A recent aricle in the NY Times made me think: Are Kids today better behaved or worse? I think they're worse -- especially in public places. Perhaps I've never noticed before, but kids are louder, less well mannnered, and prone to tantrums (e.g. in the middle of the supermarket) Is it because: - Internet, less socialization - Two parent work household - Decline in 'negative reinforcement' parenting skills - Society overall is more permissive? - Other
Is it (public tantrums) because: - Parents would go to jail and have their kids taken away from them, if they acted like previous gernerations.
Maybe parents are afraid to use corporal punishment in public. You never know when big brother is watching. That would explain the supermarket tantrums going unpunished. It is because: - of kids playing dungeons & dragons - all that heavy metal music - fluoride in the water - Pong, it all started with that evil Pong game I had plenty of "negative" reinforcement growing up and I still acted up.
The kids of today are a generation of men raised by women... easy as that. As soon as men all over the US started to abandon their families chaos closely followed.
I think kids, on the whole, are just duller these days than they used to be. Some of the most imaginative and fun kids I know have parents who don't allow them to watch tv or play video games....
I don't think it is the TV or Video/Computer games that are the problem, I think it is total lack of parental involvement that is the problem. Too many families are single-parent, putting extreme pressure on that one parent to get everything done... and the ones that are two parent usually have both parents working who extend themselves financially, living off of credit, making them spend more time away from home... I beleive the root cause of all of our kids problems these days all go back to lack of parenting... some is avoidable, some is not (such as single parents who work non-stop). It is said really.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpqua/sets/1312509/ I had a paddle with my name on it in my house growing up. That was the enforcer. If I was good, I never had to see it. Sadly I got to know it quite well. IMO, It's parents, not the kids that have gone downhill.
I agree, getting my ass whipped as a kid at home AND in school was the best thing to keep me in line. I got "swats" constantly as a kid in school, and my mother was more then happy to let my teachers whip my ass... and I'm glad she did.
I totally agree. The best things my parents ever did was limit me to 30 minutes of TV a day. It forced me to read instead of just play video games and I honestly believe I wouldn't be half as smart today if they hadn't done so.
Maybe I'll address this more, later, having been a kid during the '50's and early '60's. I've got some perspective, I guess. I just wanted to say that we have 2 incredible kids, who take advanced classes in school, make straight A's, and absolutely love to read. Not only that, but they get along extremely well, which kinda freaks us out. My son is 14, and just started high school (9th grade), and my daughter just turned 10, and is in the 4th grade. My sister was the older one in our family, growing up, and we went at each other hammer and tongs! Maybe we just got lucky. Keep D&D Civil.
Better in some ways, worse in others. Fathers play a larger role in child rearing these days, meaning there are two parents around. However, because of parents that both work, that can mean two neglecting parents. There is a stronger emphasis for education, especially college education. However, the level of consumerism and materialism is very high in kids today. on the other hand, because of this, cutting monetary support can be a stronger punishment than corporal punishment for many kids. Furthermore, because of the need for money, there is a larger incentive to work. Manners are also double sided, while good manners should be respected, we don't want kids to conform too much and restrict their individuality. We want them to be against the authority when they should, but then again too much is not good. Internet leads to less socialization, but on the other hand, it also leads to more knowledge. Kids don't need to ask questions anymore, and because they have the internet, they have become more curious and inquisitive. I'm all for that because to find individuality, you need to learn a lot about things around you, and the internet is good at that. However, not everything on the internet is 'safe' or 'honest', and at the extreme ends you have kids learning how to do illegal activities and hurt others is much more disasterous ways than kids before internet.
In a word, worse.... When I was a young kid (age 6-8), if I misbehaved in a restaurant, my Dad would make me go sit out in the car, and have the waiter bring my food to me out there to eat. He'd probably get prosecuted for something like that today.
My theory: The flower child generation screwed up everything. Kids raised in the 60's and 70's rebelled by intentionally becoming generally more casual about virtually everything in life...including dicispline. However, that generation knew the difference between rude and not rude ...they just chose to ignore social norms. Unfortunately, those folks had kids of their own and they brought the touchy-feely, causual lifestyle with them in parenting. Now their children litterally don't know what it means to act appropriate in public. If you tried to explain good manners to a kid today, they'd look at you like you were from mars... that is if they didn't cuss you out or get violent. Plus the Internet and 500 cable TV channels reinforces people with skewed points of view. If you choose to do so, you can find somebody on the Internet to agree with you, no matter how screwed up you are ...so people get artificually empowered by a minority group and eventually get disconnected from reality. Kids today feel oral sex is about the same as french kissing back in my day. The Internet, teen magazines and 500 cable channels lets kids feel good about what they do because bad behavior gets positive reinforcement all over the place ...which empowers them to do whatever they please. [/soap box] Do kids behave worse today than a few years ago. Yes. But society as a whole behaves worse too. It isn't the kids fault.
I always took my kid out of the restaurant if he/she started "acting up." It's always driven my wife and I crazy when parents blithely turn a blind eye to their kids, ruining the dinner of everyone else around them, without so much as a word to their children, much less taking them outside for some "timeout" and a talking to. I did that from the get-go. We both did. The result was that we were constantly approached by people in restaurants who complemented us on the behavior of our kids. This was when they were 2, both of them. Needless to say, we've never had a problem with this. You gotta do what you gotta do. Bending over for your kids does them no favors. Quite the opposite. We're the parents and they are the children. There is no role confusion, and we see role confusion all the time. It's a bummer, and i feel sorry for the kids and the parents, but it's the parents fault, except for "special" problems. Some kids just raise hell no matter what you do. Not most, but some. Don't take them to restaurants and movie theatres. Thanks in advance. Keep D&D Civil.
With all due respect, that's pure BS. I was a hippie back in the '60's... in other words, one of those people you're talking about, and you are just completely wrong. Sorry. In my opinion, of course. Keep D&D Civil.
