“It’s not that animals don’t second-guess themselves”, Christen pronounced, “It’s that the things they are surest of, they never question.”
Her lecture was scheduled as a peptalk to teenagers who’d made pretty big mistakes. It would end with a discussion on having ‘values’.
“Crows are among the more intelligent animals and some of them still get ‘hammered’ by cars while pecking at roadkill. But there’s one thing crows never hesitate to do. They will rally to each other’s aid in an instant with aplomb. Community and family valued more than individual safety.”
We are individually predisposed to our own variety of reactions to Life’s litany of experiences. The quiet introspective child will respond differently from the impulsive risk-taking child to the same (or similar) situations. Neither is better equipped than the other, but their ‘journeys’ will obviously take different ‘paths’. So, in that sense, we are each ‘slaves’ to our inborn tendencies.
Yet, in each situation we also have the capacity to make choices. Sometimes they are choices that are the ‘lesser of two evils’ and sometimes they are choices according to values and goals. What makes life even more of a gambit is that none of us get to become adults without passing through the “tempest time” of being a teenager. Gosh! It’s hard to watch. So much of their future successes depend on making ‘wise’ decisions during a time when their own wisdom is in low supply. We can appeal to them but no longer have much influence on them. This is why we call the preteens, the “formative years”. Their values and decision-making skills are already formed by our involved parenting.
{A short opinion rant is coming. Viewers are advised to use discretion. LOL }
Tell me again about the modern concept of “free range parenting”?! Offering little guidance or instruction to young children isn’t just “lazy”, it’s cruel and amounts to criminal neglect offering no compassion for their futures. It also makes our entire society and culture vulnerable to unscrupulous influences. Shame on those who fail to guide their children! [Yes… I lost my cool. Sometimes there are topics that require it. đ ]
This morning my granddaughter texted me from school asking to be “signed out” and for a ride home. It took only a few minutes by text to confirm her mom’s okay and let her know that I was on my way. How cool is that? It probably doesn’t seem extraordinary to anyone under 25 but the development of technology during my lifetime has given us many good outcomes. That ‘good’ news is currently overshadowed by a flood of bad news about the ‘evil’ perpetrated online. Who didn’t imagine a ‘downside’ to something that brought us so much good? It’s there. Let’s learn and adapt.
We mustn’t ignore the ‘bad’. Gosh, it’s scary to think about. But it seems complaining and outrage has overtaken the old philosophy of “live and learn”. Any innovation to solve problems doesn’t seem to ‘rule the day’. Doesn’t anyone remember “necessity is the mother of invention”? Most of what we call ‘progress’ was born from a problem that needed to be solved.
But there’s more to this morning’s tale… My daughter gave us the ‘thumbs up’ on the dismissal but my son-in-law wasn’t told about it in the interest of time. Before my granddaughter and I got home, I stopped for a gallon of milk at a convenience store. While there, my granddaughter’s phone lit up with a message from Dad. “What are you doing at a store? You’re supposed to be at school.”
Ahhh. I remember during the early days of cellphones imagining ways kids could mislead their parents about their location. [ We were once teenagers ourselves. You can’t possibly imagine that they wouldn’t find that loophole.]
But the necessity of parents to keep track of their kids encouraged them to ‘learn’ and caused the development of an app that would notify them of their child’s cellphone location. Genius! That innovation has endless potential in favor of safety.
Bad things can be tamed, even conquered, when we promote innovation. [That’s a large part of our American spirit.]
Why does it lately appear that we’re trending toward just ‘banning things’ as the go-to, inefficient, and lazy solution? Didn’t we learn anything from Prohibition?
Seems like our society is taking a really bad turn. There’s a lot of ‘banning’ proposed. Even worse, there’s a clear movement toward simply indulging our problems rather than creating solutions to them. This widespread surrender of problem solving isn’t going to end well. I don’t even know where it came from.
A rise in homelessness? Give them tents. A rise in drug abuse? Give them the tools to use. A rise in single motherhood? Offer them abortions.
I didn’t intend for this to be what many might consider a “political” post. I don’t think it is at all. “Giving up” isn’t a political topic. It’s a tragedy for us all.
I can’t imagine why “live and learn” has been replaced with “whatever”.
So, I am asking, why has that philosophy gone missing?
God really blew it when it came to making small children irresistibly physically appealing and making teenagers awkward and moody. This prompt word ‘butter’ made me instantly recall cute little four-year-olds wielding their charms and puppy dog appearances in manipulative efforts meant to ‘butter up’ adults. It works! Kids become masters of the ‘smooze’ often before they can talk. But teenagers are unlovable in appearance and temperament. What the heck? They need more of everything (love, understanding, guidance, and adult presence) and somehow were created to sabotage all those things. Some say it’s the process of getting parents to prepare to let them go. Hogwash! Teenagers need parents to hold them more tightly during their ‘trials’ of puberty. Don’t confuse my opinion on the need for more parenting with being intrusive and overprotective. I mean more alert and engaged. We have to be smarter, and more devious, than those incomplete awkward ‘adultlings’. It calls for more sleepless nights, more monitoring, and more understanding than the ‘terrible twos’ required. That realization is usually a big surprise! I blame it all on the too frequent comparison of kids to puppies which is a somewhat cruel ‘bait and switch’. Puppies ruin stuff, need training, and keep you busy but become easier to live with from there on. Not so with children! Happy Saturday and special blessings for you who have teenagers!
Since so many other online writers have blogs dedicated to their writings, Iâve decided to jump onto the bandwagon. All posts published here will be either fiction or poetry, some new, and some previously published on various places on the Internet. Some of my works are conventional, and some are quirky. All fiction posted here, except for fan fiction, will include the letters "rose" somewhere, as a tribute to my Baba.
Sillyfrog's Blog 