Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Don't Punish Me for Another's Stupidity
Do any of you have older siblings? Maybe siblings who consistently angered your parents?
Well here is a hypothetical situation to clarfify my position:
Lets say I have an older brother who flooded the basement while home alone at 15 years of age; he stole a new sweatshirt from the mall at 16; he totaled his car at 17; and he lied to our parents and went to a party instead of his friends house after the Homecoming dance at 18.
So, rather than ask me to learn from my brother's mistakes and give me the benefit of doubt I deserve, my parents change their parenting rules to make sure that it becomes impossible for me to make a mistake.
The new parenting rules are:
You are forbidden to be home alone until you are 16.
You are forbidden from going to the mall.
You will not be allowed to drive.
You will not be going to your Homecoming dance.
Now, this seems like an unrealistic reaction to parenting.
Yet this is the same knee-jerk-response, hyper-reactionary form of society we live in today.
Whenever a tragedy happens it is not enought to learn from the mistake; instead people try to "change the rules" so it never happens again.
So, when people wreck their car because they are on the phone or smoking, I am forbidden from using my cell phone and smoking while driving; however, cars are still built with loud radios and there are still drive-thru restaurants so you can eat a burger and drive.
A child says that a video game and a music video made him kill someone, so we do not analyze his personal life and try to figure out why he cannot differentiate between reality and entertainment; instead we ban thosevideo games and music videos.
An unbalanced teen decides to kill his friend and himself, so we decide to out law all guns.
Parents who were embarassed by their unathleticism in grade school have now changed the school physical education program to get rid of dodgeball to "shelter" their child from the same embarassment. But, no one tries to get rid of reading-outloud, or "around-the-class" flash card drills, even though certain kids may get embarrased.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that while growing up kids will get injured, they will get embarassed, they will make mistakes, the will break the rules and maybe at times dissapoint; however, they will also succeed, rise to the occassion, and impress. You can't keep restricting everything we do based on "potential hazzards," let us live out lives on our terms.
If you have never came up short in life you never reached far enough.
Well here is a hypothetical situation to clarfify my position:
Lets say I have an older brother who flooded the basement while home alone at 15 years of age; he stole a new sweatshirt from the mall at 16; he totaled his car at 17; and he lied to our parents and went to a party instead of his friends house after the Homecoming dance at 18.
So, rather than ask me to learn from my brother's mistakes and give me the benefit of doubt I deserve, my parents change their parenting rules to make sure that it becomes impossible for me to make a mistake.
The new parenting rules are:
You are forbidden to be home alone until you are 16.
You are forbidden from going to the mall.
You will not be allowed to drive.
You will not be going to your Homecoming dance.
Now, this seems like an unrealistic reaction to parenting.
Yet this is the same knee-jerk-response, hyper-reactionary form of society we live in today.
Whenever a tragedy happens it is not enought to learn from the mistake; instead people try to "change the rules" so it never happens again.
So, when people wreck their car because they are on the phone or smoking, I am forbidden from using my cell phone and smoking while driving; however, cars are still built with loud radios and there are still drive-thru restaurants so you can eat a burger and drive.
A child says that a video game and a music video made him kill someone, so we do not analyze his personal life and try to figure out why he cannot differentiate between reality and entertainment; instead we ban thosevideo games and music videos.
An unbalanced teen decides to kill his friend and himself, so we decide to out law all guns.
Parents who were embarassed by their unathleticism in grade school have now changed the school physical education program to get rid of dodgeball to "shelter" their child from the same embarassment. But, no one tries to get rid of reading-outloud, or "around-the-class" flash card drills, even though certain kids may get embarrased.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that while growing up kids will get injured, they will get embarassed, they will make mistakes, the will break the rules and maybe at times dissapoint; however, they will also succeed, rise to the occassion, and impress. You can't keep restricting everything we do based on "potential hazzards," let us live out lives on our terms.
If you have never came up short in life you never reached far enough.
