[Buzz123]

Originally Posted by lvkewlkid

First of all, what the hell is a family-friendly suburb?

A family can be raised anywhere...except an active adult community...

I was just about to ask that same question. The same with schools. What is a good school and what is a bad school? I'm gonna go wayyy out on a limb here and open myself up to more vicious attacks, but:

It seems to me, as I have followed the history of this that it is the schools that have been a pawn in creating most of the social problems that we now see in every city in the country. When you see such massive problems like we see everyday in every town, the logical thing to ask is what changed?

What changed was that we got off course in the late 50's and early 60's with two things. At great risk of being called a racist by certain people who don't actually try to understand what I'm saying, I'll just say that school integration wasn't handled the way it was intended. I have nothing against integration, even though by the mere mention of the word there are people who will blow that all out of proportion. But I never did understand when I was growing up why there was a separate school for the same black children that were my friends on the softball diamond or basketball court. But, anyway, when Ike finally got integration going he still didn't make sure it met the goals that were intended of raising the social and educational standards of poor black children. At least that's the reason they were giving us in the early 1950s for integration; that by allowing poor blacks to mingle with middle class whites whatever those whites had going for them (I wasn't exactly in a middle class family myself but I had friends who were), it was supposed to rub off on the black kids. Since middle class whites obviously had better opportunities than blacks were allowed to have in those days, the idea might have been a noble one but it wasn't handled right in any way shape or form.

But that is only a small part of what caused the major problems we have today of more drug use, more crime, kids shooting up their schools, etc.

Part of the problem is we didn’t examine the changes. Too many people that are alive today and raising families have no idea what this country was like before the 60's, so they have no standard to go by. But many of us remember a time when people had self respect and would rather die than suffer the public humiliation that they would face if they got caught using drugs; taking guns to school; committing vicious crimes; or generally acting up the way they do today, especially if they were a girl. Decency was considered a big deal then.

But that all changed when psychiatry got a foothold in the schools. Without getting into details, Psychiatry is responsible for the pushing of mind altering drugs on our kids. One detail I will pass along is that when they came up with acid it was supposed to be to give psych students an idea of what it was like to have a psychotic break. In other words...crazy. People thought that because it took twelve years of schooling to make a psych that they must be experts in the field of the mind, so naturally they were welcomed into the schools. No one noticed that in twelve years they still couldn’t tell you what sanity was, let alone agree on insanity.

Of course I don't think it was known by educators until it was too late that the APA had decided right after WW II to get into the schools in order to put an end to this crazy concept that people had of right and wrong. After all they were the only arbiters of what was right and what was wrong and they had a vested interest in having people come to them for the answer to that.

So now kids are taught very carefully, if not necessarily openly, that if their parents try to teach them right from wrong...in other words use discipline…it's child abuse; and like the Hitler Youth of Nazi Germany, they are supposed to turn the parents into be arrested. At the same time, they let the parents know that if they don't discipline the kids that is child neglect and parents are threatened with losing the kids to the state. The result is frustration and the result of frustration is either madness, or apathy.

And, while they are screwing with a parent's right to raise their own children they were also screwing with the whole process of education...anyone remember new math, and those other silly ideas of the 60’s and 70s? Now we have an awful lot of people on drugs that never learned right from wrong, nor did they learn to read and write (look at how some of the posts here are written if you don't believe it).

Now they are forcing parents to drug their own kids or face criminal charges. The drugs are the problem, they don't solve the problem. Every kid who ever shot up a school was on psychotropic drugs which made them crazy. We are supposed to think the kid was crazy before he was forced to take those drugs which have been proven time and again to cause suicide tendencies. But it was the other way around. The kid had study problems so instead of teachers helping him learn, they drugged him to make him quiet.

Anyway, this is too long even though I could go on all night about the evils of those who we trusted to do something about mental health but instead used it against us in order to create their own job security. And I know that so many of you have somebody that you think is leading a better life now that they have been turned into a vegetable by drugs, and you were made to believe that there just was no other way…a big lie by psychs in order to protect their vested interests…that you will scream and holler at me for saying this stuff. How dare I? Because I have studied the documented evidence. Ask yourself this; wouldn't it be logical to try and cure someone's insanity instead of just trying to keep them quiet with drugs, destroying their brains with electrical shocks, or by chopping out parts of their brains? Isn’t that insane of psychs to do that stuff?

Psychiatry is why people have to ask if a neighborhood is safe or if a school is a good one. The answer is no to both. But we could change that. Outlaw psychiatry.

[radraja]

I find it kind of ironic that so many people think that kids here end up "worse" than they would anywhere else.

I've lived here and in the Chicago suburbs, I've gone to high school in both settings - teens actually get into more trouble there than they do here.

[radraja]

As for the "sex appeal" aspect of the city...so what? In this day and age, kids are going to be exposed to sex regardless of whether or not they live here. And young kids typically don't go to strip very often anyway.

Some people might be worried about the city's affect on teenagers, but those people are extremely naive if they think that living in another city will make teens less interested in partying on the strip when they're 21. If anything, living here in Vegas makes teenagers less interested in the Strip, because we're so used to it. It doesn't hold that same appeal for us.

[Buzz123]

Originally Posted by radraja

I find it kind of ironic that so many people think that kids here end up "worse" than they would anywhere else.

I've lived here and in the Chicago suburbs, I've gone to high school in both settings - teens actually get into more trouble there than they do here.

I was born and raised in a town of 30,000 in the hills of West Virginia. It was a lot like Mayberry. When I left there in 1964 use of drugs was practically unknown. In the mid 80s I decided that I wanted my 13 year old son to experience that life so I sent him to spend a summer with relatives. I later found out that the kids in the neighborhood had taught him to smoke marijuana.

Back when I lived there serious crimes happened about every three to five years and were talked about for decades afterwords as there wasn't much else exciting going on to talk about. Now I see in the news that crime there is as frequent as anywhere else proportionate to the population which has decreased now to about 14,000. Crime is everywhere in proportion to the population because no matter what group you are talking about, 2½% of that group is going to be trouble.

[olecapt]

I graduated from high school in 1958...should have in 1957 but messed around for a year...joined the army that sort of thing.

When I was in high school we also did not use pot or other drugs of that sort. However we drank like fish. Every social occasion in high school involved booze. Even in catholic school drinking was rampant. And we virtually all smoked from early teens on. Carried the pack rolled up in the sleeve of your tee shirt.

We fought pretty well continuosly. Over girls. over slights...imagined or real..or just for the hell of it. On one occasion a guy came out of a car with a bicycle chain I think intending to whack me with it. My brother was standing behind him with a coke in the bottle. My brother did the right thing and kicked off a brawl of epic proportions that actually went on for a month or so.

I guess my Mayberry was a little different than Buzz's.

[Lola Granola]

If you are active in your kids' lives and maintain close, strong ties to them, you can raise them anywhere. If both parents work 100 hours a week and you depend on the schools to take your place, then you cannot successfully raise them no matter where you live.

As far a Vegas being somehow "different" then other cities, I've seen billboards just as risque in the Detroit area. And if you think the Midwest avoids a lot of problems, Omaha, NE has the highest syphilis rate in the nation. You can't take your kids in to get your car registered with you because the walls are plastered with STD posters.

The key to raising children is being a PARENT and actually RAISING them. The article posted above quotes a heartbroken parent who is blaming a city for his own personal failure. If you put career ahead of family, your kids will suffer for it no matter where you are.

[Lola Granola]

To actually answer the OP's question, we're in Summerlin, in the Willows area, and we are just delighted with it. There's a beautiful community pool, shopping is close (we spend a lot of time at Borders), there's a nice library a couple blocks away, Red Rock Canyon is about 15 minutes away, the neighbors we've met are nice... there's nothing negative at all that I can think of. North of us is a sports complex with a fencing academy that we'll get the kids started in this fall. It also offers soccer and a wide range of other sports.

We take walks almost every evening and see lots of people from the neighborhood out walking also, many walking their dogs. Everyone is very friendly.

[lvkewlkid]

Originally Posted by Lola Granola

If you are active in your kids' lives and maintain close, strong ties to them, you can raise them anywhere. If both parents work 100 hours a week and you depend on the schools to take your place, then you cannot successfully raise them no matter where you live.

As far a Vegas being somehow "different" then other cities, I've seen billboards just as risque in the Detroit area. And if you think the Midwest avoids a lot of problems, Omaha, NE has the highest syphilis rate in the nation. You can't take your kids in to get your car registered with you because the walls are plastered with STD posters.

The key to raising children is being a PARENT and actually RAISING them. The article posted above quotes a heartbroken parent who is blaming a city for his own personal failure. If you put career ahead of family, your kids will suffer for it no matter where you are.

What's wrong with kids seeing STD posters? It is good that they know what it is, so they don't go around being ignorant and possible spreading the diseases...

[WOHR]

"What's wrong with kids seeing STD posters? It is good that they know what it is, so they don't go around being ignorant and possible spreading the diseases..."

I honestly don't see my 5 and 8 year old kids spreading STD's, I'd rather wait a few more years before I start explaining all of that stuff. And for a 5 year old I would think that ignorance is bliss. Just wait till you have little kids someday and they start asking you all of those delightful questions, like those darn male enhancement commercials on tv

[jfkIII]

Another (recent) story for parents to read:

Las Vegas SUN: Readers want to help, but their truth hurts (broken link)