There's a rather odd sort of mind set out there that children rule. The idea that children are in training for adulthood has been nearly completely lost. We saddle our children with the burden of making decisions for themselves before they've even reached the age of reason. Children are consulted about the running of their lives before they even know they have one.
Walking through the grocery store is enough to prove the case and point. You hear mothers and fathers trying to reason with three year old. A three year old doesn't reason. The parents can be heard to continually consult with their children on nearly every subject that comes up, from breakfast cereals to their marriages and well......everything.
Gone is the idea that childhood is a time for learning how to become a responsible adult accountable for their actions. They're crushed down with the responsibility of choices and decisions that adults SHOULD be making, long before they have the life skills to shoulder that responsibility.
Children are forced by society into losing their innocence by the media and television, and now in the school systems before they have the ability to use logic and reason to protect themselves. Our society is a cruel one for children. They're not allowed to be children for the duration of childhood any more. Adults force them to face questions and problems that the poor children haven't the least idea or experience to handle.
Children are adults in training. Rather than an idyllic 21 year period of playtime, it's a grueling sprint to learn in 18 or 21 years how to conduct yourself for the years that follow. When you see 70 year old people who are slovenly, wasteful, impolite, lacking in manners and prudence in conducting their lives, you know they had a hard childhood run for them by parents who didn't take the responsibility of teaching their children how to be decent, functioning human beings seriously.
What a cruel society we've become to let our children be victimized by grown people who's idea of what is good and proper to the rearing of children is perverted. Note, I did not use the word adult there. Adults teach, correct, guard and train children to be responsible, functioning adults as well. Grown people just drag the children along for the ride.
2 comments:
Hi Rose. There is a saying which I quote often to my children: A good leader must first know how to follow. My older children probably know it by heart! Unfortunately, I can't remember who this quotation is attributed to.
A former coworker of mine- a self proclaimed liberal- at Starbucks used to point out this fact often when parents would bring their toddlers (2-4 years olds we're talking about here) into our coffee shop and ask them what they wanted. It happened too, too often. I like this post the best and am sending it to another friend of mine.
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