The 'home' front

From a distance where I sat, I watched as this child continually threw a tantrum and his mother acted helpless and gave into every whim of her child. All he wanted was to have his way and by simply looking, it was rather obvious that he was a handful. I felt for her but at the same time, whose job is it to instill some discipline in him? Reminded me instantly of another child I saw at a mall who almost gave her mother a heart attack simply because she wouldn’t listen nor stay in one place. That’s almost common pIace right?

 

On the other hand, there was a beautiful girl, dressed like a doll, looking all glamorous…judging from her looks, the first thought could be…”she is so spoilt” but to my surprise she looked right into my face while she passed and greeted. Since she seemed interested in chatting, her mum had a seat and we all had an interesting chat. She would apologize and say thank you at every instance. Her mum had to remind her not to apologize when it isn’t needed. As small as she is, she was so well mannered; her parents have done a fine job so far.

 

How many parents can we say this about? The ratio of badly brought up children to well brought up children today is …you be the judge!

Children throw tantrums at any given time and have no time out for their actions. They are rewarded for being rude, applauded for being silly.

Granted that they are children but they are also smarter than adults judge them to be. Some adults are aware of this but are content with standing by and watching for the children to take control of their lives; so to speak.

 

I saw a video that was widely circulated on fb: a boy and a girl dancing, both could not be more than nine years of age. Permit me – the girl had her booty to the boy and he was basically banging on her! The adults standing by encouraged them on with so much glee…can you beat that?! Where is the hope for children? What moral values do we have to pass on to them? Highly upsetting to watch, at least that was how I felt.

It is bad enough that parents can no longer draw the line between being the parent and being the friend to their children, then encouraging the moral decadence? Sad!

 

All of this is related…people talk about changing the world when there is little or nothing positive left of what is called a family…how does that work?

I was taught when I was in primary school that the family is the first institution of learning and I do not think that has changed yet. The first of everything is seen and learnt at ‘home’ (maybe not everything but most things...hahaha). Nobody says parents should be monsters or children should be made to fear their parents but what happened to the times when children would do wrong and apologize, or children would be punished for doing wrong, and parents had respect for their children enough to not let the children see them as inadequate? I like to believe that I was brought up in that time because back then (not so long ago by the way), we all would do everything right not to be punished. We were taught to "say thank you, please, I am sorry, excuse me and you are welcome". We were also told that greeting people including strangers would not harm us in any way, it was normal to see an older person even on the streets and say hello. These days, a mother has to remind her child countless times to say hello and sometimes even attach conditions before the child does so. 

The virtual world is also robbing families of any communication: all a child wants to do is play video or computer games, the teenagers would rather spend time on twitter, facebook or on a mobile phone chatting...I fear for the unborn and also hope that we do not populate the world with people who will cause more harm than good. Live and let live is what is becoming of families. How is it that these people who have absolutely no control of their 'homes' or would I say 'houses' come forward to be our leaders? Isn’t it obvious where the chaos is from?