OK...since I see this a bit, and I am sure others here do too, but non-parenters really irritate me. There is this place I posted at for many years. I rarely go there, but it dates back to when I first got on to the internet. Sometimes, I do go there because they have pregnancy things and baby things. Then it shows most recent posts. I should remember to not click on the posts that I am not specifically there for, but oddly, I forget. Last fall, someone wanted to know what to do about our children who brag about being crackheads. She said she did not want to get her daughter in to treatment because her daughter had friends at school and she did not want to take her dd from that. Ummm..well..there is just soooo much to say about that. From, her friends probably aren't good for her to her health and life are more important, to most teens do not brag about being crackheads. Now someone is posting about how they guessed their 13 yr old's cell phone code and once on, found that her daughter sent a picture of herself in bra and undies only to a boy she likes. She wants to know what to do without letting her daughter know that she figured out the code. My response is that my 13 yr old would not have a password protected anything. There is just so much wrong with this picture. Someone in my local playgroup is buying her 2 yr old an itouch? I am really wondering if parents have always been like this or if I just had one of the few sets of parents who had expectations for their children?
Yikes! I'm speechless. There probably has always been non parenters and parents who don't parent well. My advice might be to...parent your child/children to the best of your ability and don't click on that message board?
I think it's always been a problem, especially in the last few generations. That's why so many parents don't know how to be parents these days. There are some who just don't care about their kids or who just don't have the spine to stand up and be the parent, but I think there are many, many people who just don't know what being a parent means.
So many parents want to be their child's friend and don't want to step up to the plate and do what is required to raise these kids to be upstanding, productive, fully functioning adults.
I watched a rerun of Super Nanny the other day and, while normally I HATE that show, I found it interesting. Mom and Dad had no clue what their 11 and 14 year old daughters were doing online. When Jo asked them why they didn't check up on their daughters, they said something like, "They won't tell us the password." Um... And the worst part about it was that I can think of about 10 mums of the top of my head who will likely end up in that situation (or similar) when their toddlers are older. I was recently down-talked by a mom in my mom's group because I was "blackmailing" my children by requiring that clean their room or I took whatever was left on the floor when the timer ran out. Blackmail!? She went on and on about how manipulative that was of me. Seriously? I thought that was a logical consequence. So I asked her how she would handle it if her child wouldn't clean his room (he's 5). She said that it's his room and if he wants to live in a mess that's his right. And most of the other moms agreed with her. *sigh* There is something seriously wrong with our generation of parents.
My mother thought, years ago, I should have put a lock on my son's door. He is turning 15 yrs this week. This was a few years old, when he was maybe 11 years old. She felt it was wrong for anyone, even me, to have access to his room. I told her my house, my room, my child, I will have access.
I'm sure she would really have something to say about my dh taking my dd's (11) door off because she slammed her brother's fingers in it trying to keep him out of her room. :lol: As a Prek teacher, I see parents all the time who pretty much let their kids do whatever they want. Not only do they not discipline their children, but they also do not want me to discipline them.:roll:
HELLO!!! If you don't discipline them when they're preschool, don't you DARE come fussing to me about how incorrigible they are when they're 11, and in jail when they're 16! Rachael knows that her facebook account will accessed my her father or I anytime we want. While we respect our kids' privacy and don't just barge into their rooms or search them just because, we reserve the right to do so if we feel it is necessary. If we find that respecting their privacy is being taken advantage of, then they will lose their privacy if needed. MEAN MOMMAS UNITE!!!
I had to chuckle a bit about the right to the messy room. In my family it is the opposite. My mom tells me I'm too strict and should let the kids have the messy room. After all, she never expected me to keep a clean room. And she wonders why I struggle so much with housekeeping now? It is insane though what I see people allowing their children to do and people don't want any involvement it any of it.
I do know a family that is proud to say that they do not say "no" to their two daughters. It's very strange. My younger sister tried to babysit/be a nanny to the girls one summer and had a horrible time. The parents explained to my sister their idea of not saying no to their children. My sister refused to follow that rule. My sis told the little bratty girl no on several occasions and the girl peed all over because she was mad. The kid was 7! Unfortunately, the girl peed on my son's car seat that she was borrowing...ewww. My mom observed something about this particular family too. She said the mom was way into herself and didn't care much for the kids or what they were doing. My other sister taught the older girl in the family for music lessons. While the older girl practiced lessons with my sister at her home the little one 6 or 7 at the time colored all over my sister's dinning room table. The mom was right there and didn't stop her! My mom walked in and saw what the girl had done and told the girl she had to clean it up because coloring on tables wasn't something that she should have done. My mom said the girl's mom looked rather unhappy that my mom told the girl to clean it up. This particular girl also attended the same school that my son went to for kindergarten. The girl was always getting into trouble. The school staff was always telling her no and to do things differently. She would purposely jump in mud puddles at recess time when the staff told her not to go near the puddle. She also sprayed water all over the school bathroom by holding her hand over the faucet. I witnessed the staff dealing with these things when I came to pick my son up at school. In some way I felt sorry for the little girl because it seemed to me that she desperately wanted her mom and dad's attention and she craved some boundaries and structure.
When I taught preschool, I was taught to tell children, "We don't hit AT SCHOOL", because maybe at home Mom DOES let them hit (or play with sticks, or whatever). We cannot control behavior at home, but only AT SCHOOL. So we state the rule for AT SCHOOL. I think the same applies in our homes. I really don't CARE what their mom allows. In MY home, MY rules apply. I can and will enforce rules and consequences. OK, maybe I can't beat the child's butt like is needed, but I sure can enforce it in other ways. And I don't mind telling them that this is the expected behavior IN MY HOME. For example, take children in the neighborhood. I don't care what they talk like in their own home, but when they're in MY yard, I will not tolerate swearing. Talk like that will get you a warning the first time, and kicked out the second. (OK, depending on the situation, I might give a second warning. Like if something falls on his finger and he yells out an expleted, lol!)
Yup, we have all met them. I am another mean Mamma and proud of it. Our home is not a democracy. Mom and Dad make the rules and kids follow them and do not break them. Of course they are going to bend them a little and test their boundaries, but for the most part, they do as they are told with very little fuss. Kids have plenty of friends and do not need middle-aged ones. We are their parents and it is our job to teach them, mold them, and help them grow into productive, well-behaved, responsible, and hygienic adults. I was watching Little People Big World on TLC the other day. I used to love that show, but it is getting out of hand. The parents are arguing all the time, jokingly talking about divorce, and the kids are pretty bad. The youngest, Jacob is 12 and his Dad decided it was time to give him a cell phone. Mom set some rules and boundaries for the phone use and he continually broke all the rules. In one month he sent 8,000 text messages to his girlfriend (we won't even get into what's wrong with that) and ran up a bill of $2,800 :shock:. There was no discipline. Mom wanted to talk with him about why using the cell phone so much was bad and explain to him what he had done wrong. OK, WHAT!! Maybe an explanation was warranted, but I can't even begin to think about the punishment that would handed down by me not to mention that the kid would have to find a way to pay me back for the bill. They did end up taking away the phone and deciding he was not mature enough to handle it, but he had a smirk on his face the whole time because he knew he really didn't get into any trouble. People who won't parent really bother me. Even if you make mistakes, which we all do, you have to try something, anything. Discipline and boundaries are so important in raising children.
We "team clean." It was not meant as a way to see everything in my child's room, but I feel I certainly have the right to. But it has turned out that I pretty much know everything in their rooms. Sunday, we all cleaned my room. It is great because we visit and have fun with it and the room gets cleaned. We never team clean my daughter's room, but she wants me in there all the time so there is nothing for me to see that I don't see anyway. She shows me everything. But we do team clean the rest of the house. Team clean means we all work together on one area or one thing. It gets done quicker and much more fun to do together. It is sort of a family time for us. The conversations from the team cleaning are priceless.
