Am I the only one when I hear little boys referred to as “Little Man?” I just hate hearing people call their male children that.
The title is completely misleading.
The book begins with an overview of what I mean by the culture of disrespect. Its not just about kids being disrespectful to adults: its about kids being disrespectful to other kids, and to themselves. Disrespect for one another: its now common for kids to wear T-shirts that say things like Im not shy. I just dont like you. Disrespect even for themselves: hence the growing propensity of American teens to post photos of themselves in various states of undress. This new norm the casual obscenity of sexting would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago. Everybody does it is what kids tell me, with a shrug. Its not a big deal.
In other words kids are being allowed to conduct themselves in any manner they please e.g. Lord of the Flies. They are not being treated as adults they are being ignored and allowed to raise themselves.
When Parents Refuse to be Adults. fixed the title.
BTW. I removed all apostrophes, quotation marks, and dashes from the post and quotations cited in order to keep the garbage out.
The worst are the sports parents who think their kids are D1 athletes. Unless your kid is the best player from that county in a generation, they are not going D1.
Children are not miniature adults. Their needs and capabilities are vastly different. So to expect them to behave as adults is not only irresponsible, it’s a pipe dream.
They need to be taught at their own level, and to have expectations set for them accordingly. Otherwise, they never get the chance to be just a child.
That said, their childhood needn’t last into their 20s and beyond. Nor is it a selective state, where they get all the indulgences that come with youth but refuse to accept the parental rule (and disenfranchisement) that go with it.
I made a big mistake with my son by expecting him to be an adult before he was ever a child. He and I have both paid dearly for my stupidity.
He was on with Dennis today. Interesting hour. (the 2-3PM EST hour) If you missed it, the whole 3 hour show replays from 3PM EST, to 12PM the next day. Replays of this particular hour are at 5PM, 8PM, 11PM. And the following day @ 2AM, 5AM, 8, AM 11AM...
The problem is both treating your children like adults and your grown children as small children.
A large portion of the problem is mass entertainment used as a babysitter. Beginning back in the 1960s and up through the 1980s, parents would do this because of lack of time due to needing two incomes in the household. Thanks feminism and Democrat economy!
It was mitigated somewhat by peer interaction in neighborhoods, though not nearly as much in generations past.
However, soon the mass entertainment babysitter became a self-perpetuating cycle, since the kids raised by TV didn’t know how to raise their own children and would set them in front of TVs and not interact a lot with them.
Fear of neighborhood abductions and other ghastly nearby crimes (hyped by, you guessed it, mass media) made parents keep their children inside, thereby cutting off the only mitigating factor against mass entertainment babysitting.
Finally, the computer age came about, and with it the death of childhood imagination, since the child could see any number of avatars representing himself or herself, doing things former generations had only dreamed of.
Then is when the proliferation of adults unable to function as adults, imagining themselves to be fanciful creatures among other things, began.