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Insane/Ill-Informed/Presumptuous/Entitled Parents

#41
IconBasser said:
an interesting hypothesis, care to elaborate on that? (Not trying to be snarky here, I'd just like to hear your reasoning. I'm genuinely interested in this phenomenon).
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Well, think about it - if parent never teaches their kid any sort of personal responsibility, let's them get away with anything, never instills a sense of pride, never demonstrates a work ethic or even a caring in their child's future, then HOW do you think that would manifest itself once that kid gets to school?

See what I mean?
 
#42
I was fortunate when I was in school many years ago (I'm 55) in that I had good teachers who cared about their job and parents who cared about me. I knew what was expected of me and not doing the work and/or getting in trouble was not going to go over well. My only "experience" with our current educational system is hearing friends and family who are teachers relate their "war stories". They seem to be responsible for any problems that arise, whether the problems are in school or at home. I don't think I could have the patience or resolve to deal with what they have to face.
 
#43
Relic said:
+1. No argument here, but I still think that good parenting sets the stage for the teacher to even be able to work their magic. I guess it's still possible for a teacher to reach "that kid" who's never been shown discipline, work ethic, or pride but I'm thinking that it's by far the exception.
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I agree totally that parents can do a huge amount to instil discipline, work ethic and pride. But I think that really inspiring a kid to actually learn in a particular subject has a great deal to do with their teacher.
 
#45
fdeck said:
Let's set aside the fact that complex problems tend to have multiple causes, and instead, focus on blaming the one group of people who can be blamed with no possibility of verification: Parents.
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Well, do you feel a majortity of parents do an excellent job raising their kids? I know I sure don't, Ive lived it. My ex-roommate was a horrible parent, I wont go into it. Im sure there are plenty of others out there like her, you can easily tell by the dumbing down of each subsequent generation.
 
#48
You could argue that most of the problems in the world are caused by less-than-perfect parenting, and your claim would not only be unfalsifiable but also Utopian. A system that can't function when faced with human imperfection is not worthy of consideration.

I think that by and large, parents are doing OK with the hands that we are dealt. There's no instruction manual for raising kids. We receive massively conflicting advice about what to do. Our attitudes are likely to be similar to those of our parents. We have the right attitudes. But we are not 100% in control of what happens. Our kids have personality traits that are governed by their genes. They are influenced by the environment outside the home. It is possible that levels of biologically driven behavior problems such as ADHD and autism are creeping upward for unknown reasons. We have our own behavioral traits that we might not even be capable of controlling. We experience unpredictable levels of stress that we have to cope with.

The school environment is one of the challenges of raising kids. I think that it has become more chaotic since I was a kid. This is probably caused by a combination of rowdy kids who are easily bored, in rowdy classrooms that are easily boring. Kids have less and less instruction at school due to educational fads such as group learning and standardized testing. And they have less and less unstructured free time due to structured activities, electronic entertainment, and homework.

Now, about pushy parents. Sure, we are pushy. Wimps get walked on. We live in a pushy culture. If we don't like a consumer product, we expect a refund, no questions asked. If we don't want to pay a car repair bill, we bitch until the shop agrees to eat part of the cost. We even haggle with service providers such as the cell phone company, over terms that are supposedly nailed down by contracts or "policies." Everything is negotiable. Businesses, in return, routinely overcharge us, gambling that only a few of us will notice and bitch about it.

In my own job, if I am doing substandard work, I expect to hear about it. Most of us who are employed in the real world have accepted that we will continually be told how we can improve the quality of our work.

The only question is when to be pushy and when not to be. I support the teachers when they discipline my kids. At the same time, I have told the principal that the teachers need some coaching on classroom management, and that my kids need more advanced instruction. Kids have to learn how to be pushy too, albeit probably not starting in grade school. By the time they are in college, they have to be not only bright and diligent, but also assertive, to get ahead.
 
#50
I used to transport middle school kids up to Portola Hills aannd you could tell they were latchkey kids, parents were never home so who do they crave attention from? the driver of the bus. I've been called all sort of delightful names, one kid decorated the back of the seat with "gina is a bitch" ...he got his butt in trouble for that. The girl with the potty mouth FINALLY thankfully was either removed or moved away i dunno...i felt pity for these little ***** that their parents didn't take time enough to teach them respect.
 
#53
fdeck said:
Let's set aside the fact that complex problems tend to have multiple causes, and instead, focus on blaming the one group of people who can be blamed with no possibility of verification: Parents.
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Hmmm, kind of a black and white statement there.
The truth of it is that parents are the key part of the puzzle. Yep, there are other factors involved which can dictate success or failure, but parents and good parenting are the foundation.
 
#54
Relic said:
Hmmm, kind of a black and white statement there.
The truth of it is that parents are the key part of the puzzle. Yep, there are other factors involved which can dictate success or failure, but parents and good parenting are the foundation.
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Okay, but then what? We know that parents are involved with our kids. How does that statement help us at all? I was mainly trying to point out that "blame the parents" is not a universal answer to issues involved with raising kids.
 
#55
fdeck said:
Okay, but then what? We know that parents are involved with our kids. How does that statement help us at all? I was mainly trying to point out that "blame the parents" is not a universal answer to issues involved with raising kids.
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How does what statement help? "Blame the parents"?

OK, here's my thought process on the subject - nowadays, there sure seems to be a mentality of "blame someone else", or "nothing is really my fault", yeah, exaggerated for effect but not by much. And because of this, things that really need to be fixed don't get fixed, or at best, ever improve. Why? Because the blame is perpetually somewhere else.
Good parenting is the lynchpin. Whether your kid aspires to be a mechanic, rocket scientist or ballet dancer, teaching him/her a work ethic, a sense of self worth, and a sense of responsibility will get them to where they aspire to be. Too many kids do NOT have the benefit of that and then we blame "bad teachers" because the kids are doing bad in school, we blame MTV, we blame video games, etc etc
I'm a parent of 3 boys, and I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can usually tell which kids have involved parents and which do not.

So to say "blame the parents" may be an oversimplification at times, but in my experience, that's usually where the problem lies.
"we have met the enemy and they are us..."
 
#57
fdeck said:
Okay, but then what? We know that parents are involved with our kids. How does that statement help us at all? I was mainly trying to point out that "blame the parents" is not a universal answer to issues involved with raising kids.
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The problematic this thread is about is not blaming everyone's parents. It's parents blaming everyone else for what their own children do.

I don't know how many times I've heard a parent get a call because their kid got in major trouble, and ask "What did you do to him?"
 
#58
Back when I was a security police officer in the USAF, most of the time when we arrested kids for shoplifting, vandalism, etc., the majority of the time even back then quite a few of the parents reacted 'not MY kid! He'd never do anything like that!' usually followed by 'so-and-so must have tricked/talked him into/whatever' doing what they'd be doing. The parents who protested the loudest were usually the ones whose kid turned out to be the ringleader who was behind everything... Further, the ones who got into the most trouble were the ones with senior officers as parents; the kids of the enlisted folks didn't get into trouble nearly as much. Talk about senses of entitlement... and as we were arresting them, the kids would be telling the store detectives and then the security police personnel "do you know who my father is? You're gonna get into so much trouble - you better let me go!" *Sigh* So the refusing to take responsibility and 'my kid can't do any wrong - someone else has to be responsible' attitude isn't anything new. It just seems to be a lot more common than it used to be.
 
#60
To the teachers here, what do you think of this situation;

My daughter (5th Grade) gets a letter home saying she is going to be presented with The Principal's Award for academic achievement at a ceremony at school.

The day comes and I asked her how the ceremony went. She told me they didn't do the presentation and she gave me another letter.

It basically said - after much thought and conversations with teachers and parents, I have decided not to present the award in school because I do not want to discourage the students that did not get an award from trying to reach their potential.

So it looks like some parents of the kids not getting an award complained that their little jane's and johnnys would be upset to see their peers succeeding.


Boy was I pissed.
 

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