Posted on 11/21/2005 6:09:12 AM PST by knowseverything
If the communities we live are have become an unreliable disaster for our kids we must redouble are efforts as parents. As a matter of fact maybe this should have been part one, as the individual family’s values shape the nature of the community (we could argue chicken and egg theory here). Now this next concept is pretty dramatic and complex, so hold on to your coffee. Here it is....More people need to make raising their kids the most important priority in their lives.
This is not a revolutionary idea, but seems terribly hard for many folks to put into play these days. How many parents do you know today who put money, careers, and other material items before their families? The number seems to be growing every day.
Maybe it all starts because modern American society instills an attitude that glorifies all the wrong things to adults. What makes a man is his job, his house, his income, his car, etc....How his kids turn out, or what kind of father and husband he is, has become secondary at best. And the “keep up with the Jones” attitude, is much easier to maintain with both parents focusing on superficial goals.
This has led to full-time daycares doing the child rearing. Parents drive from the maternity ward straight to the daycare center without skipping a beat, and so the behavioral nightmare begins. Daycares can hardly raise a voice to a misbehaving youngster for fear of being sued out of existence by a furious parent. Add to this the fact that the parents themselves, having pawned off their kids for all but a couple of their waking hours, come home to extreme feelings of guilt and the need for only happy times. This creates the environmental backdrop for parental enabling, and defense of bad behavior.
The problem becomes dangerous to us all when little Johnny reaches the teenage years. These same parents are too busy to wonder or care, what Johnny is doing in his room on the internet for hours at a time, and why he suddenly wants to dress like a vampire. They are too preoccupied with other things to know what he does with his friends, who they are, and what cults they are forming.
Keep in mind, this is no longer your father's society where every now and then a teenage boy stumbles upon a dirty magazine with his buddies. Evil seeks kids out today. It is hunting for them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it will find them. When it found those kids who marched into school to kill, nobody was there to protect and prepare them for what came lurking. How incredibly sad, for them, those they murdered, and those who are experiencing the same thing right now, that we will read about in six months.
Most all parents are already incredibly desensitized with the constant pounding of violence, sex, drugs, and everything else that is thrown at us daily from multiple media sources. It takes an extreme amount of vigilance and awareness to guard our kids against this. With two career driven parents, there simply may not be the time, and/or energy left to fight this exhausting battle. That is, assuming they even know a battle for their child is being waged, and haven't already unknowingly surrendered.
In conclusion to this discourse, if only people everywhere realized if they don’t raise their children, somebody else will. And in today's corrupt, irresponsible, and “multi-cultural” society, it’s anyone's guess who that is going to be. The community of yester-year certainly is not there to back us up anymore. As for all you crazy, Christian, responsible parents out there, you're only really left with two choices. Prepare and protect your children the best you can, then send 'em out to draw fire, or move to some secluded mountain top somewhere……that doesn't have cable service.
-knowseverything
Very, very true. In the liberal, leftist enclave where I live, I know parents who place mountainbiking and racketball in front of raising their kids. Sad, but to be expected from selfish, self indulgent Starbucks liberals.
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