Parenting

So I'm extremely worried about when children these days are our age and begin to carry responsibilities and do something with their lives.

I work in retail, so I get to see the highlights of every day parenting and let me tell you, some of it is down right frightening.

I get the over worried mom's who are buying M rated games for their son's who are afraid they're going to turn into a serial killer and bomb their school.

I even entered a conversation when one of my coworkers was bringing a mom up to my register about how she read an article about if you spank a child it can cause them to be less intelligent. I wanted to just laugh at the woman. The coworker and I both told them our mom's didn't put up with anything, and we were college students financially living on our own.
Her response: "Well, I just don't want to take any chances..."

You have the parents who let their child run crazy tearing things apart, spilling things on the floor, ripping bags open, and they're just pretending it's not happening around them.

Or the child who is screaming and the parent is just standing there yelling back to get over here and knock it off, obviously not having figured out you can't reason with a 2 year old.

~*~

Then on the other side, you have the parents who required their children to say "Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am." while speaking to me, and basically in military.

Today I saw parents making their 3-4 year old pay for his Wii game. They asked him to take the money out of his pocket and hand it to me and take the change and explained he only had $10 left.

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In school you can't use red ink on papers anymore, it's discouraging, and might upset a child for doing badly on a test.

There was a girl who came in with a dirty soccer uniform and I asked her if she won, and she said "I don't know, did we Daddy?" Sports basically make it so everybody is a winner, and losers don't feel like losers.

You can't put stress on a child or it might disrupt their growing patterns, and they may grow to have defects and not succeed as an adult.

You can't hit a child, they'll lose their intelligence.

You have to medicate your child if they're hyper.

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Basically, we're putting large bubbles over these children so they don't experience disappointment or fail at something.

What happens when they grow to be an adult and go to a job interview and don't get hired the first time.

What happens when they lose their job, or go to live on their own?

How do they plan to succeed college?

I really feel like we're setting our kids up to fail in society.

We're called the "Now Generation" where we want everything now and don't want to wait for anything.

How many kids do you think will understand the ability to have a savings and prepare for retirement?

How many people now do you think are capable of doing that?

I was brought up like this, and if I ever have children I will bring them up like this.

Personally I find it disgusting when children refer to their parents simply by their first name or nicknames. To me, that's simply unacceptable. The english language utterly lacks honorifics. It utterly lacks "-san" "-sama" "-chan" "-sempai", and even saying "sir" and "ma'am" makes a person sound like, as you put it, "basically in the military."



I'd say that was pretty touching, actually. The girl looks like she had fun rather than looking out for who won or lost. Kudos to the dad.

Yeah, but when I played sports as a kid, if you didn't win you went out for ice cream and the coach was the cheerleader that made you feel better. Don't worry, next time we'll try harder and win for sure!

It gave kids motivation to try harder and do better, and to me that's a good lesson kids should experience while growing up.

I agree with you for the most part. As someone who travels back and forth from the mother country to the US I must say the Now Generation is mostly prominent in the states.

As Obama said, violence is sometimes necessary.

I don't know much about the US, but Canada should definitely make parents able to hit their kids for discipline. I don't mean hit as in beat the crap out of your kids to give them permanent injuries, but beat them so that his physical state was not affected much, but his mental state changed from being hyper and disrespectful to scared and disciplined, so that he will know what is right and wrong.



I believe it is actually the opposite. Discipline teaches what is right and wrong when done by someone intelligent.

Ziggy we have the same worries, about the future of this world.
But the world will end in 2012, there should be no worries
I think it'd be best to stand up and tell them what is right and wrong, but if that doesn't work, we can just ignore them and concentrate more on our future and our children's future.

Yes, and now you're dating FPOD...this theory may have some merit. j/k.

Seriously though from my perspective spanking a child does nothing but teach them the way to deal with someone doing something you don't like is to use force. They may learn not to do whatever they were doing because it resulted in them feeling pain but we're human's not dogs so you're just as likely to end up teaching the kid that the problem was not what they did but that you found out. Then you just end up with sneaky bastards who beat people up when they disagree with them. Yay?

I too found the soccer story to be a good thing and not a bad one. Who cares about winning if everyone is happy? Especially if the result of winning or losing is nothing at all changes which is how sports works. Then again I suppose this point boils down to if you have a more socialist or capitalist viewpoint. If you see things one way then there is enough happiness to go around and one side is no more deserving to enjoy themselves just because they were better at the activity. The other way and the goal is the largest share of that happiness. The first way does less to encourage people to become good at things, the second ends up with grudges, feuds, and desires for vengeance. Personally I think the people who are losers are those that feel that someone has to be a loser in circumstances where there is nothing to be gained.

The "yes, mam" "no, mam" thing I find to be neither bad nor good. Teaching someone to follow a completely ordered lifestyle has about equally good and bad consequences. Mainly efficiency is prioritized over adaptability.

I have no idea what you found wrong with the parents teaching their kid how money works thing. Did you think it was too early for him? If so I think that's an error on your part. If someone is capable of understanding something there is no reason to avoid teaching them regardless of age.

The red ink thing is almost certainly not happening in most places, just places with too many ex-hippies.

Too much stress is bad for everyone especially those who are in their developing stages. What counts as too much stress though is probably way over the bar set by overprotective parents.

Medicating people who need to be medicated is not a bad thing. The problem is misdiagnosis. That's not really a problem with parents but with greedy/inept doctors and pharmaceutical companies.

It is a natural instinct to protect children. We're just more capable (even overly capable) of doing so now.

Yes, that generation of people under those theoretical circumstances would be set up to fail. But do you really think the teaching methods and societal customs of our generation weren't also setting ours up to fail?

I'm pretty sure kids growing up right now will end up one way or another understanding the importance of saving money. You know, what with their parents losing their jobs/houses/etc.

I think right now the problem is less to do with people being too dumb to save and more to do with people not having the money to save in the first place or having been lied to about the state of their savings/homes/etc. So really the question you should be asking is how do we think the younger generations will fare if we continue to let greedy bastards keep the majority of this country's money while also letting them push for lower standards of education? Or do you really think that all the parents out there that are too uneducated to make good decisions are dumb through working at being dumb?

I don't disagree with you about thinking things are heading in a bad direction concerning parenting. I just disagree with you about what the right direction is and felt the need to point out why I think things are going in the direction they are currently.

Edit: I am surprised you didn't mention how damn rude most kids are these days. Some of the filthiest cussing I've heard has come casually from the mouths of kids about 1/3rd my age and they act as if they have no logical reason to even pay attention to advice from their elders.

Edit 2: As I pointed out in the latest abortion thread, I think potential parents should have to prove their ability to raise children decently before being allowed to have them.

Just to catch up on some things, I was listing things from both scales

The no ma'am yes ma'am thing isn't too bad, I just was pointing out it seems to go from one end of the scale to the other.

The soccer thing, I think I came across too appalled by the fact she didn't know she won or lost. She was very cute, regardless, but it's kind of 'aww... you didn't know if you won?'

I don't see what's wrong with giving kids ambition to work hard to obtain something, but that's slowly going away with the 'now generation'

The money thing, I'm always amused when parents are going through the process of teaching their children how to deal with money. It's a stage everyone goes through, and while I fully support that. I think the kid needs to learn to speak and spell and count before holding money in his pockets and being told to pay for things and being taught to hold onto money and not lose it.

And I have to disagree on the medication thing. Schools tend to be very pushy when it comes to medication. They try to diagnose kids all the time with shit and push parents to take action on it by getting medication.

It's a problem alright. The attitude that I've seen at schools is just not right.

Sure, it's fine telling children that as long as they tried their best then it's alright. But there are losers in competition. You should strive to be the best, competing is simply in our nature and taking away the fear of losing isn't something that should be done.

Really it's exemplified quite well at the school my younger half sister goes to. She lives with my dad down in Texas (I do not live with 'em now, but I did for a time.)

She plays soccer, and in that league there are winners and not losers, but learners.

I may be taking a harsher view on this, but what the hell is the point of playing if not to win? You should make it so they want to win, not reward failure. All that will do is make adults who are pushovers.

I've had conversations with my dad and a few of the other adults around the whole soccer thing when I lived there, so I had a specific example. :P

Obligatory wall-o-text tagged for your convenience.

On the one hand it's really none of my business how other people raise their kids. on the other, those kids are going to grow up and run this country into the ground. in the end there's nothing i can do about it either, because people are going to raise their kids the way they think is right. even if they should never have had kids in the first place.

you need a license to drive a car, but any idiot can have kids.

Nah, my soccer coach was a dick.
When I was 6, he'd throw stuff at the people who didn't play good, and yell at the parents afterwards.

But then I looked back on it, and lol'd.

Well I'am just a college student but. . .
Some parents have children even if they don't want to. What I'am saying is the parents today are not prepared for children. We should let our children have fun (within reason please) for the duration of their youth. And don't expect your dream child to be him/her. Some parents raise their children just for being the best thus All work and no play made their child a corporate zombie.

n their teens is where you should enforce all the values, because this is the molding period. It's better to start early for preparing him/her for the future. They will hate you for it now, and thank you later. But don't force the values into his mind, It won't register. I was like this once, I hated my parents for making me do the chores, Only when I started living alone I realized chores helped me become independent.

Oh and yes hitting a child will cause "some" stupidity. It's also said that children that where hit has a tendency to become the school bully. Please don't hit your child, they will just become more stubborn. On the topic of punishment, don't ever make "limiting" a punishment, I go for the old-school grounding.

Damn, I'am beginning to think about this stuff seriously. I'am still in college and I still have some freedom. Better make the best of it. Cheers to a single life!

Care to provide some proof to back up that argument?

You have to let your children experience some things on their own, for better or for worse. Shelter a kid too much and they'll dabble in everything once they are old enough to be independent and will be completely overwhelmed to the point of harming themselves. That said, you can't be too lax either. Parents need to find that comfortable middle ground with their children. You have to know when to let things slide, and when to crack the whip. No one can tell you where that point is either, because it varies given every individual situation, child and parent.

Quite frankly I know for a fact that I'm not willing to go through that hassle, but I never plan on having children. Until I feel comfortable making those decisions I never will.

As for "spanking" a child, I don't really have much opinion on it. My mother spanked me growing up, but my father made sure she never did it in public. It is all to easy to be reported to a child protective services branch for something as seemingly minor, and perhaps innocent, as that. I do know I resented my mother for ever spanking me, my father never spanked me and I don't remember ever resenting him on a long-term basis. Then again, that's just my personal experience.

WALL OF FUCKING TEXT!!


There is a lot of talk about whether violent video games and movies can cause the child to be violent. This is actually not totally untrue, but that is not the fault of the games but of the parents lack of communicating with the child, explaining and showing how the real world works and help them be able to separate fiction from reality. When a child grows up it learns how to act from th influences around it; mostly its parents, but also from friends, teachers and other grown ups, but also from other things that show them a version of how the world works; movies, books, video games etc.

Now, the fact that people panic over this and think that playing GTA will make you kid a bully in school and then a violent criminal when he grows up is retarded. A human child Can reason and think logically, and if it is brought up with love, told and shown how a good person acts, that will have a much greater impact on the child than any video game. Something that is good is to actually follow the Age Regulations on movies/games until a child is mature enough not to be too influenced and affected by the content of the media. Not telling to force your child to watch teletubbies until he/she's 18 (damn, that'd probably make it a psychopath if anything), but letting it play RapeLay at the age of 5 isn't a really good idea either.

Point being; what you teach your child, and if you do it in a proper way will have a much larger impact on its behavior and reasoning when it grows up than any video game.


I have never been hit by my parents. It might be since it is against the law where I am from, but more likely it is because they think it is wrong. Not being hit by them have most likely not made me more stupid, nor more intelligent. That is just superstition, and a truly retarded one. Nor have I been pampered or gotten everything I pointed at; with a family of 6, with 2 older siblings, most of my stuff was handed down to me, and having a younger brother that required more care than me when I grew up a little probably helped me in learning how to care for myself. My parents has been angry with me, and I have done stupid stuff as I grew up, getting yelled at and punished in a way that taught me what I should and should not do, but they have, as I said, Never resorted to physical punishment.

If you think you need to hit your child for it to "learn and be brought up in a proper way", then I pity you. Clearly your parent could not show you what was right or wrong or how to take care of yourself since they did not have the intelligence to do so and had to resort to violence. Or maybe they were just lazy, but that is all the same. Some of you might think that violence helps to give you the respect you need to have for you parents, but I think that you are confusing respect with the fear of getting hit. That is Not the same thing. Also, mutual respect is an important factor in raising a child, and hitting someone that is so helpless as a small child is disgusting. To be honest, if I had been hit as a child, I would have hit them back.


I can't see why anyone would want their child to call them ma'am, but I do not think that is something anyone should consider a problem, since it does not matter. It is good to be able to call someone in a respectful way at any rate. I want my children to call me Dad, but that is just my preference.

Also, about the Wii thing, are you sure the parents did not give him their money and just let him pay for the game to teach him how to pay in a store? Sounds likely to me.


Well, this is just silly and over thinking. Imho it is better if the child gets a bit upset and thus try harder the next time; it is the parents duty to make sure that the child does not lose hope completely and support and help it reach the goal instead.


Also silly. Life is a contest. There are losers and there are winners. Sometimes it matters, mostly it don't. To teach your child not to take a loss too hard is also the duty of a parent, and the same goes for teaching it to be modest even if it wins.


Stress is bad, that is self-explanatory. Some stress might help you preform better, but too much will disrupt everything in your life, and as a child, this might also follow you when you grow up.

Already talked about hitting a child, it is unnecessary and stupid, and makes me question if you are really fit to be a parent at all. There are much better ways to teach your children respect.

"Hyper" is something many children are and should be, that is a part of being a child, having the energy to run around doing fun stuff. I'm a computer nerd, but I actually do think that children should play more outside, run around and be crazy.
Then ofc, "hyper" can also mean ADHD or summin like that, which makes the child having problems with concentration etc.


I agree that many children now days are to pampered and do not learn the stuff that they need to succeed in life and to be able to live by themselves, have a family, a job etc. Parents are doing a bad job in preparing their children for the future. Yes, I agree with you, so I will just say some things I concluded after typing all this.
I think children should be allowed to be children for as long as possible. That does not mean that they should be allowed to go crazy, be disrespectful against their surroundings and all, but that they should be allowed to play as much as they need.

Parents should not resort to violence to teach their children respect, there are other ways that works much better. The "Stick and the Carrot" is a method that always works, on everything =) But a child should as I said be allowed to be a child and should not be forced down with rules and stuff like that either. Moderation is always best.

To teach a child how the real world works, do not leave it on its own to get impressions from all and everything that does not display a accurate reality. Do not either be afraid to let them imagine, forbidding them to play games and see violent movies will most likely only make it harder for them to handle some situations in the future. rules should be taught so that they are respected, not forced down their throat.

I might come up with something a little longer/more on-topic later :P, but just to focus on the issue of medication, I really wasn't aware of the sort of situation in the US that FPOD experienced, nor I guess that it went that far back. I mean, I went to a primary school in a pretty run-down area, and there were loads of kids with supposed 'ADHD' (proof, if anything, that 90% of diagnoses are bullshit, and a lot of it is parenting), and I was friends with pretty much all of them. Not one took medication, as far as I'm aware; one of my best mates was adopted, and lived with foster parents on a farm specifically because it gave him stuff to do and space to let off some steam. There was a 'special education needs co-ordinator' who would diagnose kids in the school but then kept a check on them, and would be called in to calm them down if shit went down (and it did on a number of occasions - chairs being thrown, climbing on tables etc. For the most part, or so I remember thinking, it was over-reaction on their part over justified grievances). There were also rewards of sweets at the end of the day for sitting up straight, answering questions and generally behaving, and half an hour of free time on Fridays which could be deducted for bad behaviour over a week.

It didn't work all of the time, and I know having caught up with people that it didn't much improve their education, but it placated troublemakers and kept a decent learning environment for everyone else, without drugs. Maybe it's just the NHS/private divide meaning we can't afford the stuff, but if so, that's surely some quality cost-cutting.

I saw it on Discovery, and what argument? Half of my post was just opinion. (I can be wrong, I can be right)

Authoritative meta-analysis of >300 studies, flawless 290 cit-score (A-journals):

Thank you kindly Gibbous. I've made a note of it and edited my post.