My Promise to My Children

[Dasla]

Originally Posted by fitz1980

It's easy to look back on your own youth and think that every adult, even the cool ones, were practically tyrants. It's just as easy to look at kids today, from an adult perspective, and say that they are a bunch of entitled brats who's parents are way too lenient on them.

Actually no, I don't look back at my childhood like that. I had one teacher that taught me for two grades that was SO cool. I had physics teacher in grade 11 and his wive who ran the drama group that I thought the same about. We, the drama group, socailized with them (in an appropriate way). I had teachers with various teaching styles, I though of none of them as tyrants (it helps that I was a good kid who got mostly good marks so they didn't need to act that way) I didn't think my parents were tyrants. I don't think that it is just a "Kids today" thing. Most of my cousins are a generation younger then me. Their parents are not their best friend, they are their parents.

I work at a high school. I don't think most of the teachers are too close to their students. It does clarify to me that I could never be a teacher because I couldn't control a class. There are one or too teachers that, in some staff opinion, are two close too their students. But it is just an opinion.

[Avril]

Most adults I knew weren't tyrants. And most kids I know aren't brats.

The bratty ones, however, do make an impression on a person, as do their often lenient parents.

[Lainie]

I wish more people would recognize confirmation bias, and fewer would use it as an excuse to make stupid comments and Facebook posts along the "kids today" line.

I once posted, in response to a particularly broad and insulting swipe at "young people," a counterpoint about my own experiences and was greeted with a level of disbelief that might have been appropriate if I'd said that I often encountered unicorns. "Where are you meeting these courteous, considerate young people?" Um, all over the place. ETA: In the same places I encounter rude, inconsiderate people of all ages.

[Dasla]

Originally Posted by Lainie

I wish more people would recognize confirmation bias, and fewer would use it as an excuse to make stupid comments and Facebook posts along the "kids today" line.

I recently fell over twice in one week on the footpath, in front two different schools. One student from the school I work at helped me up and another picked up my bag. The other time was the state school down the road, and while they didn't help me up a girl at least asked if I was ok.

[Lainie]

I know a man who believed it was his duty to "flip out on" his kids and "be [their] worst nightmare" when they misbehaved, did poorly in school, etc., that he was doing so for their own good, and that other parents who didn't do so were remiss in their duties. At least one of his kids cut off all contact with him as a teen, and is doing much better by every conceivable measure since she did so.

[Dasla]

Originally Posted by Lainie

I know a man who believed it was his duty to "flip out on" his kids and "be [their] worst nightmare" when they misbehaved, did poorly in school, etc., that he was doing so for their own good, and that other parents who didn't do so were remiss in their duties. At least one of his kids cut off all contact with him as a teen, and is doing much better by every conceivable measure since she did so.

So it worked then.

[Hero_Mike]

Yes, children need supervision - they need to be watched and occasionally supervised - and sometimes they need to be watched and supervised despite their own best efforts to conceal it. But that is a factor of age, and not of familial relationships. Attitudes like this breed helicopter parents who pester teachers, professors, and prospective employers, acting as "agents" on behalf of their children, when really, their children should be fully capable of doing these things themselves. I'm shocked when I hear about parents coming to an interview with their young adult children, or even taking their teenager to the bank to help them open an account.

I have a sister who is now 34, and years of overactive parenting have left her unable to do anything on her own, even get a job. What's sad is that she was coddled like this because she was the "favorite", and because she was a she - my parents buying into the "girls need protection" aspect of the culture they grew up in.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by Dasla

So it worked then.

You know, that's probably exactly how he'd spin it. He probably thinks he's the victim, and/or that he's made some sort of noble sacrifice on behalf of his kid(s).