Lately in the news, we get frequent reports of children either beating each other, their teachers, or being assaulted themselves. What's happened to our children?
The answer is us! We are the culprits and we are perpetrating a form of child abuse on them that goes largely unnoticed. We neglect and refuse to teach our children. We've been sold a bill of goods that discipline is abuse and we no longer discipline our children.
Constantly we see in public, parents pleading with their children about one thing an another. Children are permitted to throw tantrums, both at home in private, and in public. The adult authority in the child's life stands by desperately trying to placate the child, or bribe the child, or reacts in anger, thus teaching the child that it's OK to get angry and say and do mean spiteful things when angry. We have abdicated our authority and we put children on the same level with us. In essence we demand that children be miniature adults, even though they lack the skills and the experience to behave as adults. We put an enormous burden of responsibility on our children that does not belong to them.
Remember that children learn what they live?
The greater problem is that adults very often do not practice self control. We are so focused on pleasing ourselves (it teaches selfishness). We're impatient and rude to those who stand in service of us at the check out counter (it teaches arrogance). We cut each other off in traffic and fill the air with expletives blaming anyone but ourselves, showing gross disrespect to those around us( it teaches that others are not important, only we are important).
We feed our minds garbage in our reading and television watching (it teaches a lack of taste and discrimination in what they feed their minds).
Our work ethic is atrocious. We tell "little white lies" on a regular basis and justify it (it teaches dishonesty). We eat too much and drink too much and cater to our whims too much. We put ourselves in enormous debt, spending way beyond our means in order to feed our desire for whatever interests us (it teaches a lack of self control). In some cases we even punish our children for imitating us in these things.
THEN we have the nerve to wonder what's happened to our youth.
Children learn what they live.
When you hear that men stood around watching while a stranger was beaten or killed, or when those who witness injustice keep silent. When we knowingly spending money for "frills" knowing that we can't really afford it. When we steal time from the workplace by not diligently attending to our duties and goofing off, telling fibs and outright lies. That is what our children are learning.
Once upon a time, courage, honesty, diligence, self sacrifice, integrity, ethics, self control, respect for authority and elders were instilled in children. How seldom we see those things now.
Children learn what they live.
Everything we see in our children is what they've been taught. When we fail to train and discipline our children to a moral standard that gives them to tools to become happy, productive adults, we perpetrate one of the worst forms of child abuse. We've condemned that child to a miserable life. What is even more shocking is that we then refuse to admit that there's something wrong and help the child justify what they've done. In doing so, we heap more abuse on our children and on society at large.
How long will we continue to build prisons by neglecting and abusing our children? Silent and deadly child abuse. The invisible child abuse of training our children to be hedonistic, selfish mean spirited creatures. How cruel we are.
Children learn what they live. What are you teaching?
1 comment:
I've read that children are like books with blank pages inside. Every experience, every person who makes contact with a child writes in that child's "book". Parents need to be vigilant on who and what is leaving impressions or images on the precious pages of their child's soul.
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