stella41b
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Joined: 10/16/2007
From: SW London (UK)
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Interesting thread..
quote:
ORIGINAL: SirPumpy
They understand that I know better and that their Mum knows better and accept our choices for them with minimal complaint and almost always say please and thanks.
How do your children understand that you and their Mum knows better? Is it simply through your position in the relationship as their parents or is it through your behaviour, attitudes and the way you live your life?
You talk about 'minimal complaint' with regard to the choices you make. Does this mean that your children are discouraged from complaining or questioning the reasons behind your decisions?
quote:
ORIGINAL: SirPumpy
Because its easier than saying that as a nation we have some seriously crappy parents and parenting created by social views and pressures and its not just Australia but I feel most of the so called civilised or western world.
I disagree here. Substandard parenting is nothing new. In fact I would even suggest that there were just as many 'substandard parents' in the 1950's (your 'golden age' of parenting if you prefer) as there are today, just as there are substandard relationships.
But you know people survive substandard relationships and the vast majority of children actually survive the substandard efforts of their parents whether it be through their own efforts or the street corner or even The School of Hard Knocks.
The thing which has changed is society and local communities and much of this has come about by advances in technology over the past forty years which has transformed completely almost every area of our lives resulting in the demise of the local community and local community values.
Now society changes with each and every generation and we as a society cope through support in our families and local communities. This has happened once before in history, the advent of the Industrial Revolution which also brought rapid changes to society and created social upheaval bringing us the social problems that we can read about in any of the books written by Charles Dickens.
This is why I disagree, because I see what is happening today as nothing more than history repeating itself and society as a whole struggling to cope with the after-effects of over 30 years of social upheavals. However you may not agree with me and may wish to continue thinking that all our social problems are connected with 'some seriously crappy parents'.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SirPumpy
I am (For the record) not a new age Dad and I am infact the opposite, taking my parenting leads from the 50's through to the 70's with the main tenets being boundaries and discipline, building self respect and respect for others as well as a bit of work ethic for good measure.
I'm sorry to burst your bubble I am not a parent but I have contact with people who are parents and also with young people and I don't associate the understanding of boundaries and discipline with the 1950's, 1960's or any other period in history but I associate it with what it really is, the hallmark of an emotionally mature adult and I feel you can meet numerous examples of such adults aged in their 20's, 30's, 40's and older if you are prepared to look hard enough.
In fact I have a tremendous amount of respect today for teenagers and young people for example among the volunteers who take part in the CRISIS Open Christmas for the street homeless every year in London. Yes I'm talking about young people who sacrifice their own Christmas and travel long distances to London where they rent a hotel room, pay their own fares spending even as much as you would to go away on a foreign holiday and they do this simply to spend time with homeless people so that they too can celebrate Christmas.
I was in my early 20's during the 1980's and I never did such a thing but then again it's a different generation where you do have young adults in their early twenties who don't have much money but despite this they commit to saving up money throughout the year so they can be a volunteer at a CRISIS Open Christmas.
I'll give you another example. My generation was the generation of the riots in Brixton, Southall where you got scores of black youths fighting the police for freedom (the riots started over our controversial 'sus' laws) but today you cannot do this because if you do you will be prosecuted under the Prevention of Terrorism Acts or for numerous other public order offences.
But you know I see many black youths today attending college, some have bought Mac computers and are busy making music in their bedrooms and sharing that music among friends and family, uploading their music up to sites such as Youtube and MySpace.
You want to see an example? Click on the link and watch Matthew MacAnuff singing Be Careful. If you do click on the link I'd strongly recommend you listen to the words of the song, which paint a pretty accurate picture of what it's like being young and black in society today.
However if you're not prepared to get out there into wider society and take a good look at the people around you and even try to get to know them I guess it's much easier to believe what the media is telling you that black people deal in drugs, wear bling and walk around London with guns and knives and that parents are much worse today than they've ever been. Oh and that they are conspiring with the asylum seekers and illegal immigrants to bring society down.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SirPumpy
Am I the weird one?
No you're not. Maybe you do what a lot of people do nowadays, they believe everything they are told by the media and regurgitate such opinions verbatim presenting them as personal opinion.
This is no different to what people were doing in Moscow in 1952 under the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. It's much easier to believe myths such as Pawlik Morozov and 'crappy parenting' than to observe, think and develop one's own opinions. All propaganda needs scapegoats to release others from shared responsibility for what's going on.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SirPumpy
Because these days its about (IMO) kids and the "rights" of kids as well as the creation of a "Me first gimme gimme" generation who are parents..........
But isn't this true about adults as well?
You don't even have to go anywhere else - just go to the search function here and type in words like 'scammer', 'fakes', 'why can't I find...' 'Collarme is a fucking shite website' etc and find thousands and thousands of postings in hundreds of threads created by people pissed off that it took them more than three days to get any nookie after joining the site.
Go browse profiles on the other side. Spend a bit of time studying threads and posts in the Politics and Religion section.
Children didn't think this stuff up or imagine it all on their own, but are simply forming attitudes and patterns of behaviour and relationship strategies modelled by their parents, by media figures, by their teachers, and also by other people in their communities.
Social problems are no different to other problems in life. They have solutions. The thing is nobody is interested in the solutions, it's too difficult, it requires thinking, it requires taking responsibility for one's actions and it's pretty evident to me that these are things which have becomne unfashionable.
People don't want to know, they often don't want to do anything which doesn't offer them some sort of immediate return or benefit. We have been conditioned over a number of years to take the easy way out, and the easy way out for most people is to blame someone else or even a group of people for the problems and expect someone else to come up with the solution. This is what many people do quite a lot of the time.
You don't even have to use the search function to find threads and posts started by people who are having relationship problems but seem to have a mental block when it comes to their own responsibility for the relationship breakdown and who perceive the problems as being caused by 'other people'.
Okay, so you replace 'other people' with other words such as 'Martians', 'fairies', 'garden gnomes', 'God', 'Nigerians', 'socialists' to see how ridiculous this way of thinking is.
I honestly believe that social change has a simple straightforward solution. You hold yourself responsible for everything that you think, everything that you say and everything that you do and you hold everybody else equally accountable. If you want people to treat you differently you model different attitudes and patterns of behaviour. If someone cannot be responsible for their own actions then you leave them alone to bugger off and whinge and whine and moan and bitch about 'other people' (or 'Martians', 'God', 'Nigerians', 'socialists', etc)
I don't have time for such people in my life. I don't know how much longer I'm going to be alive, how long my life is going to be, but however long it is I want to devote my time to living, doing stuff and sharing moments and experiences with other people.
I'm not bothered about being right, my focus on life is on being an example to others through my behaviour and attitudes because this is the only way people will know me, remember me when I die, and through this the only way my life will have brought some benefit to the world and society as a whole.
It's about being happy and making other people happy.
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