I mentioned in a recent review how things change when you are a parent. We hear it a lot, but it’s true. That doesn’t mean that people without children can’t feel the same empathy, and compassion for kids that parents do, but there is a fence for most people who don’t have children, because even if you are close to your niece, nephew, grandchild, godchild, or someone else things change when you are raising that child, teaching them, and loving them dawn to dusk and well beyond.
The hope, for me, and I would think for a society, is that we can all work to protect children to the best of our abilities without making a world only for them. Lots of folks don’t have or want kids, and they shouldn’t have to curb their interests or lifestyles for people they may not even want to know.
And that’s all fair.
The iron is to live in a culture that goes on and on about protecting kids, and berates people, and preaches to them about the kids, the kids, the kids…up until the point of having to curtail their own behavior, ideologies, and actions.
We hear it all the time, the anti-abortion rhetoric, the wringing of hands over violent video games, the satanic panic that gripped the nation, and the rise of Christian groups bent on curtailing anything they deem as offensive.
And while all of those plates are spinning we see college rapists getting slaps on the wrists, elected officials paying off mistresses, and performative outrage on the television about a rapidly changing culture that has been shifting for generations.
You see the double standard in schools, where they want to ban books, and and cater history to a narrow, jingoistic viewpoint but the same people will lie, cheat, and steal because they are different than other people. People want to hide the truth a full view of history can present in order to show the United States, and White people, as heroic and great, not as flawed, and ever-evolving. It’s a simplistic, and useless view of history as, once children grow up and enter the real world they’ll be faced with the reality that the rest of the world doesn’t view the U.S. as selfless and heroic at all. American history, and its place in the world, is far more nuanced and complicated.
As a culture we preach one thing, and live another while wagging our fingers.
I live near a school and am astounded to watch as people race down a 25 MPH street where kids live. Worse is to go to the school my daughter attends and to watch people do the same thing, with the same limit, as children are going into school.
But yes, let’s think of the children.
Or ingest some television or movies for children and you see humor for adults, either sexual, or scatological, with a wink, to keep mom and dad amused. There’s a trailer for the new “Angry Birds” film that has a long, disgusting pee joke, which is no surprise as the first film had something similar. And oh, sure, a kid will laugh at that, but it’s potty humor, and isn’t necessary in any way. Kids laugh at lots of stuff because it’s taboo, that doesn’t mean we should cater to that mindset. Turn to something like YouTube and there are videos marked for kids that deal with subject matter that is not for kids, or advertising that is far from child friendly.
It’s not enough to try to monitor what your kid watches now, because suggestive, or inappropriate material is slipped into movies that are age appropriate. Heck, even the most appropriate content on YouTube can have advertising that isn’t appropriate, because they have to monetize their work in order to keep creating it. Turning to the version of YouTube that has the guardrails up for kids still brings you content that isn’t appropriate. I remember a video for kids that had little action figures being manipulated by an adult dealing with an adult stranger speaking with a child, and then the child telling her parent, and insinuating it was an abusive conversation. YIKES! An important conversation to have with a child but maybe not the most thoughtful way to handle it, YOUTUBE!
We sexualize and adultify kids because we want to live through them. We make little girls dress up like grown women for pageants, and boys work out and take muscle supplements as their bodies are still developing so they can be more masculine and strong. We want kids to be children, but also want to to live through them, and have them do the things we didn’t, or couldn’t.
How many times do we see fights breaking out at a sporting event for kids?
Is it appropriate?
Is it sane to get so caught up in the moment that you steal the fun of something your child is doing to make the moment about you, and your outrage?
Does it matter?
Does it matter if your child got a raw deal while playing a game? Does it?
Do you think they’re destined for greatness?
I get that kids get attention from a school and can be offered sports scholarships, and that’s great, but if you are so wrapped up in their career as a child playing sports that you’re willing to scream, yell, and fight, then you may well push that child away from something they love, because they see how it makes you behave.
As we hear all the time, kids are smart. They are clever. They can sense when we’re lying, can tell that we’re hiding things from them, and will seek out the things we are forbidding them from knowing. It’s as simple as someone telling you not to think of the sun and then immediately that is what you will think about. Humans are also naturally curious, and can only understand the world around us through knowledge and understanding.
Don’t touch the stove.
Buy why?
It doesn’t matter.
Well, now I need to find out for myself.
I am still reckoning with what it means to be a father, a dad, a girl dad, and to deal with the things on her horizon that were also on my own.
I am trying to help her with things I struggled with, and to be more emotionally honest and available with her than I had in my childhood.
I created a lot of complications in my life with my ongoing mental health issues, but some things I was in control of, or needed to take control of.
We aren’t giving kids a world they can grow in, but are protecting it from the knowledge we decide they shouldn’t have or need. We hear about indoctrination all the time, and how children are being INDOCTRINATED, and the thing is that they are, but not in the way we’re hearing. They are being indoctrinated into a world that doesn’t reflect reality, but a belief system, and one that may very well die out in their lifetimes.
Kids don’t need a world that is not just fenced off from them, but which is blacked out, as if it doesn’t exist, they need to know why some parts of the world aren’t meant for them…yet. They need to understand that decisions they make now, could effect their futures, but not always in ways that are clear to see. Kids need to be taught, as they are ready, about the world we have made, not the one we want them to think exists. That doesn’t mean telling them about nuclear war as a kid, but that people can be dangerous, and they need to be wary of who they trust. They need to learn that history is just as complex as the people who make it, and that we all need to keep striving to be better, to ourselves and one another.
How many adults are being raised by their children?
How many adults are so broken, and buried in the ruins of their own lives that they make their children become the parent, and hold the family together?
Yet we cut resources to mental health, and are cutting the support systems that can keep that family together as they weather the storms too many of us have to endure. The cost of living is rising but the jobs are drying up, help, and aid are disappearing. Wages are not keeping pace with inflation because the wealthy cannot imagine a world where their sharing the profits of a business makes sense.
We wonder why there are children who turn to violence, and gangs, and drugs, when we adults refuse to work together to make the world better for them. At every turn we show children that unless you are favored, by race, wealth, location, or some other arcane rubric, there is no future for you outside of servitude. And we wonder why they tune us out. We wonder why they want get-rich-quick schemes like becoming an influencer.
Because they want the attention they couldn’t get from the people who claimed to love them.
Because they see the adults around them chasing after the same schemes because the system is rigged.
It’s a kid’s world, friends, just so long as they shut up, behave, and make us proud.
…c…
