Wow !!! It's Friday Already !!!

[Dawn309]

I agree with a lot that has been said here today. I do know that being raised by a single parent who had to work 2 jobs most of the time after my parents divorced does not mean a child is going to turn out badly. Mom raised 4 kids by herself, mostly, having to rely on us to do as she said. Times were very different then. We lived in a very small town in New England too where everyone knew everyone. If you were seen doing something wrong, I guarantee you Mom was getting a phone call telling on you. That was aggravating, but we also felt safe. Cities and towns are so different now. Neighbors don't do much more than nod and say Hi. People don't watch out for each other and each other's kids. I think kids feel much more isolated now.

I also agree kids get too many things now. Chuck and I were guilty of giving our kids too much because our parents had it so hard. We wanted our kids to have more than we did. The kids were disciplined but they were also spoiled rotten. Chuck and I have paid for that many times. Our kids raised their kids much more leniently than we did and they do not have the respect for people or authority that we did. I think parents need to go back to less is more with thing and discipling for disrespect and misbehavior. I think the child learns more that way.

Off my soap box now, too.

[BarbaraRose]

Well, turns out this whole thing is hitting close to home here. The guy grew up just down the street from me here in Rancho Penasquitos. He graduated from the same high school that my roommate's daughter just graduated from.
I heard helicopters flying overhead this morning and was wondering what was going on. Once I got to work, I found out that his family lives in my neighborhood and the news media were swarming the area. We had two news crews parked right outside the salon interviewing people at the coffee shop next door. So lots of talk about it at work today. Such a senseless and tragic situation. I feel for his family as much as the families of the victims. People around here say that the family is very nice and friendly and everyone is shocked by what happened. This area is a very nice upper middle class neighborhood. So for whatever reason, this kid just snapped, altho some said he was always quiet and didn't have a lot of friends. So who knows...

[Nasoosie]

Fascinating to read all the ideas and opinions this morning.....it's good to tax our brains now and then, and try to fathom reasons and 'fixes' for the ails of our free society. Can we teach our representatives in the government to do this??!!

A parenting salary could be Welfare re-vamped to actually require a human to be knowledgeable via training classes which would include how to teach kids to feel compassion, respect, and love for each other. These classes would open up jobs for the teachers and, hopefully, teach people who were brought up to believe that more is better when it comes to property, rather than love and time spent playing, interacting, respecting, and loving each other. The classes could be required of the parents along with their kids, hence allowing the "socialization" argument for day care to be a successful and knowledgeable reality, rather than just tossing kids into a group with not half enough supervision and love and training to "learn how to play with each other." Too many of those kids learn how to manipulate both adults and their peers to get what they want when they want it----my opinion. I have watched that happen. Granted, our Welfare system has been around for some time now, and has been abused into uselessness by many people. I think that those who actually use it to allow them to be better parents are those who were raised by at-home parents and learned the skills so badly needed to be parents who raise healthy, compassionate, loving members of our free society. The boost of that money for food and heating bills, etc. allows those single parents, or both working parents, to keep their heads above water.

The problem with "If you can't afford kids, don't have them" is that hardly anybody can afford kids these days, and yet they sure aren't stopping having them. Then, to boot, they have to depend on others to raise them, either in foster care, cheap, uncaring day-care places as both parents have to work in order to feed the family, or they simply give up and kill them one way or another. However, I can also see where some 'enterprising' folks would use the incentive of a salary to be a stay-at-home parent to have a slew of kids just to get the money. It is surely a dilemma no matter how we look at it. I was lucky to have a stay-at-home mother, and I was also lucky enough to have been able to be one myself, although it meant losing my acreditation with NY State Dept. of Education as I took 10 years off to get the kids up to school age so I could return to teaching. (After 10 years, all the grad credits I had earned were tossed out as being "too old" and I couldn't afford to retake them all at that time in our family's history. I needed a Master's Degree in order to regain my full-time teaching position somewhere.) Do I regret that I was forced to retire as a teaching assistant rather than a full-time teacher? I would not have given up those crucial early years with my kids for any amount of money compensation in the world. Am I bitter about NY State's rulings? You bet your butt I am!

Parenting and teaching, right along with nursing and doctoring, are among the most noble and critical professions in our society. All should be honored and respected and taught with care and with the health of our society in mind.

Not all parents have the wherewithall to raise happy, healthy, well-balanced kids, and not all poor parents will raise angry, bitter, off-balanced kids who are a threat to our society. Of course there are exceptions to all rules. However, given the history of kids growing up on their own, or in poorly-run day-care situations, or in families who use possessions to mean love and comfort rather than the use of love, caring, and respect for each other, something is not working out there. Working eight or more hours a day at intensely stressful jobs, picking up kids from day care, trying to put together a healthy supper rather than going to McDonalds, calming down kids who were without parents all day long, trying to establish loving connections with all, then clean-up from supper, bedtime rituals (many of which now lack one-on-one time and story-book reading and intimate discussions of the day), getting the kids to sleep, and then falling into bed, only to repeat the next morning for at least 5 days, is not conducive to a happy, healthy family. Our ancestors worked just as hard as we do now, granted, but our kids were alongside us, for the most part, participating and learning from us. Who they are learning from now, and what they are learning while being "socialized" in those groups, is downright scary-----my opinion.

These discussions are good for our brains, whether we like to try to contribute or just read and contemplate! It's too easy today to sit back and say, "Oh well." And I have always loved trying to support ideas and feelings while encountering oppostion, as it makes me think through things and sometimes discover how off-target I was. I hope I never get to the point where I would try to say "I am right, period." This is what living in a society is all about-----being able to converse, and, when necessary, compromise for the benefit of all. Learning what goes on in other's brains has always fascinated me!

More coffee!!