Where have our children gone? (teenagers, divorce, games, parents)

[geeoro]

Is the world going crazy or is it me? We seem to be living in a world today that has stripped it's children and teenagers of all innocence. When i was a Teenager, i would read and watch the news and see the older population causing death and destruction everyday. I see the news now and it seems full of crime being committed by younger and younger offenders. Are we doing this to our children by giving them way too much too soon? Giving them too much credit and money at a age that they just cannot handle it?
Anybody feel this way or is it just me?

[mommiewrites]

LAck of discipline?

Feeling of entitlement?

bad seeds? who knows.

Really though, I doubt this is a 'new' epidemic. With the widespread and easily accessible news and as quickly as it travels over the internet and newswire, it just seems like it.

Decades ago (before my time) it was unlikely to hear of a murder 1000 miles away- but now its a common occurrence. Especially if its a 'slow' news day in your area.

[geeoro]

Maybe so, but i do think that what the younger generation today is exposed to is creating a "ideal" that Bad Behaviour is acceptable. The drug culture is now treated as "recreational" and things like "Jackass" spurs them on to more and more dangerous outlets to their imaginations. Even in the Primaries, we talk about the "Kiddie vote" and how important it is. If you look at the killings, Beatings etc. going on in Campus, it's getting worse.

[sean98125]

Where have the adults gone? Where is the generation that puts this kind of youthful indiscretion in check? We have parents that are either trying to be their kid's friend or who are trying to desperately relive their youth through the kids. There are grown-ups that go off and spend money like a teenaged girl in a shopping mall without really thinking about how they are going to be able to afford the debt service. We are a society of immature Veruca Salts screaming "I want it now" at the top of our lungs.

The kids are just modeling the behavior of their parents.

[Capt. Dan]

Parents working 2 jobs. Both parents working. No time for raising kids. let the schools raise them?

[geeoro]

That is part of todays problem. No concern at home about bringing the school work into the home. Yes, send the kids to their computer but no real at home help. Two working parents is the old excuse for lack of interest. I bet Dad still finds time for fishing or his drink on the way home or mom going to her aerobics class. We as adults must take our fair share of blame for the way our kids turn out. Divorce is a huge factor and the high tech age with it's Plasma t.v's amd Wii's and al the trimmings gives todays kids a false idea as to what is important.

[mari4him]

I agree that the fault and burden falls mostly on the shoulders of the parents who are too busy being their children's friends to actually parent them and correct behavior that is inapproriate.

I have heard all the arguments about children's right to privacy, right to self-expression, right to being treated as an equal and rights to no censorship in the home. Well all these rights given to the children have created a lot of what we see out there now.

I am sorry, but as long as that bedroom is in the home I pay for, it is my bedroom that I allow them to use. If I feel there is a need to go in and search it, I will. What privacy they have is what I offer them based on their earning it by not giving me reason to question what is going on.

Right to self-expression, to an extent, I draw the line at what is offensive to me or my home so long as they live under my roof.

Right to being treated as an equal, sorry they are human and should not be mistreated but they are not my equal, they are my children and I am the parent, that makes us unequal in our relationship to one another.

Rights to no censorship, ughhh... nope, particularly when they were younger I did censor what they watched, listened to and read. Why? because it all has the potential to influence in right or wrong ways. Now that they are older, I expect them to use self-censorship, but if they don't, I will not hesitate to say I don't want that music being played in my house or that show being watched in my house.

Parent's have to stop being afraid that their kids will be upset, angry or even hate them for a while. Their supposed to if we are doing our job. Lord knows I hated my mom a time or two, but now that I am older, I am forever grateful for those moments when she was not afraid to say NO to me and endure my wrath. LOL.

Mari

[cynwldkat]

I think if you look back over the generations it seems each generation has it's worries about the "children" of the next generation. I know my grandmother thought "my" generation was totally out of hand, and some were. The same goes for today. Yes, there does seem to be more problems for the kids of today but as another poster stated they don't always have the home life we had our our parents had. But if both parents don't work it is often times nearly impossible to make ends meet in todays world. I think there are many really good parents out there and I also think there are a lot of great kids too!! They are still out there!!

[5kingsinvegas]

I get so tired of hearing all the "what is wrong with our children today" tales of woe!!! Our parents and grandparents all thought the same thing. The reason, in my opinion, that things seem so much grimmer today is because of the wide reach the media plays in our daily lives. When we were growing up we had ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS. That was it. The news was 30-60 minutes in the evening and what we heard was limited. I am going to date myself here, but the first "cable" we had consisted of 2 channels, IT and ON. We were never allowed to watch either. I wasn't even allowed to watch the Six Million Dollar Man, it was to violent Now we are bombarded with CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews etc. 24/7 as well as a bagillion cable channels and network TV has shows that when I was a kid would never have been allowed on TV. The world seems a lot smaller. I lived in Michigan and California seemed like another world to me as a child. Now, if something happens on the West coast, the East coast hears about it for days and vice versa. China, Japan, the Middle East, Africa etc. were just places on the globe to me or pictures in National Geographic. Now we hear about school shootings in Ireland on our USA nightly news.

I think that these things happened when we were kids, we just didn't hear about them unless we lived in the area. I remember when I was in 6th grade one of my classmates got mad at a neighbor who was 3 and bashed him to death with a brick. It didn't even make the local news station back then. What about the school bus full of kids that were kidnapped and buried alive, don't remember where. I didn't even know about that until I read a book about it and realized that it was a true story. When our children hear about things that happen on other continents I don't think they realize how far away it is and that it is not in their own backyard. I think hearing about these things all the time desensitizes them and makes them believe that this stuff is happening everywhere at alarming rates. I tell my children that when you stop hearing about school shootings etc. then you need to worry because they have become so common place that they no longer make the news.

I also think that part of the blame lies in within our society and the focus on children having self esteem. It is very important for a child to have self esteem, but it is just as important for children to learn how to deal with disappointment. Life is full of let downs and broken promises....so many of our children are not equipped to deal with this.

There have always been bullies, there have always been gangs, and there have always been children who murder, rape etc. The stats may have increased, but then again, so has our population. I don't think there is anything alarmingly wrong with this generation, and I caution all of you with this gloom and doom mentality. Ask your parents and/or grandparents how they felt about the next generation from them.

And on the topic of the music, while I don't like a lot of the lyrics in a lot of the songs today, I grew up listening to ACDC, Ozzie Osborne, Led Zepplin, The Doors, Black Sabbath, and many more and I turned out just fine. My parents grew up listening to that horrible Elvis "the pelvis", and that awful longhaired buch of kids from England called the Beatles.

[Sgoldie]

If you notice practically half the programs on TV (in the US anyway) involve someone being murdered, in movies too, also electronic games. This is far from the Ozzie & Harriet mindset we grew up with. If not murder, it's car crashes, criminals, or idealization of ghetto life. What must people around the world think of us as a result?

This has become the norm for our children, and it's shameful.