|
If you're new here, you can subscribe to our RSS feed, receive e-mails and/or sign up to receive our FREE monthly newsletter, The Good Ship Mom&Pop . Welcome aboard - thanks for visiting! |
OK, Grandma Linda needs to vent. I hope you’ll indulge me for a moment.
I’ve got so much to do, I’m researching like a maniac. Now, I can take a bad story, but when I run into bad story after bad story, I slow down. Next thing you know, I can’t move because I can’t think straight with the brain going a million miles an hour. As a Grandma, the more I learn the more I get scared to death for my grandbabies, the eldest of whom is rapidly becoming a young lady.
In the last hour, I have run into a teenager’s suicide because she was foolish enough to send the requested nude photo of herself to a boyfriend who showed it around high school when they broke up. I read about a 7th grade teacher – female – sentenced to 90 days in jail for sending sexually explicit text messages and partially nude photos of herself to a 14 year-old special-ed student of hers. I ran into a blog post on the disgraceful and disgusting way teenage girls speak to each other these days. Yet another reported on a Teens and Parents Sex Summit during which teens, the youngest of whom was 13, by the way, revealed that they had done everything from having a threesome to getting drunk and drugged in preparation for sex, to making sex tapes…texting nude pictures is obviously no big deal in this environment. Did you hear about the autistic child beaten, dog-tied, and thrown into an isolation cell at a middle school in Georgia?
Is it any wonder I can’t think straight?
When I began Parent at the Helm, a mom asked me for facts and statistics to help her convince her husband they should homeschool their little one when he reaches school age. I told her hard statistics are hard to come by on homeschoolers, and why. Mom, I hope you’re reading this! Just travel around the Internet – I wasn’t searching for this stuff at all!
Someone please just tell me it’s not too late.
Link to this page
Grandma Linda,
How about our friend who is a public high school chemistry teacher who homeschools his own child because of what scares him every day of his life. And I'm sure there are more than one public school teacher who homeschools their children.
I really didn't need to know all the details he shared about what kids do with their cell phone cameras to unsuspecting kids in the restrooms and locker rooms.
It is definitely NOT where I want my children or future grandchildren. I hope this dad doesn't need any more 'statistics' than this.
Makes me wonder if teachers would, under promise of anonymity, share their stories to help parents?
Hi Linda,
It's extremely perplexing.
In Australia many teens and young adults drink themselves into oblivion and then brawl on the streets. This is becoming so common now that it is almost accepted as normal. We have had a huge police blitz coordinated throughout the country over this last weekend with police "cracking down" and arresting drunken brawling teenagers.
Of course, it goes much deeper than that. It is a societal thing.
Here we are in this beautiful fortunate country and the best thing that many teens can do is drink and fight – something is missing and unless we all find a way to instill in these young people a feeling of inclusiveness, responsibility and plain old self-control, we are going to become one very sad society.
Howdy, Barbara,
And thanks for commenting.
A "police blitz coordinated throughout the country?" That's mind-boggling.
I think you're on to something very important – that something's missing. Going back to the sage saying, "Only an empty cup can be filled," might it be safe to say that the "cups" are getting filled up with too much else to have room for responsibility and self-control and, if so, what is it, why is it there, and how to get rid of it? Just thinking out loud…