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To: sageb1
Thank you for your response and I do understand your what you are saying. Here is where I am coming from.

It depends on what people will define as violence. My boys played with toy guns and eventually went hunting with their father. I can't tell you how many wrestling matches were held in my family room along with the hitting and the punching. Of course it was tempered with a balance in quieter calmer moments. My boys are grown and have turned into great young men. I would think some psychologist somewhere would have called them violent....I would called them being normal boys.
1,342 posted on 10/02/2006 3:36:05 PM PDT by Kimmers
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To: Kimmers
"Here is where I am coming from."

I'm coming from a similar place in that my father always had guns, hunted, took my brother with him. As children, we had toy guns. I can't say we had wrestling matches in the living room, nor do I remember knowing anyone else who did. But that didn't mean it didn't go on.

I think we have to define violence in one way. And that is as a damaging physical action taken with disrespect or disregard for the well-being of another life. That would discount the family skirmishes you described.

What we have now is sons and daughters who have fewer and fewer role models to teach them self-control by their own example in a casual family setting. At the other end, we have children who are over-exposed to adult supervision starting at a very early age. In order for a child to learn self-control, they must be allowed to figure out what works. If a child has good role models at home, they are more likely to come up with compromise as a solution to a problem on their own. As it is now, adults have taken on an intervening role for the sake of expediency. "Situations" are resolved for the child, so the child doesn't really learn from the situation. They just do what they are told.

We have too many kids who are not learning the crisis solving process (some would call it anger management) by experiencing the whole process, which includes accountability. And by accountability, I don't mean "go to your room." Rather, accountability means accepting that the method one used did not get one what one wanted and understanding why. This is why teaching children that they deserve self-esteem for simply existing is so dangerous. Unearned self-esteem, no self-accountability, no understanding of compromise and its value all being acted out in homes with no good role models, violence on TV, in video games, and in music, and we have set our society up for disaster.

1,446 posted on 10/02/2006 6:09:22 PM PDT by sageb1 (This is the Final Crusade. There are only 2 sides. Pick one.)
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