| Author |
Message |
    
Musicme
| | Posted on Monday, March 26, 2001 - 10:43 am: |     |
Ashear: good points
Look at the Taliban's idea of "zero tolerance".
EB1154:
There is no going back to the good 'ol days. There never has been and there never will be. We can only move forward.
The big difference between now and then is the advent of the ready avialability of weapons. particularly automatic weapons.
I recently went on a business trip to Georgia - just outside of Atlanta, and had some time to dispose of - and so stopped in a pawnshop. I was amazed at the arsenal available to me to buy. We're talking AK-47's, rocket launchers, grenades, sawed-off shotguns. I asked what sort of ID they needed, they looked at me like"you ain't from around here are you...you need cash!"
Don't get me wrong, I attend service each week, I have 3 kids in the local schools and I teach them civic and moral lessons daily by the example I set. I limit what they can watch and what they can play, but it still doesn't stop by son from chewing his sandwich into a gun and going "bang!"
My point is that there's really no return to them good 'ol days. We can try to reform, but it doesn't need to be a knee-jerk reaction to the percieved threat. You want to stop kids from shooting each other, take away the guns. Otherwise they just pray before they pull the trigger. |
Nakaille
| | Posted on Monday, March 26, 2001 - 10:57 am: | |
Ashear, please translate your last line for those of us who are Latin-impaired (despite having taken 2 philosophy courses!)
Your points are very well stated and well-taken.
I think respect is very important, too, for all of us. My child is only 4 but she uses Mr., Ms. or Mrs. for adults outside our immediate circle. But that's just the surface, in my opinion. Much more important than these forms of address, I think, is our demand that she respect us, herself, her peers, etc. And we also demand of ourselves to be respectful to one another, to her, and to people we speak of in front of her, including strangers. A very recent example of how this works at home: My 4 year old and I disagreed insistently about an event that had occurred earlier. I soon learned that her memory of it was, in fact, more accurate than mine. I apologized to her when I realized my error. She said, "That's all right, Mama. We're all wrong sometimes." I loved it. That was the lesson in it for both of us.
I think that modeling respect for others, including others who are quite different from ourselves, is very key in how our children perceive their place in the world.
Bacata |
Ashear
| | Posted on Monday, March 26, 2001 - 11:09 am: | |
Bacata - "After this, therefore because of this." It is a common logical fallacy in which people confuse coincidence (meaning that two things coincide temporally) with causality. (By the way there is a typo in my original post - its proctor, not procter.) |
Curmudgeon
| | Posted on Monday, March 26, 2001 - 12:54 pm: | |
Ashear et al.:
It's not procter or proctor. The correct word there is propter. |
Eb1154
| | Posted on Monday, March 26, 2001 - 5:55 pm: | |
Everyone seems to want to address the gun issue, so lets do exactly that. Were there no guns in the "good ol days"? Yes, there were. Is the reason we have more shootings today because there are more guns? Or is it the way these kids were brought up? In my days of school (in Jersey City, in the 80's)we had plenty of access to guns and other weapons, but we knew the conscequences of our actions and knew that using a gun or weapon was way over the line. We were taught morals and respect. And that is what my orignal post was all about.
I'm all in favor of strict gun laws, hell get rid of guns completely. I have no use for guns at all. (I can't believe I'm going to say this, but) Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Musicme, do you think it just became legal to buy these weapons? If anything has become a little harder now, so why all the shootings now. "Other wise they just pray before they pull the trigger", that's not an answer. The question is why are they going to pull the trigger now when we didn't back then?
Gotta go, but I'll be back. |
Uncleelmer
| | Posted on Monday, March 26, 2001 - 6:52 pm: | |
Eb, growing up in the 80's as you did I have to agree with you. When a kid had a problem with another kid they would just fight it out and that would be the end of it. No one back then even thought of getting a gun and going after the other person. What has changed so much in society today that our children have to resort to violence with guns. |
Cbbk
| | Posted on Monday, March 26, 2001 - 8:40 pm: | |
EB,
The laws that protect children from abuse/neglect are the same laws that are used against parents when they discipline their own children. When parents try to discipline (and I don't mean beat the kid senseless but take away things of enjoyment or confine the child to their home etc.) many kids will threaten to call DYFS, some even do make the call. Parents no longer hold authority over their own children. There seem to be less accountability from a child today and if you implement accountability and consequences, you as a parent could be in serious trouble.
Yet, parents are accountable for their children's actions, seems like a catch 22 to me. |
Nakaille
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 5:43 am: | |
As a former DYFS worker I have to weigh in here: Discipline is one thing and abuse is quite another. (And neglect is another issue, too.) If your child can intimidate you by merely threatening to call DYFS you are not offering them discipline. Discipline, by the way, is loving guidance backed up by appropriate ("logical" is one method) consequences. It is not punching your kid in the face or the spleen or using them as a verbal whipping post.
In my tenure as a child protective service worker I had to remove 2 children from their parents. One was a kid whose mother whipped him with a cord and threatened to kill him because he didn't clean the house well enough. I photographed the marks on his body. Mom had a history of having stabbed a former husband in the stomach with a screwdriver causing serious injury so I knew she was capable of serious violence. The other child was a baby girl being literally starved to death by her mother's refusal/inability to hold her because she didn't want to "spoil" the kid. So the baby wouldn't eat. (There was enough food and formula in the house.) Each time the child was hospitalized (for malnutrition) she ate just fine and gained weight appropriately.
So I don't buy the "DYFS defense" for inadequate parenting. No one's going to take your kid because you gave them a time out or took away the nintendo for a while. If you believe this, your kids have really got you snowed!
Bacata |
Melidere
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 9:47 am: | |
I think it's all rooted in the culture as it's been interpreted by the largest generation in history, the baby boomers. They started out with 'don't trust anyone over thirty' and in their zeal to make things better, everyone who didn't agree with them was the 'enemy'.
So we slowly model for our children a complete lack of respect for those who disagree with us.
A lack of respect for human life naturally follows from the demonization of everyone we deem to be on the 'other side'.
Gore isn't fighting for a 'fair count' he is STEALING the election. We point nasty, hateful fingers at others at the slightest provocation...ending in rants about 'parenting' and culminating in 'road rage'.
The legacy of the baby boom generation is that it is not acceptable to 'hate' blacks, but it is acceptable to HATE a whole host of other people...politicians, other drivers, smokers, mothers who work, people who support gun laws, people who don't.
The bottom line is that the generation that sharpened it's teeth on a lack of respect for authority or anyone else is incapable of teaching it.
And it's all downhill from there.
imho |
Cbbk
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 1:08 pm: | |
Nakaille,
I am not criticizing the system at all, and I agree beating, neglect etc is wrong!!!! Children subjected to that type of environment need help.
What I am stating is basically kids today are more aware of how to get over on parents. I have also seen some parents wrongfully accused of abuse/neglect by DYFS because an outsider saw something they did not like, the parents were eventually exonorated. I believe the people at DYFS have an extremely hard position. Right or wrong it is not for me to decide.
I feel that kids today have less respect for authority figures, parents, teachers, police, fire and themselves, etc. How to solve this problem, I have no idea, I do however, try to influence my own children, by teaching respect (giving and getting).
Where was that respect lost? Is there a way to get it back? |
Jem
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 1:23 pm: | |
Just to illustrate that the teaching of politeness and respect are not a lost art, I was at the Rite Aid in South Orange, standing on line behind a mother and her son, who appeared to be, perhaps, two and a half. The little boy was pulling out candy bars from the display, showing them to his mom and discussing them (to the extent that such a little guy is able), and putting them back until finally he chose one that his mom agreed he could have. Throughout the process, he was saying "Please, mommy, may I have this?", and "Thank you, Mommy" when he got what he wanted. I was absolutely knocked out by this polite little fellow, and told his mom so as I left. She responded "It's something we work on." The work appears to be paying off. |
Mem
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 3:51 pm: | |
I was at McDonald's in Penn Station (don't ask). I saw a woman treating her son (five, maybe six years old) with more impatience and cruelty than I have ever seen in my life, from slapping and cursing him, to ordering food for herself and not for him. The whole place was stunned into silence, and she just didn't care. When she turned her back on this little boy, the look he gave her had more malice and hurt than an adult could even have. How could years of that kind of treatment ever produce a respectful or loving child? Do we blame society for producing parents like this...or is it more likely a case of the chicken and the egg? |
Njjoseph
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 3:58 pm: | |
Mem, if I witnessed what you did, you would have had to hold me back from slapping the woman. Actually, I wouldn't have slapped her, but I would have said something, if only because such behavior is not appropriate in public. |
Mem
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 5:22 pm: | |
Such behavior is not appropriate ever. I didn't want to get close enough to her to slap her. Now, if I had a gun.... |
Eliz
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 9:01 pm: | |
Mem - I'm with you. If you are in the city enough you will see instances like that over and over. It seemed to me the subway brought out the worst in some mothers. It breaks my heart to see mothers dragging over-tired toddlers down the platform at a fast pace while the poor child is stumbling and crying and the mother screams at them to "shut the f... up". It's a scene I've seen over and over with many variations - people stare appalled at what is happening but are powerless to do anything. That people feel free to act like this in public with impunity says something terrible about our culture. |
Melidere
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 9:03 pm: | |
mem,
the next time there's a shooting and the news reports all have interviews with the neighbors who relate how cruelly the kid was treated and how his parents beat him all the time...
i'll be sure to look back on your tale and nod. |
Melidere
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 9:07 pm: | |
i don't know what it's called...but it's definitely a psychological coping device...and it had to be in full force in the communities we've witnessed so far.
Everyone looks outside their community at egregious acts of horror and consoles themselves that since they aren't like THAT then they are safe and everything is fine.
but it's clearly not helping us get at the truth of what is going on here.
clearly the 'horrors' are invisible to our eyes..or we're not looking for them really, or we see them and don't recognize them...
because none of these kids involved in these horrific acts of violence come from families where they are treated in such a visibly hideous manner. |
Eliz
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 9:39 pm: | |
Meli - I didn't think this discussion was limited to what was wrong with these kids who shoot up their schools. It's not like these school shootings are the only things wrong in our society. What Mem mentioned and I seconded is that there are many ugly, horrible things going on. If we are going to examine what is wrong with our culture we shouldn't only be looking in one place. |
Melidere
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 10:21 pm: | |
no,
but it might make sense to look closer to home. |
Eliz
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 - 10:42 pm: | |
We were looking closer to home. |
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