some kind of standard some kind of real measure of abuse a spanking is not abuse getting hit with a bat or beating your kid until they pass out, a split lip, a black eye, sticking their hands in boiling water, locking them in closets, beating them until they bleed these things are child abuse.

Society has been on this dangerous slippery slope where just looking at a child hard is considered abuse you have taken the power of parenting out of the hands of parents and put in the hands of the courts and court appointed guardians and listen you think foster care is the answer for these children. Some of the places the children are then placed are worst then some of the actual homes. People take these children in for a check and they don't give a fuck about these children some or truly abused or sexually exploited, raped, pimped out, turned onto drugs all that. Being a parent is hard work I don't have to have children to know that I see it and I get a taste of it when I have my niece and nephews. I think that people should remember that they aren't privy to what is going on in someone else's household unless they live in that household and unless you actually witness some abuse in your face then you should back off and let the parents be a parent to their children. Especially since you aren't contributing one red cent to the upbringing of these children nor are you going to take them home and be responsible for them. I am no advocate of child abuse far from it but a spanking never killed anyone, discipline, values, tough love, those things never killed anyone matter of fact some of the best people had those things in their lives and they turned out marvelous but I digress these are just my thoughts and I'm not a parent I can only say what I feel in my opinion is right. If you disagree please feel free to leave a comment especially parents.