Monday, September 2, 2013

Children Should Come With Instructions

“Tolerance is the last virtue of a dying society.” - Aristotle

Children don’t arrive at birth with a conveniently written manual to address every parental crisis in the middle of the night. It is hard being a parent, especially a good parent, and many of us do need the Idiot’s Guide to Parenting.  Liberals are more than willing to step in via free government programs to give firm instructions and to control how you raise your children.  They have been pretty successful so far in taking away many parental rights while molding the next liberal generation.

When I had children in the 80s, there were no self-help books, and the only source of scholarly parental wisdom and what to do was Dr. Benjamin Spock, M.D. However, most of the time I deferred to my mom’s experience and to other elders who laughed when TV stars and psychologists with out-of-control children tried to give parental and child-rearing advice.

Protecting my children from self-inflicted injury was not easy – dangers lurked in every corner, plug, cabinet, dangling string, slippery surface, sharp object, pill bottle, knife, scissors, freezer, electric socket, chewable toy, and especially the bathroom. As a toddler, one of my daughters loved to drink water out of the commode with her Sippy cup. Being escape artists, it was hard to hold on to them in public places. I managed fine without having to put them on a leash/harness, a common practice at that time. They did complain bitterly much later that they were on a tight leash as teenagers.

With every stage of development, new and interesting challenges arose but nothing was as hard as the teenage years. At this developmental stage, our children decided that we, the parents, were an utter embarrassment to them. We should have been banished to a faraway island, while they could freely choose a new set of parents, preferably someone hip and young, who had not fallen off the fashion train in the 70s; this someone would have to be glamorous, smart, and more accommodating and understanding of their “simple” needs and immediate demands.

Because I grew up in a different culture, my views of what constituted proper parenting and those of my American counterparts often clashed. After all, I was not really American, I was naturalized. My children hated me and felt as if they were the victims of my Old World antiquated ways of mothering. I was experimenting and destroying their future. What was I thinking? Why would I not let them do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and with whomever they wanted?

For starters, why was it necessary for kids to spend the night in a total stranger’s home whose parents I did not know, whose house I could not inspect, and whose bad habits I might not approve of to be displayed in front of my children, and whose lack of parenting I might find shocking. What was wrong with our home and their own beds? After all, they did have summer camps for sleepovers in the middle of nature, surrounded by lots of fun critters.

Why was it necessary for parents to spend inordinate amounts of money on slutty clothes for their children when a simple, no, you are not going to dress like that, would have sufficed? Who was the parent? Did they need the latest trinkets, toys, electronics, stereos, DVDs, Cabbage Patch dolls, and other useless devices that stifled creativity?

What was wrong with kids meeting in the back yard, close to nature and the sandbox, using their creativity and boundless energy to play? My daughters never came inside before sundown. Nowadays kids have to have play dates. What is that all about? Do you match the kids based on your friendship preferences, moral values, wealth, and social status?

I never understood the total disregard for morality, propriety, and for the welfare of other parents’ children, coming to their friends’ homes to “hang out” where alcohol, drugs, and tobacco consumption were encouraged and provided, with the expectation that children having sex was normal - “it is better to have sex in our home, supervised, instead in some seedy place.” What is wrong with saying no, you are not doing that in my house?

American clothing style has degenerated from elegant, proper, and detailed, to the skimpy, improper, and right down scandalous. As a very elegantly dressed professor who made her own clothes once said, there has to be a middle way between being “half naked in public and the burka.”

Boys cannot concentrate in school with girls dressed in mini-skirts, showing their derriere, and dressed in tight tops with their breasts hanging out. Worse yet, certain administrators and teachers approved of such a dress code and did not send the offenders home to change. On the contrary, some administrators sent students home who wore patriotic t-shirts or displays of religious affiliation such as a cross or Bible verses, for fear that it might make other students uncomfortable.

When I go out to a restaurant to eat with my family, I expect a relaxing atmosphere, conversation, and good food. I am not there to listen to past middle age men with trophy wife number two teaching their bratty kids their ABCs in public and how to properly color within the lines, disrupting the entire restaurant atmosphere. Also, I am not there to look at skimpily clad women’s body parts with rolls of baby fat overflowing their several sizes too small garments.

Nobody should have to witness the obscene and right down pornographic dress and behavior of our youth imitating Hollywood stars who have no moral compass. Hanna Montana was a role model for young girls for a long time and parents loved her. But Miley’s pathetic performance, simulating sex on stage, surrounded by teddy bears, degrades and dehumanizes women, debasing innocence and preparing young people to accept more twisted and perverse behavior to come. Nothing seems to shock us anymore.

“Miley’s performance may have been raunchy, but no one can deny that she seemed to be enjoying flaunting her sexual power and prowess. She would be no man’s sexual victim. She modeled for our girls that even a sweet Hannah Montana could grow into a sexually confident young woman who was having a very good time with her sexuality.” (Huffington Post, Why Miley Cyrus Is Actually a Good Role Model for Girls, August 29, 2013)

Modesty, honesty, innocence, and propriety have been lost long time ago, replaced by the race to the top of smut and titillation. This is what liberalism and feminism-gone-wild have done to young girls and young women, who confuse dancing around half-naked with power, sexuality, and achievement.

Parents must have been mortified. They control the purse strings, the education of their children, and the TV remote, not Hollywood or academia. Yet the degradation of our culture and of our youth continues in the name of tolerance. Liberalism has promoted the idea of being non-judgmental because they don’t want people to think for themselves, they want to groom and prepare the next generation of faithful and blind liberal followers.

 

 

 

 

 

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