I
have decided to continue on the subject of raising children. I have a few more
blogs in mind about this particular subject…questions and opinions that I have
about it, and I hope you will stay tuned.
Let’s get back to raising the
youth of today. Again, I know there is no manual for how to raise our children,
but someone needs to get down to business and write one. Obviously we all need
some form of help! If we as parents join together and try our best to raise respectable
adults, we can all learn and grow together.
You can be Christian,
non-Christian or any other denomination, it really does NOT matter! But I can
promise that no one wants to raise a child that becomes a person that is
disrespectful to elders, peers and even themselves. When I am referring to
disrespect I am 100% talking about SEX!!!
Crass or Class can go for both
males and females, I just think no one wants to admit it today. You can overtly try to raise young men and women who are independent and classy who respect themselves and others, or you can not care what happens to your children and create these crass human beings who don't care about themselves either.
When i talk about Class, i am talking about Gentlemen who open doors and speak politely and are more worried about personality than what kind of panties a girl is wearing. As well as young women who are independent and do not throw themselves at boys begging for attention.
When I talk about Crass, I am referring to these irresponsible young people who drink excessively, have no direction in their life and have a wreck less disregard about what happens to themselves or those around them.
When it comes
to females, parents today just don’t understand what is at stake for their
daughters. Do you want to turn a blind eye to your daughter sleeping around?
Catching a disease? Or even having an unplanned pregnancy well before her time
for motherhood is upon her? These same things can go for your sons as well… Do
you want your son to sleep around? Catch a disease? Or fight with his “baby’s
momma” for child support or custody? Specially when these things are beginning
to happen to our children younger and younger!!! I know 12 YEAR OLDS who are
having kids!!!! When I was 12, I was worried about getting my homework done so
I could go and ride my bike with my friends!
NO ONE REALLY WANTS THESE
THINGS FOR THEIR CHILDREN!!! So realize now what is happening….and start asking
yourself how we can change it???
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
Is not a good way to go when
raising your children. Do you as parents really want your daughters or sons experimenting
with sexuality as a young adolescent??? Your children need to not be left in
the dark. There is no need for sex to be awkward and children need to know, not
only want it is and how it works, but they also need to know how special it is
to share with someone. They need to know that it does NOT just mean NOTHING
between people!!!! I really think that is the main problem today. Sex is just a
taboo subject, so children have to make their own assumptions. Between
television, the internet and society as a whole, children gather what they
think they need to know about sex. Sex is known as frivolous and meaningless.
People we need to wake up!!!
Having sex with someone is not a conquest or a game. Our children may still be
in diapers or just starting kindergarten, but we need to start now. Maybe not
by explaining the birds and the bees today, but starting by monitoring what
they watch and what they hear. These things make a difference and do not be
fooled, YOU DO make a HUGE difference in the child, teenager and adult your
children grow up to be.
We as parents need to take
charge!!!!
Children these days are
starting younger and younger with having sex. How is this not concerning to today’s
society???? It is not okay for a 12 year old, or in my opinion a 17 year old,
to be participating in sexual activities.
I know what I’ve been through
and I know what I have learned and I hope to pass these things to my daughters.
I want better for my girls, but I know I cannot do this alone. So my goal is to
blog about my concerns about child rearing and then get people to share it and
share it some more. So will you join me? We all have questions and opinions…I just
want to try to make a dent some where, and this is where I am deciding to
start.
Here is my concern for
today….if I work so hard raising my daughters to respect themselves and others;
how can I just let some non-concerned parents’ son come in with all the right
things to say and convince my child to do something that either they know is
wrong or they don’t want to do??
Please think about your children and not only the people you want them to be, but the opportunities you want them to have the choice to have.
Please think about your children and not only the people you want them to be, but the opportunities you want them to have the choice to have.
Please!
Please! Please! spread this and leave your comments, opinions, and advise.
Love
and God Bless
mrscomeaux
Reading your last few blogs I see that you have many questions and thoughts, which I have been having myself. Raising a child is a scary job, and I don't want to totally screw it up. It is very difficult to find a balance between what everyone tells us and what we feel is right.
ReplyDeleteYou and I were raised similarly with a strong faith, but differently as well, because my parents weren't as strict. We both still made our mistakes. I was able to ignore the peer pressure for quite a while and I waited until I was in my twenties to have sex, but I still did that with the wrong person and for the wrong reasons. I started to feel like I didn't know what I was waiting for. I made many mistakes and yes, at the time they were what I wanted and what I thought made me happy. What really happened is that I allowed myself to be hurt by others but mostly, I hurt myself. There were some lessons I learned over and over again, simply because I thought "I can do this, so why shouldn't I?" There are a million reasons why I shouldn't have done the things I did, but I never listened to myself or others when the reasons to stop were presenting themselves.
Not too long ago I was hit with the realization that so many people in our lives will just push us to do things, and they don't bother asking us what we really want. I watched as a friend was encouraged by others to potentially go hook up with a guy, while I was the one who said, "you can do whatever you feel is right, but remember you have to live with it tomorrow." Now trust me, that wasn't easy for me to say. I wasn't her mother and I'm sure she didn't want to hear that from me at that moment, and I went home feeling like such a buzz kill. Was I the bad friend for reminding someone that I care about that their life goes on beyond a moment?
Consequences from just a moment can last a lifetime. I was lucky that when I got that little surprise positive on that pregnancy test, that this was happening with someone I actually loved and valued. I realized that this could have happened before with someone else that I didn't want a future with and that I had been extremely careless with all of our lives.
Cont...
ReplyDeleteI think we all have too many people in our lives, who encourage the reckless behavior and encourage the bad choices because they don't want to feel like a bad friend. Being a quality friend is encouraging the good choices and still being there even if they make the bad ones. It means not saying "I told you so", but saying "you are better than this and you deserve better than this." Too many people make bad choices just to be like everyone else, but we're all lost...we are the blind leading the blind most of the time. How many of us know what we want from life we we're 20 years old? I didn't...
Back to raising the kiddos now.
I think first and foremost, we (all parents) need to learn to set realistic expectations of our children. I know now, at age 2, that there are certain things Aurora understands the concept of and other things she has no grasp of. She knows when I'm upset and she knows I'll put her in time out, but does that mean she wants to sit in timeout for her 2 minutes? No way. Does that mean she understands that when she is sitting in time out she can't get up just because she wants to. Absolutely not. She knows it upsets me, but there isn't the connection between upsetting Mommy and not doing it yet. This is where parenting becomes a frustration. This is where as parents, we are teaching our children the same lessons over and over again. Eventually she'll understand, but right now her attention span is very much directly in the moment. Right now, it's still a lesson we're learning. I don't expect her to be a genius and understand why I do everything I do and why I tell her everything I tell her. She is growing and she is learning and she is doing that at her own rate. I did have unrealistic expectations of her at times. But Aurora is Aurora, and I am still learning, so why should I expect her to be ahead of the learning curve?
Cont...
ReplyDeleteI think we (all parents) have to accept that as much as we teach good manners and class, there are many other factors that our children will be exposed to. So I think it is important to teach our children to be aware of how they treat people, but also how people treat them. They should be aware of the people who genuinely are interested in their lives and their happiness. They should know that to be a good person you also have to care about other people...their lives and happiness. I want my children to know that love is more important than sex, love is more important than popularity, and love is more important than having the latest video game or pair of shoes. I think teaching children the value of things that don't have a monetary value is extremely important and lacking in society today. (Rest assured, my children won't be carrying around an iphone 9, or whatever, when they're in kindergarten.) I think we need to teach our children to be proud of who they are and to express themselves in positive ways. We need to start letting our children know that they are beautiful, and that doesn't happen just on the outside. It comes from within. I also know, and this is directly from learning from my parents, that as parents we have to listen. We may not always want to hear it, but when your child needs to talk it is important to try to hear them and not to judge. I know that isn't easy, especially if you are hearing something that goes against your beliefs or all the values you have taught your child, but we have to have patience and understanding for those we love. I have a very open relationship with my parents and I feel confident in talking with them about the worst and the best days I have. They also know that I'm not going to do anything that they will have to hear about from someone else. It isn't necessary. I will tell them and nobody has to rat me out on anything.
I have all these thoughts and ideas, but executing them is quite a different story. I won't pretend to have the answers, but I think the fact that we ask these questions and have these thought puts us a step ahead of some parents and makes our children very lucky. We've been very blessed with our families and as long as we work hard at it, we can continue to bless our children with love and respect and provide them with an environment that promotes class and not crass.
Sorry... I think I just blogged all over your blog.
Love you anyway.
wow i love you too sarah! I am tired...but i will read all of this and reply tomorrow :)
ReplyDeleteSarah,
ReplyDeleteFirst off thank you for responding! I believe these things are HUGE issues today that people don’t realize are there….I really hope people share this and get some awareness out. When we were younger, things that were so taboo, are now the hot topics of discussion from 10 year olds on up. That really scared me.
And you are right I don’t want to totally screw it up. We were both raised similar and different and we both turned out to be decent human beings, well more than decent ;) But there are something I want to do differently but I just don’t know how I am going to do that yet. That’s why I want advice and questions and opinions.
I think it is great you took that stance with your friend, because you are 100% right. Thinking back on my 20s none of my friends did that for me. Coercing your girlfriend to go home with some guy that she just met cause he’s hot, or whatever other reason, IS NOT AND NEVER WILL BE A GOOD IDEA!!! Where did we learn these behaviors???
I didn’t know what I wanted either. And having friends of quantity not quality was a must back then for some reason. How was I supposed to know how crappy I was going to feel walking down the aisle? It was suppose to be the happiest day of my life and at that moment I had tears in my eyes thinking how awful it was that I had given myself to someone else other than the man I was about to commit the rest of my life to?? It never was a big deal to me until that moment, and now it will unfortunately stalk me the rest of my life. But I am sure many people don’t feel this way.
The golden rule needs to be amended! “So I think it is important to teach our children to be aware of how they treat people, but also how people treat them.” I don’t think you could have said it any better than that! That rounds right back to the respect issue. If a boy does certain things he obviously doesn’t respect you…. I wasn’t taught those warning signs well enough.
The relationship you have with your parents today is very close to what I have with mine, but things could always be better. I want to learn so many things to be able to be a better parent. I am so proud that you are pretty much the same way I am. We want all these things for our children.
I love you sarahface!
Let’s learn together!