That is such a good question and a really good article...here's what I think.
I think it's really ironic that at the same time we are dressing our little girls and boys up, like adult divorcees, out on the town, we are also refusing to help them mature into responsible young ladies and gentlemen. I see more and more children living with their parents, way past the age they should be responsible for their own home. We've just recently passed legislation to keep "children" on our medical insurance till they're 25!
We seem to be more interested in being our daughters or sons friend, and keeping them at home with us until they have children. Instead of teaching them accountability, responsibility and morality, we're coddling them by shielding them from any kind of consequences, not wanting to bruise their egos. It's gotten to the point now that if you told a girl she looked like a slut or a boy you look like a gangster, you could be accused of hate speech! What happened to parents saying, "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?" Somehow we've bought into the idea that this generation is actually wiser and smarter than we are now as adults. When the kid says "Could you be any more out of it?" we think "oh no, maybe I don't get it", how do we forget, that at their age we would and did say anything to get our own way?
Sometimes I think it's just plain laziness on the part of parents, but it's also a refusal on their part to grow up fully and accept their own responsibility to guide and develop their child into adulthood. But I guess it's hard to enforce rules that you're still rebeling against, feeling that your parents were so mean...because you haven't matured enough to see they were right.
16 Years and Still Around! - "Jungle is 101!"
6 months ago
