Parents Are Failing Their Kids
“Kids these days...” We have all said it at one time or another showing our age and sounding exactly like our parents. For the first year since my childhood I was surrounded and inundated with teachers, their work, and their lives and I had an epiphany. It's not “kids these days.” It is “parents these days.” Generations of parents have successively become more self involved and disconnected from their children. Behavioral and educational problems that in the past would have been addressed with tutoring or discipline now have fancy names that enable parents to ignore them, accept them, or medicate them away. We have developed whole industries to pass parental responsibilities to others and providing excuses for underachievement. The cold reality is that in the real world excuses don't matter much. Kids who aren't good test takers or have ADD will be expected to perform in the work force. If your boss needs a report on Monday it better be ready and it better be good. We are raising our precious snowflakes for a world that doesn't exist.
Childhood is a magical time in each person’s life that should be enjoyed but not at the expense of developing the tools needed to succeed in life. It's tough raising children. It's a balancing act between protecting your child, but still maintaining the ability to develop their character, morals, values, knowledge and sense of responsibility. This year I have seen parents fail their children in ways that would make the Gosselin family look functional.
I have seen parents of children with habitual bad behavior take their childrens' side over multiple different school authorities causing so much trouble that discipline simply became impossible. I have seen family members who work in the school district enable kids and kin in mischief, lie for them and bring innocent children and faculty to tears. A student with consistently poor grades, an excess of absences and habitual disciplinary problems failed the grade and the mother was beside herself with anger. Not at herself or her own precious snowflake, but at the teacher! Parents have waylaid the school with nonsensical accusations and grievances when their child couldn't attend a field trip. A field trip the parent failed to sign a release form for over the course of a month. Another parent took their child and cupcakes home from a holiday party when their child had to sit out part of the celebration for hitting another child. These are just a few of the gross abuses that pop into mind.
After a year I don't understand how teachers have any time to actually teach kids between bad behavior and renegade parents. We focus a lot in this country on education. Education is a vital part of building a better brighter United States but for all the faults our education system has in America I have come to the conclusion it is a scapegoat. You can always regulate education, add more red tape, and make new policies but none of those things will ever be effective if parents don't do their job. Make sure your kid gets to school. Teach your child to respect authority because without that they will be spending days in ISS or suspended. They will drain teaching time from other students doing a disservice to your community and children who want to learn. Talk to your child, look over their homework. If they know their school work is important to you, it is more likely it will be important to them. Help them if they struggle with a subject. If you can't, plenty of resources are out there if you just look. I see a lot of potential scholars out there but I also see a lot of writing on the wall. Don't write your kids future off just because parenting is hard.
Tyson Bam
July 1st, 2010
