Welcome to Gaia! ::

If my own folks are any yard-stick, I'd say you'll get to eat out and go golfing a lot more.

Well.. the times have really changed... I no longer work, but my son is out of the house and has been for 2 months now. I don't think I really am having a problem with it... he is close if you consider phone and email... not that he ever contacts me. Right about the time he left we added 2 bodies to the house, Jenn and Skye, and having the baby around has filled up a lot of my time. Guess I will really never know what it is like to not have a full house.

I had originally planned to make some joking comments in here if not an observation or two..

But having read the whole thread I now find myself at my tolerance level for negativity. My bad for reading it all I suppose.

Well Poppetta, do you take requests for your bow and arrow practice... I have a few teens and young 20's that I would like to volunteer for your practice.

I appreciate the kind response, but would not claim any level of uber-maturity.

The thing is, well, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so." Modern psychology and even physics describes how you tend to find what you set out to look for, and to not recognize that is to fulfill your own prophecies.

For all the bad teens you notice, think how many pass you by without regsitering on your radar because they did nothing spectacularly good or bad. The loud ones get the attention, but to only remember the loud ones is to delude yourself, whether they be good or bad.

As for the "problem teens" they are trying to individuate from their parents and they have hormones raging through their systems that they have not learned to deal with as yet. I have met "adults" with the same symptoms. I make no excuses for actual criminal behavior, mind you. Influenced or not your choices are still your choices. But as for some sort of imminent doom based on the behavior of teens, well there is an old quote to the effect of, "If something is not done about these teenagers today, our society will be destroyed." The quote (which I have abused with bad memory in wording but not intent) was written by Aristotle. Yeah, teenagers are kooky and such, newsflash. They've been that way since puberty was invented.


Another ancient idea has been that of the "Golden Age" where everything was wonderful and you never had the problems and complications of these dratted modern times. Terry Pratchett spoofs all of this wonderfully in several of his books. It works both on a cultural and individual level. Funny how stuff you hated and struggled through at the time becomes blissfully easy when viewed over the backs of several deceased decades.

I attended an anime convention recently and was quite impressed with how friendly and polite the vast majority people were, and the majority of those people were teens and perhaps those in their early twenties. It was not until I caught someone plugging up one of the toilents "for fun" that I remembered, 'Oh yeah, teenagers." Not stereotyping them all, just knowing that plugging up toilets is a teenage (or slightly below) level of "humor."

And lastly, I realize people here are just ranting and "blowing off steam" but have you noticed the level of violent fantasies? I realize there is a huge difference between thinking about something and acting it out, but if your thoughts show a strong trend you are likely to act on them at some point. Not that people who joke/mention violence are always going to act it out by any means, but the infamous "quiet person" who goes on a rampage spends years fantasizing it quietly before they do it.

Also, I am amazed that someone could claim to be a karate instructor, for example, and yet apparently fantasize about assaulting people on a daily basis. My martial art was more gentle than most forms of karate I grant you, but from what I understood the more rambunctious martial arts have a calming effect because you get all that hostility beat out of you. If you are still fantasizing about smacking people around because they don't fit your idea of how they should behave, you need to go back to school, not teach.

Most true martial artists I have met (and I don't number myself among them because I don't have the level of dedication they do) are extrememly calm, easy-going people. And largely non-violent. Granted, they can handle trouble when it comes, but they don't seek it out and they don't look to violently impose their codes on others. I seriously doubt they sit around fantasizing about it either because A) they know they can handle themselves and so have nothing to prove, and B) they have seen enough violence and conflict firsthand to know how little lasting positive effect it has. Hard training is one thing, striking people for "bad behavior" is another.

Lastly, all of this affected me more lately because I have been rather frustrated and down in my own life. As such, I was more sensitive to such things and may well have made a mountain out of a molehill in some cases. In addition I was raised by someone who was not slow to hand out the yellings, spankings, and once or twice choking.

The key is to teach your kids to be fair by being fair. Model the right behavior for them and be fair in how you mete out punishment (whether it be a spanking or a time out, but the latter should always outnumber the former). Punishment, especially physical, for its own sake is just cruelty with a polite social mask. Daddy or Mommy can't make the world be the way they want, so they take it out on jr.

And as for the "You have to make them believe you will kill them" comment, I lived with a father I thought might kill me. It makes you hate authority and far more likely to have violence as a regular part of your worldview. If not for a timely divorce, I may well have killed him. And if you knew how non-violent I am in daily life you would have a better perspective on that comment. Violence, emotional and physical, begets more violence. Discipline demonstrated and practiced begets discipline, let's not confuse them.

>whew<

very nicely put Lupe!

i hope you're in a more positive frame of mind now 3nodding

i THINK that most people's violent spoutings here are just venting, i know mine are anyway! i don't believe i'd shoot someone, no matter how much they annoyed me, if i thought i could get away with it i may well give them a slap round the ear though 3nodding i do with some of my work mates when they try my patience redface

I remember going to my math class late when I was in the Jr. High, the teacher was outside the classroom slamming a student up against the lockers... emaging that happening now stressed

All kids care about is cool graphics.
I rememer text only computer games.