Nation of Brats

The Arizona Republic ^ | February 8, 2004 | Robert Shaw with Stephanie Wood

[quidnunc]

What is happening to our children?

Only four years after the massacre at Columbine High School sent a chill through our nation, Time magazine ran a feature story on violent behavior at American schools among 3- to 6-year-olds.

The emergence of such behavior makes it imperative that we recognize that we are in the midst of an ever-worsening crisis in parenting, a crisis that is leading to a plague of uncontrollable, joyless, alienated, disaffected and even violent children.

Children, including those who are considered privileged, are no longer developing empathy, moral commitment and the ability to love. These emotionally stunted children constitute an epidemic that is permeating American life.

Can you go into stores, restaurants or libraries without seeing depressed-looking children sulking, resisting their parents, pulling packages or books off shelves?

Do you notice all the tantrums, all the whining, bickering and pouting going on while parents, in turn, nag, complain or, even worse, try desperately to ignore their unruly, surly child?

As they progress through grade school and into the preteen years, these "epidemic" children often become sullen, disrespectful automatons, staring with deadpan faces at the adults they encounter — teachers, their parents and their parents' friends.

As preteens, many of these children become media-addicted mall habitués, disassociated from their families. Later, many become addicts of promiscuous sex, drugs and alcohol. At the extreme end of these behaviors we have seen the school shooters, the highly destructive hackers, even bands of wildly destructive suburban teenagers vandalizing houses, stealing, setting fires and sexually assaulting their own schoolmates.

-snip-

[Eala]

we are in the midst of an ever-worsening crisis in parenting

Could it that the elites have been persuading us to leave parenting to the government, as in "It takes a village..."?

[meenie]

Spare the rod and spoil the child.

[goodnesswins]

Well....when you take God and Morals out of society....what do you expect?

[T'wit]

Chips off the old block.

[steplock]

Looong book name! :>)

Robert Shaw, a child and family psychiatrist, is the author of "The Epidemic: The Rot of American Culture, Absentee and Permissive Parenting, and the Resultant Plague of Joyless, Selfish Children" with journalist Stephanie Wood.

[paul51]

Do you notice all the tantrums, all the whining, bickering and pouting going on while parents

Before I got to the end of the sentence, I thought it was referring to the parents. Anyhow, where do the kids learn the bad behavior if not from the parents?

[Chris Talk]

God said, "If you forget me, I will forget your children."

[Mr. Jeeves]

Life is frequently frustrating, and the endlessly catered-to child who grows up thinking he/she is the center of the universe is likely to be ill-prepared to function in society.

We're seeing bunches of them on American Idol this season. And Simon (aka: "the real world") is disposing of hem nicely.

[Johnny Crab]

Even my 2 remaining at home have noticed this from a VERY early age(5,6) by stating: "Mom, Dad, those children are out of control" or "What is their major malfunction?" or "Another case of parent abuse".

[Orangedog]

Can you go into stores, restaurants or libraries without seeing depressed-looking children sulking, resisting their parents, pulling packages or books off shelves?

Do you notice all the tantrums, all the whining, bickering and pouting going on while parents, in turn, nag, complain or, even worse, try desperately to ignore their unruly, surly child?

Notice it?! Hell, that's one of the reasons why I go out a little as possible. I'm not sure how everyone else was raised in decades past, but I was born in 1969 and outbursts like kids today display in public were not even an option to me when I was growing up. We didn't have "time out" when I was a kid...we had "knock out." You pulled a stunt like a temper tantrum in once and only once. And that didn't mean that kids got the Hell beat out of them...but I knew that behavior like like that was "unacceptable." Parents today are either afraid of their kids or they seem to think that they are doing them some kind of favor by letting them act up. Well, they're not doing any favors to their kids or society.

[Solson]

The elite's are fully intending on government issued parenting licenses. This is the solution to the left. Instead on focusing on the root cause of the problem, they will pass legislation requiring parents to take government mandated "parenting classes" furthering the indoctrination of everything bad.

[Orangedog]

Before I got to the end of the sentence, I thought it was referring to the parents. Anyhow, where do the kids learn the bad behavior if not from the parents?

It isn't learned behavior. Behavior like that only expands with the willingness of the parents to tollerate it. Children constantly ask, if not beg for boundries. It's their way of daring their parents to care. The kids don't realize it at the time, but that is exactly what they are doing. Sadly, now the parents don't even realize that.

[Nea Wood]

Unfortunately, the people who need to read that article probably won't. I'm appalled when I see kids and their parents nowadays. The kids are spoiled and surly. They often run the house, making the decisions. The parents seem to think that it is the cruelest child abuse to discipline their children in any way, to make them do chores, or to ever tell them "no." The kids have all kinds of "stuff," they go snowboarding or to Disneyland or wherever they want to go, and they get new cars at age 16. And they are miserable, ungrateful, smart-mouthed brats. I don't know how these kids are ever going to function in the real world. All I can figure is, the first time they get into trouble, they'll go crying to mommy and daddy, who will dutifully bail the little darlings out.

[muawiyah]

The kids may be onto something. They hear. They see. It's a big time thing in this country for adults to slaughter those who would have been their first-born.

These young'uns are absolutely correct to build a wall of resistance between themselves and their psycho-sociopathic parents. It may save their lives when their pro-abortion parents decide they need greater thrills than that to "go on" with their lives.

[billybudd]

The parents are to blame.

[John Jorsett]

Do you notice all the tantrums, all the whining, bickering and pouting going on while parents, in turn, nag, complain or, even worse, try desperately to ignore their unruly, surly child?

Well if you belt the little ankle biters, you get thrown in jail.

[fish hawk]

The answer to the question is "Liberalism". It gives the freedom to do whatever feels good and punishes those that do discipline their children. Some have even gone to jail for spanking them. When I was in school, teachers still had a "spanker" on their desk. Try that now days and jail and law suits. It did work though, no foolin around in my school. The fault lies on the parents and them only, no matter what ever else excuse you use.

[Eala]

The elites are fully intending on government issued parenting licenses.

Don't get me started on parental licensing. I encountered that one ca. 1988 with a report from one Claudia Pap Mangel that talked about not whether it was a good idea, but how to fly it to implementation under the public radar. I confess my earlier calls on the issue missed the mark (the public turned out to be more resistant to this bad idea than I anticipated), but the idea still lingers like a diseased cesspool.