Posted on 11/09/2013 4:41:50 AM PST by Kaslin
For many American children, the floor has become their closet. This drives me crazy. I walk into a room where an urchin resides, and there are clothes scattered everywhere. Believe me, I know the passive-aggressive tactics that kids use to torture their parents, but something else is going on here.
More than a few times, I've heard parents describe their offspring as "amazing." If you look up that word, you will see this meaning: "To cause great wonder or astonishment." That's what "amazing" means. So occasionally, I will ask the parent of an "amazing" child to tell me exactly why that word applies to their tyke. What is the "great wonder" associated with him or her?
"He just is" comes the usual reply, along with a look that could kill a cactus.
Many children fully realize their parents see them as astonishing creatures and incorporate that into their daily presentations. That is, they throw their stuff on the floor because if you are truly amazing you can pretty much do what you want. Right?
When I confront the urchins about strewn clothing, I sometimes get a blank look. So I read their minds. And the brain waves come back this way: "Why are you bothering me? This is interfering with my texting. Someone will pick up my clothes. And if they don't, so what?"
American children are being done a great disservice by adult society. For reasons only Dr. Phil understands, many parents have decided to attach their own self-image to their children. So if the kid is amazing, that means the father or mother is amazing, as well. That's what's going on.
The huge downside is that it takes a lot of work and perseverance to become amazing, and most human beings never reach that status. But children are generally not told that. They are rarely confronted with the fact that life is tough and that to succeed you have be honest, industrious and disciplined. The discipline part kicks in when you hang up your clothing.
The disturbing thing about childhood these days is that some parents and grandparents excuse a lot of questionable behavior because they want their kids to approve of them. It all goes back to "amazing" again. If your extra-special kid doesn't like you at the moment, maybe you aren't topnotch.
Americans whose parents were raised during the Great Depression or World War II understand how drastically things have changed on the home front. My father did not care a whit whether I liked him, and it would have been unthinkable for him to pick up my stuff. There were rules in the house, and they were enforced.
So today, as an adult, I still pick up my stuff and recycle and keep a neat house. That is routine and not at all amazing. But I'm not sure that tradition will survive the next generation.
I seem to have hit a raw nerve. Sorry! :)
More like latent homosexuality. The fussy, anal-retentive male is usually fighting an inner battle between what he wants to be and what he believes to be right. In order to convince himself that he's really straight he goes out of his way to follow all the rules, even to the point of absurdity. These are not pleasant people to deal with.
I have survived my kids and they are out in the world. One realizes what I sacrificed, the other thinks I am the wicked witch. I am comforted by knowing I did right by her, other people find her “amazing”. She will come around.
But, I have a peer that has a daughter that is hell on wheels. She was telling me her escapades one day, and I replied that I would have ended that fast with my kids. Her response: I can’t go 1970s on my her. Why not? I did when necessary with my kids. It wasn’t more than a few times and they respected there was a line you didn’t cross.
I picked up my stuff and the stuff of everybody in my house from the time I was about 7. I did the dishes every night. I did the vacuuming. Not my mom, who was sleeping on the couch. Not my dad who was staring at the tube.
It was a family of 6 and I was the only adult.
The parents were too busy with their causes, League of Women voters, then transactional analysis and getting “trained” to do it, not liking his job and quitting without another lined up. It was embarrassing.
So, while I totally agree kids should hang up their clothes, it doesn’t come from the parents teaching it. Modeling it maybe.
We are bad about the clothes on the floor. I now have one of the things that has the bags. I can sort through the week and have manageable sizes of laundry to carry down the stairs. Actually liking it a lot.
The bad, the frame is cheap metal, so my project for this weekend will be to make a new wood shelf to fit it into.
http://ana-white.com/2011/01/sausha%E2%80%99s-washerdryer-pedestals
I built that. Makes laundry easy. Course there is no one home anymore but me and hubby.
That was an amazingly AWESOME post.
http://ana-white.com/2010/11/laundry-basket-dresser
That is cute too except I didn’t have the room for it.
“Why are you bothering me? This is interfering with my texting. Someone will pick up my clothes. And if they don’t, so what?”
...so take away their phone, that’s what.
If that’s the battle you want. Might want to choose better ones, and there are too many greater ones than sloppiness, these days.
Although if the above attitude might require taking a hammer to the phone.
Recycling is a very old tradition, just another word the liberals have taken for their own. Recycling used to mean if you couldn’t use something you found someone that needed it so it would not be wasted. It did not mean you had to wash and sort your trash so someone could feel better.
When I was about that age, probably a little younger, my mother came into my room as I was sleeping very, very, very late one night, turned on the light and told me to get up and clean my room and put everything away - mainly clothes. I did. She only had to do that once.
I don’t remember my grandmother ever throwing anything away. I sat and ripped buttons and zippers out of any old clothing before she cut it all up and used it to make quilts. I Still remember her coffee can full of buttons that I had to sort through if we needed some for something she was sewing. ;)
I wonder who these kids are he’s writing about - probably his grandkids! LOL!
You were easier than my daughter. I had tried almost everything before I resorted to throwing her clothes out the front door. My goal was to embarrass her.....and it did.
whenwver I have to take stuff out to the dump, I see the “recycled” paper is in wet mushy piles rotting.............
teachers are some of the biggest slobs around
Just strike a balance. I have 3 strong sons. We live on a 3 acre property that borders a 600 acre nature reservation. There’s a ton of yard work to do. They help me split and stack wood half the day I cut them some slack if their rooms are a little messy.
great idea!
I am going to start such, I have jsut been throwing the buttons away, I keep a pretty zen like place
I am surprised that she didn’t make you sort them and string buttons that were same together on a cord.
Look, kids are a**holes, all of them until they reach about 25 and then the % drops to about half. This percentage continues to drop as they mature until it bottoms out at about 5%.
Note-They above does NOT apply to children of Liberal parents.These children are born, live and die in the full bloom of a**holeness.
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