You missed my point with that. There will always be immgrants, and there will always be people in financial difficulty. That has nothing (a lot less) to do with being a parent. Financial situation has nothing to do with a person's ability to instill the right values, pschological structure, etc in their child. A poor person might be a great parent, and a rich parent might be horrible; the opposite might very well be true as well. Believe me, I know about financial distress..there was nothing easy about life when we came here 12 years ago.

My point was in line with Barry's, in that it is tough being a parent in today's society. A parent has to counter almost everything that a child faces when it steps out the door.

That's correct:

What many parents don't seem to get is that if your going to teach children to deal with the worlds issues you as a parent better be doing it yourself. What that means in my mind is if you want your child to get the point about certain issues you need to be taking a stand and following thru.

No Smoking
No drugs
No sleeping around
No mental and physical abuse
Establishing and maintaining a moral compass
No alcohlism
Little or no Television
Praticing what we preach
Spending a LOT of time with children
Spending a Lot of time with the wife
Following thru with ageing parents

If we do what we are suppose to do it will set the standard of behaviour for our young ones.

Sounds like a boring life? Maybe. But it's better than the paris hilton, britney, 50 cents culture which seems to be all about me,me,me, sex, sex, sex, money, money, money and finally self destruction. But as i said before. This is just my opinion.

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"What you hear in a great jazz band is the sound of democracy. “The jazz band works best when participation is shaped by intelligent communication.”
Harmony happens whenever different parts get to form a whole by means of congruity, concord, symetry, consistency, conformity, correspondence, agreement, accord, unity, consonance…….

x 1000000000000000000

Out of the above, while each one is as exceptionally important as the other, two stand out to me:

-It is something that caught my eye very early on when I moved to this country. Once the kids step out the door to college, etc, it seems like minus some minor get-togethers annually, ties between parent and child are severred. It always saddens me to see very old people at the grocery store having to take care of themselves.

-Television/Media: this is probably (should be) the biggest enemy of every parent trying to raise a properly functioning individual. If I was a parent, I'd probably keep the cild away from the "set" as long as possible.


Misc fact: Did you know there really isn't a limit on how many languages a child can learn early on? Children who learn secondary languages early on don't have an accent either. Point, there's so much great stuff for a young child to be engrossed in, provided the parent is aware of all the fantastic opputunities.


Barry, Ray, Soccerjunky, et al..you have some very lucky kids .

Thanks:

5 Gandchildren now. So the works continues.

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"What you hear in a great jazz band is the sound of democracy. “The jazz band works best when participation is shaped by intelligent communication.”
Harmony happens whenever different parts get to form a whole by means of congruity, concord, symetry, consistency, conformity, correspondence, agreement, accord, unity, consonance…….

I got your point. I'm disagreeing with your assessment that it's more difficult now than previous generations. Our parents did a good job raising us in spite of having to deal with the social and economic factors of being immigrants. All of the things that Barry listed were embraced by our parents on top of dealing with those other issues. Take away the severity of those other issues for our generation and I doubt that you could say it's more difficult for us.

All I'm saying is don't minimize what our parents did by making excuses for the failures of some parents in our generation. Parents today need to suck it up and not put blame on external factors. The buck stops with us.

They're lucky because of their grandparents as much as their parents.

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Wake up every day that would be a start.

A couple of points here.

I first learned how impressionable they are when I would tell my oldest one "time to put on your britches", just to aggravate my wife (she hates my hick talk). So, guess what she started telling her mom? We had to hit the reprogram switch on that one.

The Britney Spears, et al, affect is overstated. I have a 13 year, and she thinks those people are loser morons. I'm sure that has nothing to do with her pop saying that all the time.

Last - no one has said how important it is that they know theya re loved unconditionally. They do dumb things, and make you nuts - but they know they are loved, and that gives them a base to operate from. They have to hear that, hear it often, and know by your actions that you mean it.

I agree with rayxi. It was just as difficult then, as it is now. In fact, many of the issues that we openly speak of as being faced by today's adolescents were swept under the carpet by the parents of prior generations. Issues involving alcoholism and drugs within the family were not discussed. Rehab was not a solution, largely because rehab for teens did not exist at the time. If you were gay, you stayed in the closet behind a padlocked door. And not only was interracial dating unacceptable, you would be lucky if you were able to date outside of your parent's nationality without getting flak and poor you if you were the "wrong" race.

The rules of raising children are simple. Love your children, educate your children, and teach them that the "horizon is as distant as the mind's eye wishes it to be."