http://www.dailytribune.com/articles/2011/04/20/news/doc4daedecd154c1932590226.txt?viewmode=2I was disturbed to read that the school is thinking of sending the kid who brought the gun to another school for 180 days as discipline while the other parents are wanting metal detectors. What about holding the parents accountable? Do people not believe in parental responsibility any more?
It seems everywhere I turn over the past couple of days I hear about lack of parental responsibility or rather lack of parents thinking any kind of discipline or strictness is necessary with their kids. Yesterday a coworker told me she babysat for a child whose parents told her she was never to tell the child "no." If she encountered resistance she should talk with him about his feelings. I'm all for validating a kid's feelings, but don't people see that not expressing any disapproval of anything a kid does is setting the kid up for failure when he encounters disapproval in the world?
I also got together with some of my own extended family members over the weekend and learned that one of them who has teenage boys a) allows one son to be in his room with his girlfriend all the time with no supervision and paid for a hotel room for his son, girlfriend and friends to party in for prom and b) does not say anything when the other son's grandparents (the divorced mother's parents) throw him a 15 year birthday party complete with pot they have bought for him and his friends because that is "what he likes to do."
Lack of personal responsibility and any kind of standards or expectations for behavior or performance also seems to be getting reinforced in schools. Our school does virtually nothing about theft. It's treated as if it is just a problem you have to accept if you are the victim. And with the No Child Left Behind Act, my teacher friends tell me there is virtually no way for them to hold a child back a grade for poor performance. I volunteer in my kids' school and the children especially the older ones show no respect for adult parents in the classroom and think it is OK to talk over their teacher, talk during tests, etc.
I feel like the world is going to hell in a handbasket or else I'm getting to be a real old fuddy duddy, like old people were when I was young. Do you think it was always like this and back in the Roman Empire, Nero's (insert your tyrant of choice) relatives were sitting around thinking "boy, his parents are really spoiling him. He's going to end up a real tool."