I just watched part of a video on MSNBC of two middle schools fighting in a bathroom at school. I’ve seen girls do worse, but of course they were in jail, so it’s sort of apples and oranges. I was a teenager once and I remember threats and viciousness, yet I still found this video clip disturbing. Perhaps I have a different perspective as the mother of a little girl. But it goes a little beyond that, I think. For all the honey in the Hundred Acre Wood, I can’t figure out what it is that we are teaching kids to make them so damned volatile.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of these people petitioning for violence and profanity to be eradicated from all media. I just monitor what my kids are watching. I don’t allow them to watch most TV shows, I seriously restrict violence and our viewing is usually limited to Disney, Nickelodeon or Discovery Kids. But I don’t think I have the right to tell other people what to let their kids watch. At the same time, I can’t understand people who allow their preschoolers to listen to hard-core rap, watch violent movies like Spiderman III or horror flicks and then don’t understand why their kids do things like assault their own parents, curse at them or attack their siblings. That seems to me to be a bit of a contradiction.
We can’t have it both ways. People complain that kids are too violent but then let them play games like Grand Theft Auto.
I don’t blame the media or entertainment industry. I don’t wholly blame the kids. I pretty much think that parents need to stop being so damned touchy feely and start setting some limits on their kids. If everyone parented their kids, I think we might start to see a bit of a change. And I know that has been made virtually impossible these days what with all the ‘experts’ telling parents to boost kids’ esteem and empower them and let them be free and let them make their own decisions at the age of three. “Let them work it out,” I hear from one neighbor who used to be a preschool teacher. “They have to learn.” Sure, okay, but they also need some kind of guidance. That’s the problem with all this ‘self-help’ advice: it throws out great one-liners, but never gets into the reality of implementation. Life cannot be reduced to a catch phrase.
Yes, we should boost kids’ self-esteem, but they also need to understand that they won’t be the best at everything, nor will they win all the time in the real world. I agree that kids should be allowed to make some choices for themselves, but quite frankly, if a three year old could make all their decisions for themselves, they wouldn’t need parents. How’s that working out by the way? You have a kid who thinks they know everything and never has to follow a rule, you say? I can’t imagine why.
I think a bit more of the ‘old-school’ way is going to have to make a comeback and fast. I don’t think that kids need to be beaten, I won’t go that far, but at the same time, parents need to be allowed and supported in setting some better limits on our kids. And stop blaming the media or the entertainment industry. Just because a child wants to watch something or play a game, doesn’t mean they have to be allowed to. Just because everyone else is doing is doesn’t mean that my kid has to do it. How is a child supposed to not succumb to peer pressure when their parents are giving in to it? Barbara Bush may have had some kind of an idea.
Granted, my kids are little and still very much under my thumb and I have no experience raising anyone older than six, but I honestly believe that if the foundation is set at a young age, kids will take those lessons with them. I’ve been fighting those peer pressure battles since the day my oldest was born. People pushing me to let my kids have candy or crappy snacks all the time have changed into different people thinking that I’m stupid for putting their seat belts on to drive down the road. But you know what? My daughter was playing McDonald’s the other day with some peers at the playground, and when she placed her ‘order’ instead of asking for soda, she requested water. I wasn’t there; I heard the story from Grandpa. So obviously the lessons have sunk in. When my kids start expecting gifts and trinkets on a regular basis because they were being given them (against my wishes) I put a stop to it. Now we have a reward system and they have to earn their little treats. And when they want something strictly because they see someone else with it, I say NO! because they don’t always have to follow the crowd.
We’ll see how this works out for us, but I certainly don’t get the sense that I’m alone in thinking that parents are starting to feel the need to regain control. I look at it this way, I can let my kids run amok now and then let them pay the price later (that girl in the video is being charged now – she’ll have a criminal record at the age of fourteen) or I can take the responsibility now and hopefully they’ll be spared when they’re older. As far as I’m concerned, I signed up for the latter the day I decided to become someone’s mother. Or maybe I’m over-simplifying. What do you think?
And just as I finish writing this, there’s another story of a school shooting, and the fourteen-year-old suspect killed himself. When is it going to stop?
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2 comments:
I will never forget some show I saw back in the 80's. Some comics were trying to make an impressin on gang youth, and they interspersed comedy with statements by former gang members, one of whom said that when he got shot the first time, he was shocked, because when he saw people get shot on TV they kept running, and I guess he sort of fell down and could not run anymore. Kids see make believe and they think it's real.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of adults think make-believe is real. People believe what they see on TV. But we all know problems are not solved in 30 minutes and that any neighborhood like the one in Dangerous Housewives is bound to be a place you really would not want to live. If we don't know these things, we should.
My parents had rules for us and I followed them, despite what my friends did. Some of my friends never paid a damned bit of attention to anything their parents said. I may suspect the differences, but I can't say I know for sure why the difference. I do know the Jesuits say "Give me a child till he's six and he'll be the Lord's forever" (Well, my mother says they do...) and they have a long history, so they may have the same point you have here.
My two year old has started hitting and I have told his father he can't watch the cartoon channels his dad puts on for him any more. They don't hit on the public stations, he can watch those.
One of my earliest, and most long standing fears has been that my father would be shot or hurt on the job.
Apparently as a kid I realized that...if my dad has to carry a gun, and he's a "police office" (he was a fed, but to a four year old, that's a police office) and police officers sometimes get hurt or killed at work, that my dad could be hurt or killed. It wasn't likely, but try telling a four year old that dad handles fraud cases, and the gun is there "just in case".
I think it's very wise to restrict children's exposure to that kind of stuff, not because either side of the previous example holds any a-priori moral standing, but because...it's frightening to them.
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