Parental Guidance is Suggested

I'm worried about children these days, and their future.

And it's not because of global warming, or pollution, or Social Security, or anything of that nature.

It's because of the values being taught these children, or lack thereof. Parental skills seem to be in decline. I'm not sure whether it's the lack of punishment being given, the general disinterest parents seem to have in their children's lives, or some other reason.

Much of this comes just from daily observations, and from firsthand accounts. My contributor could probably tell you a ton of stories from his place of business, mainly consisting of parents showing up late to pick up their kids, and how little they seem to care that they showed up late. I particularly enjoyed the one about the guy who showed up late out of spite. (Maybe we can get him to tell it one day)

A trip to the movies also provides much of this evidence. For example let's take my viewing of Superman Returns. The theater was not crowded, so I took a pretty nice seat near the middle. Later comes a man and his boy of, oh let's say 7 or 8. We had only started the trailers when the boy began commenting on what he was seeing. Okay, I can live with that, just as long as he knows to respect other people when the movie starts.

So on comes the "please be quiet" promo that begins every movie, and the film begins - along with the boy's comments. The boy apparently thought he was recording a DVD commentary for the movie. "Is that Superman?" "Is that Lex Luthor?" "Look at the dog!" "Look at the farm!" Each comment would end with the father giving a polite "shh" and the boy would say "okay" to his father, before waiting a whole 15 seconds to begin talking again. "Shh" was the only effort this man was making, even after he definitely began noticing my annoyance. At one point he even said something about me to the boy. The boy didn't care. He kept talking, and I moved in a huff.

Even a good 4 or 5 rows up, I still heard the comments. Angry stares were being made by the people around me. Eventually, the talking stopped. Whether this was because the boy got bored, or because the father actually showed some parenting and had a talk with his son, who knows. The point is, the boy should know better, and the father should take a more active role.

Not that it's always the kids at fault at the movies. Too many times do I see parents take kids into R-rated movies with no regard to the fact that the MPAA says about R-rated movies, "hey, we REALLY don't recommend this movie for anyone under 17." Oh, and taking babies in to a movie, brilliant. Especially at a midnight screening. My first screening of Spider-Man 2 was marred by what seemed to be a crowd of 50% crying children. At one point, riled, I loudly exclaimed, "Oh, I might as well join in. WAAAAH! WAAAAH!" Ask my brother and his wife. They'll gladly admit to this, and to their embarrassment of my outburst.

There's also rarely a time I go shopping that I don't see or hear some bad parenting. Kids going around knocking stuff down, screaming all the while. And the parents just sit there, doing nothing.

Well, why not punish these misbehaving children? Ah-ah, not so fast. In this politically correct society, any kind of physical discipline is frowned upon. Some of it is even viewed as child abuse! While I CERTAINLY don't laugh at the idea of child abuse - I do laugh at the fact that there are uptight people out there who see some mild spanking as "child abuse." Because guess what, my generation and probably every generation before as suffered much worse. I'm happy I got the "belt" treatment that me and my siblings got, after hearing what's happened to generations before. Now that's some tough love.

Do these people actually think that talking to the child and telling them they've done something wrong, and actually getting them to understand they've done something wrong, will solve things? As Bill Cosby said in Himself, "kids have the brain damage." If you tell them not to eat the cookie, and get them to agree to not eat the cookie, 2 minutes later, they're still going to eat the cookie. You've got to throw some discipline in every now and then. After hearing my dad coming up the stairs, removing his belt, I sure as hell wasn't going to do whatever I did, again. :)

Not that I'm saying kids get a beating, no. But this touchy-feely psychological style of parenting isn't going to work, either. With my parent's style, I turned out fairly well, I think. I respect other people and have compassion for other people's plights. Which is more than I can say about other people I've met and known.

And if I might take a page out of another work.. a comic book, believe it or not. I'm going to close with a bit of dialogue from Ultimate Spider-Man, where Peter Parker is talking about a misbehaving schoolmate. I think it sums things up rather nicely (thanks to Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley).

Sure, now he's just one of those guys, who likes to bust on everyone. Takes his shots, gives a wedgie, dumps a bucket of something on someone, and everyone laughs. Just jokes, right? He gets to say whatever he wants because he has a basketball jacket and a nice haircut. Because in this world, I guess all you need is a nice haircut. But here's the thing..he's going to grow up. He's going to become a man. And because you have rewarded him for his behavior year after year, because his parents don't seem to care, because all he knows now is that it's okay to act this way, to treat people like this.. he's going to grow up into a full-grown, greedy, mean, selfish liar. The world is full of them. The world is being run by them. And your "friend" is one of them. You need to learn it fast. This is the world.. good people don't get to be happy. We just sit and wait for one of these evil two-faced, greedy liars to step on our heads.

Truer words were never spoken. Let's hope this generation of kids and parents can turn things around.