Wow! I have to say it – Wow! Times sure have changed. Everyone gets offended at the least little thing. We walk around with our hearts on our sleeves. If someone says anything, someone else on the other side of the room will get up in arms and call for them to be fired, or shot, or at the very least, ostracized from the rest of society!
Why are we, and why have we raised a society of wimps? The least little thing we are accused of bullying and/or being mean spirited. Gimme a break! Please! Why is everything that is done an offense?
The public school system is in the mess it is today largely because teachers cannot discipline our little darlings. If little Poindexter or sweet little Miss Blue Nose are scolded it will hurt their psyche and they will grow up to be ax murderers. So now our little fledglings are running the classroom instead of learning anything in classroom and are no longer really fit to run a society. And guess what? – these are the people that are running society.
If I was just now born and my parents were raising me the same way now that they did then – our good neighbors would have long ago tattled to DSS and I would be in a foster home at this point.
My parents disciplined. They spanked (goodness me), they yelled (oh my), and all what-not (an old-fashioned term)! The difference is, they did it with understanding, with love, sometimes with humor, and with the Bible.
My mom was the disciplinarian our house for small offenses. She was the one there most of the time. She would get fed up with us kids a lot. “Go play!” was the standard, and we were supposed to go find something to do. Me? I was the only boy in our neighborhood at the time, so I guess that was part of it – but I became a dreamer, an imagineer. Mom not only raised three kids but she also had to work in a textile mill on top of it. So, mom did not have time for a lot of stuff from us kids. I know now that it was sarcasm at its highest form, but she had all sorts of little jibes when she was busy, or just didn’t know the answer. The most memorable (and most used) of all those – when we needed something and would ask her where it was: “It’s hanging down there in the pine tree.” When I was real little, I actually remember going down there once and looking for it. It was not in the pine tree!
Whether you want to believe it or not, whether you think it was mean or not, I, just like the rest of my generation survived. If we kept to our roots, we thrived. if we strayed from our roots – I know a lot of people that had and have had multiple problems, because they could not cope with society. Some didn’t survive. They missed the point of what their families were trying to get a cross, they were trying to give their kids some depth of root. These people had just gone through a world war. They were being given examples at home of how to live, and how to thrive.
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6
The point is not to give a child everything he or she wants, but to love and cherish, and train a child how to live. A child that is given everything cannot cope as an adult, because society will not give them everything they want. Go figure.
Where in the world did common sense, respect, and love get to. I guess it is hanging down there in the pine tree!
AE
Voice of the Introverts 