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| Articles: Kids these days . . . |
Posted by
Andree on Wednesday, May 05, 2004 - 04:12 AM PST
Kids these days are soft. When I was a kid, we were disciplined, and fit, and tough. Now, kids are unpunished, lazy, and over-privileged.
I mean, I’m nineteen years old, and I am very naïve—I could hardly be considered world-weary, and in some ways I'm still very much a kid. . . make that many ways. But even now, there are a few things that make me feel old—like the fact that I don’t get a sucker at the bank anymore, and that I actually like butterscotch and artichokes and tapioca pudding, which used to look like fish eyes. . . I know, pity me, pity me. There’s more, though. That my friends are getting married and having babies (the two don’t seem to be correlated), that my parents’ backs and knees and memories are already shot, that everyone has died or is dying of cancer. So yes, childhood is a thing of the past, so it’s with authority that I speak of it with indignation: things used to be run much differently. Kids have in fact become soft.
In my day, parents were allowed to punish their children. If we back-talked, we got a spanking. If we lied about the use and whereabouts of the matches, we got a spanking. Drawing on the bedsheets with crayons definitely deserved a spanking. Our parents told us that all this discipline was good for us. We didn’t believe them, of course, but they were absolutely right. Discipline did do us good. After a good spanking, we didn’t smart-mouth anymore. We didn’t start fires, and we certainly didn’t color the bedsheets green again, or any other color for that matter.
But now, spanking is “abuse,” and there are many projects dedicated to delegalizing it. Even the United Nations wants Canada to make spanking unlawful—as of this year, Canada is obligated to make periodic appearances before the U.N.’s Committee on the Rights of the Child. The committee has said Canada should “adopt legislation to remove the existing authorization of the use of ‘reasonable force’ in disciplining children.” There was even a Supreme Court case regarding spanking—Donald R. Cobble, Jr. vs. Commissioner of the Department of Social Services. Cobble argued it was his God-given right to discipline his child, but the state agency disagreed, likening Cobble's “tough-love” discipline to “child abuse.” Kids today can’t even receive proper punishment without a concerned activist’s intervention.
Children also used to be healthy. My third-grade recess was a time for playing tag. It was a time for making touchdowns and running away from cootie-infested boys . . . it was our A.D.H.D.-given nature to get some exercise. Yeah, every class had a fat kid (ours looked like a tomato), but the rest of us had too much inborn hyperactivity—and if we didn’t, P.E. class forced it out of us.
Now, however, children are fatter than ever. Kids are lazy. Childhood obesity rates have doubled in the past decade. The reason for the growing number of growing waistlines is inactivity. I read somewhere that only twenty-five percent of schools today have P.E. classes, and that the amount of kids enrolled in P.E. classes has declined by some thirty percent. School must not be as fun--if there are too many fat kids, they’ll miss out on making fun of the fat kid, because everyone will be a fat kid. This is sad.
Kids used to be tough, too, but now they’re wimpy as Wendell on The Simpsons. I blame a single food item: crustless bread. When I was a kid, we had to either eat the crust or get rid of it. Eating this horrible brown bread-scab built character; it taught us how to deal with discomfort. If eating the crust simply wasn’t an option, we had to find a way to get rid of it, and there were only two ways to do this. Option one was to give it away, which required good negotiation skills to coerce a sibling or parent into eating it. Option two was to sneak the crust off the plate. This improved our wits, because deviousness improved our problem-solving skills. We bettered ourselves, whether we hid the crust under a napkin or slipped it to the dog
But instead of using their brains, today’s kids are catered to. All a parent has to do is head down to Albertson’s and buy a loaf of crustless bread. For $3.19 a loaf. No longer can bread prompt emotional development—without crust on the table, kids don’t improve their characters, their bargaining skills, or their critical thinking abilities.
If this trend continues, kids ten years from now will be seventy-pound beasts who sit on the couch all day, while their parents serve them pre-chewed feasts on silver platters. It’s about time people start spanking their kids. It’s time to make kids run during fourth period, and it’s most definitely time to stop adulterating bread.
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| Kids these days . . . | Login/Create an account | 25 Comments |
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by Psychopixi (psyche.at.psychopixi.dot.com)
on May 05, 2004 - 06:02 AM
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*big smile*
I loved this article. Specially the bit about bread, because I remember all too well how fucking tricky it was to get the crust suitably hidden under a napkin. Or hiding the peas under mashed potato, that was another classic.
Gotta say that skiving off PE never did me any harm though - think of it as improving my negotiating skills, and my poker face as I had to come up with a new excuse every week to avoid that dreaded class.
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by Ironboots on May 05, 2004 - 08:43 AM
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*creaks back and forth in his rocking chair* You're damn right!
I'm 19 too, and its pitiful what has happened. For example, my old elementary school has built a big steel shade-enclosure thing over the lunch area. Back in my day, we didn't have anything like that. We ate our lunches out in the damn hot sun and got skin cancer. And by golly, we liked it! And on rainy days, we'd eat lunch in the classroom, which was loads of fun because you could run around and scribble on the board; something you never got to do normally...
And its all them damn generation X'ers* that have sold out and become 'model' parents... Bah humbug...
*although there are some exceptional x'ers that have not...
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by callei on May 07, 2004 - 06:43 AM
(User info | Send a Message) http://http:// | yah got to wonder, is the gen Xers or the babyboomers second round of kids that are the more spoiled. The gen Xers dont want to be like thier parents and thier parents, the babyboomers, dont want to make the same mistakes again.
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by Merry_Widow on May 05, 2004 - 09:11 AM
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Remember folks, it's only abuse if it purposefully leaves a mark that lasts longer for 24 hours.
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by callei on May 07, 2004 - 06:45 AM
(User info | Send a Message) http://http:// | | that is sooo scary to me. I mean you can fit your kid hard enough to do permenant damage again and again as long as you "didnt mean it" and as long as it doesnt break bones or disfigure them. you cant do that to adults so why can you do it small children? |
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by Dolorosa (SixOfSwords@IU.zzn.com)
on May 05, 2004 - 10:37 AM
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Good god damn I suddenly feel old...that ain't freakin' right. You know...back in MY day, which was even before Ironboots' when one of us kids did something wrong, our parents took us out in the back and shot us.
No seriously.
Funny though, this article brings to mind how damn rapidly things can change, or rather, how fast our perceptions of them change. Every generation has complaints about the next, and idealizations of the past...which I'm not sayin' ain't true...just dang common.
I for one will think of you as an adult kid, if only because you made a Simpsons reference...which goes the same for me, if your an unadultrated adult you woulda' made a reference to Popeye. heh heh.
Props on an interestin' article though...
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by Jesi on May 05, 2004 - 03:52 PM
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Hell yes. I agree with you completely.
I visited a playground the other day at some local park and found that, apparently, sand is no more. Nothing but padded crap, instead of sand, so that the poor kids won't scrape their knees when they have a nasty fall. Sure, it makes shit safer, but I couldn't help but feel that they were turning them into pussies. I noticed that a couple of fat kids complained to their mommies that the soft shit apparently still caused them to have bo-bo's. Aww...poor them.
Hmm..I always ate the crust of bread. My dad told me to suck it up, stop being a wimp, and eat the damn crust already. Food was food. He did the same thing to me with eggs. I hated eggs. I still hate eggs. But that's another story...
I also remember walking out of my parents room backwards when I did something bad, so as to avoid a spanking. I thought I was a swift, sneaky bastard the second I'd turn around to walk away.. Haha. What a loser. But then my dad would nail one right on my ass. Pfft..never again.
Yep...
That's all folks.
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com)
on May 05, 2004 - 05:46 PM
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FIrst off, you're right on a lot of points. Kids are spoiled, misbehaved, rude, terribly educated, coddled, and too "fat". Now as an ex fat pre teen/teen, I'm not making fun. There are always going to be fat kids, but you can tell a NORMAL "fat kid" from a FAT KID. I noticed this at disney land four years ago, the sheer NUMBER of not big boned or healthy big kids, but fat, tired, whiney brats and their overprotective, junk food peddling "parents". Playstations aren't babysitters, tv isn't a babysitter.
On to spanking. I"m half and half with it. I got spanked only two times I can remember, and I was still in diapers. It was usually only a swat, and it was the sound it made that was intent to scare me away from doing something REALLY REALLY dangerous. Once was for throwing a large rock at my sister's head as she rode away on my bike, and once was for the old classic heading towards the light socket with a fork in hand. My parents simply used "the look" and psychological disipline which involved time outs and making me explain my actions, not getting away with "I dunno". My parent's also listened to us, kept an eye on what we were doing, if we were tired and getting cranky and needed to go home, told to suck it up when we were being overdramatic, and payed attention to us. SPanking isn't the answer for everything, like drawing on the sheets or the wall, definitely not, but if you need to get a point across in a hurry to stop a harmful or REALLY terrible behavior, then a swat is, in my mind, called for.
I never heard the line "I'll give you something to cry about" or "Do you want a spanking" and my parents could take us anywhere at any age and not have problems. We pitched the occasional fit, of course, ALL kids do, but we knew from an early age that fit pitching, misbehaving, or embarassing mom or dad in public was a free ticket home early, and the personal hurt of knowing we were out of hand. If we started acting up my mom would sit us in the public bathroom until we were done, ask if we were tired, and if we needed to go home.
Like I said, I agree mostly with what you said (spanking aside), and it isn't starting with the kids you see now, because I see kids way older that grew up FROM those kids and are obnoxious horrors as teenagers.
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by Zero (-)
on May 05, 2004 - 07:03 PM
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first i'd like to say i like this artical......
I used to be the fat kid...THE FAT KID. I was tortured everyday in school since the 4th grade. i had freinds though. so it wasn't all bad. but everyday i would get called one name or another. it sucked. i was in a few fights that i won..i guess my weight had some benifits. I still remember trying to sighn up for little league football...but i was too big to play with the kids my age...it sucked.. i 'm still very self concious because of all that. i do have to say that because of all the teasing i eventially started to fight back. i guess i was made a little stronger because of it.
So, yeah kids these days suck....in fact people are becoming idiots and asses at younger and younger ages...i see that alot here...the kids just suck...and they don't respect adults at all...i blame alot of it on non-sense TV....also know as sesemi street, blues cluse, yugioh!, and all that other kid crap desighned to get children to buy so-called "educational" toys. Television cannot raise a child...no matter how many times you show Burt trying to search for his favorite number.
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com) on May 05, 2004 - 10:25 PM
(User info | Send a Message) http://bettie_x.tripod.com/ | So do you blame the television for being there or the parents that expect it to raise their children for them? Parents don't have to LET their kids watch TV. But this they do, so who's really to blame? It all comes down to personal responsibility, which 90% of the population gave up en masse about 10 years ago. Media may load the gun, but environment and upbringing always pulls the trigger.
Sesame street still is a basic education program, tho I can't say much for some of the idiot toys they've come out with. I learned to count with sesame street. Blue's clues isn't AS educational, but still not nearly as absurd as most television. My nephew has picked up a shockingly large spanish vocabulary at the age of 2 by watching dora the explorer's character Diego. He learned shapes and activities on bob the builder, and I"m serious, watching a 2 year old study a hole and a peg, and then ever so carefully make the correct choice and hammer the sucker in on his bob the builder toy set is wierd. My sister doesn't ever just sit him in front of the TV by himself unless it's to keep him occupied long enough to pull his lunch out of the toaster oven.
The problem is when parents sit their kid in front of non age appropriate material and think nothing more of it, ASSUMING they know the difference between fantasy and real life, and then cant' figure out why they dont' listen or talk back or shoot up their classmates. By not asking questions and monitoring/explaining the things their kid watches, they are releasing their responsibility to the outcome of their child,. something which a frightening amount of parents seem more than willing to do anymore. |
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by pheno (issa2k69@hotmail.com)
on May 05, 2004 - 11:06 PM
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Our minds are mush. We'd lack the discipline to be on the lookout for everything we got spanked over. It is a sign of the changing times. When I was a kid, although both my parents worked they didn't have to.
All in all, our wonderful environment leaves us to be is spanked by our boss, trying to afford a roof over our head. If I had kids, by the time I got home from work, they got home from the sitter, dinner, cleanup, overtime every other saturday, there would'nt be enough time left to spank 'em.
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by dead-cell (freaksworth01@netscape.net)
on May 05, 2004 - 11:26 PM
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Man...I could rant for days on these wimpy kids. Being twenty-two I remember a time when dodge ball was mandatory. Now most kids ask, "What’s that?" They would not serve on the playgrounds of our past, metal monkey bars, metal slides that would burn your ass, chain linked swings that would pinch the skin on your fingers, and tether ball (aka playground mace). That was just the playground; on certain days we had the obstacle course (higher monkey bars, climbing walls, etc..) In P.E. we had to run a mile at least once a week; other times we got out the balancing beam and played pillow fight. Heck when the lights went off at our school during a storm we did not scream out of terror; we screamed out of excitement. The teachers would usually gather more than one class together let their hair down and tell us stories. Ha now I remember one of the games we use to play at recess was spread eagle (no not that spread eagle). The object of the game was to spread your arms out, put your back to the wall, and let your friends through every ball they could at the wall with out hitting you......No these kid today wouldn't last long in our day. I hear tells that there are no more metal bars, slides, and chains. That art classes are decreasing. Toddlers having to go to school at earlier ages each year (which boggles my mind as to what their teaching since its mainly repetition after sixth grade.) Sometimes I wonder if kids still play duck, duck, goose. Something tells me we will be seeing alot more Rod and Tod Flanderses
I'll post about punishment some other time.
-DC
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by BlueLinn (avilinn@yahoo.com)
on May 06, 2004 - 09:23 AM
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I am so SICK of children, even just a few years younger than I am screaming about ANGST. when they have both parrents, they have no debts and mommy and daddy just bought them a car for their 16th. A bumper sticker said it best...." Angst is stupid"
nice artical though
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Look at Us
by IamSquid (undisclosed)
on May 06, 2004 - 12:36 PM
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My god, what the hell is wrong with this? Here we all are in our 20s and 30s some of us in our TEENS complaining about kids these days. I don't think it was that long ago that it was people in their fourties and older who were always complaining about how new music sucked and kids are ungreatful brats.
What the hell? When did people start getting old so quickly?
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Re: Look at Us
by pheno (issa2k69@hotmail.com) on May 06, 2004 - 03:24 PM
(User info | Send a Message) | | since TV learned how to convince us that being old is better. |
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Re: Look at Us
by Merry_Widow on May 06, 2004 - 04:13 PM
(User info | Send a Message) http:// | | What the hell are you talking about? TV pushes youth as the only thing. That's why People or ET or one of those things is having their Top 25 stars under the age of 25. This has to be one of the most youth obsessed cultures ever. Why do you think people keep having botox parties? |
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Re: Look at Us
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com) on May 07, 2004 - 09:58 AM
(User info | Send a Message) http://bettie_x.tripod.com/ | Squid, man, I was 21 when I started turning into a cranky old lady. I remember the first time it happened, I was driving to the store down the block at 11:00 at night and when I got out of my car there were large groups of kids just haning out around their cars and blasting music in the grocery store parking lot, and as I was walking towards the store I got all cranky and I swear this exact thought ran through my head...
"Goddamned kids, it's a fucking school night, don't their parents know where they are? I can't stand that crap they're listening to, how could anyone listen to mindless garbage like that? It's not music, it'd goddamned idiot noise. They better not screw with my car when I'm shopping..." |
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Re: Look at Us
by IamSquid (undisclosed) on May 07, 2004 - 10:12 AM
(User info | Send a Message) http://www.goodandevilgoround.com | | Yoo know, the neighborhood kids call mee and my roommates "old" all the time. One of my roommates always lets them play in the yard, sometimes they run into our house uniinvited. Every time they do I catch myself saying "friggin KIDS." Maybe I should just give in and chase them around with a broom... |
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Re: Look at Us
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com) on May 07, 2004 - 11:28 AM
(User info | Send a Message) http://bettie_x.tripod.com/ | | I know I caught myself right after and almost cried thinking "SHIT! Am I really ready to be a cranky bitchy old woman?" the answer is yes, because I was totally born as a grouchy old lady. I hated most teenagers when *I* was a teenager, I hated being around them and I hated BEING one. |
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Re: Look at Us
by Nykiro (AFI_seasonschange@hotmail.com) on May 15, 2004 - 04:10 PM
(User info | Send a Message) http:// | | my younger sister had a few friends over the other night, and they know things that i had no idea about at that age...some seven year olds were calling each other skanks and whatnot...my younger sister appreciates absolutly nothing....she just had a birthday and i came home with a fish i had bought for my self, and she threw a fit...it was horaible...all of her friends were telling me that i was a brat and then on called me a bitch and shes only 7 or 8....kids shouldnt know that sort of stuff...i personally blame it on us...the older people that they look up to...if they hear us say somthing there going to repeat it because they think that its cool... |
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by Squire-of-Gothos (Brian0049@hotmail.com)
on May 07, 2004 - 03:36 AM
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He, he, dodge-ball.......It really is a shame. I'm 18, and just barely caught the tail end of the wimpification of kids. It really sucks. I remember when we where all ready to go rough and tumble, when flag football was for losers, and when breaking someone elses nose was an honor, and when you're the loser and you break the nose, you practically become a god of the 3rd grade *Eyes get twinkly as a lunch room memory floods back* Eh hem, yes, so enough using elementary school as bragging rights. Nowadays, kids fight in gangs of 4 or 5, becuase they lack the Klingon like honour that kids used to have. They're all sad and lonely, like a bunch of ghosts that haunt an empty house. And I think I know the reason....Television!
When I was growing up, I had Pet and Pete. Ren and Stimpy. Clarissa, Bump in the Night, Reboot, Free Willy the animated series....Ok, forget Free Willy, but yeah. And before that, you had the kids that grew up with the MTV revolution (Beavis and Butthead did help forge me, though) and before that, god knows what, Happy Days and shit, but the point is, television now has become the milkiest, watered down baby shit you can imagine. Here are some examples of what kids get force fed into their skulls today:
-Jackie Chan adventures (Fucking Jackie Chan in his most colon shrinking role ever)
-Dexter's Lab (Yeah, it used to be cool, but trust me, I watched an Episode, it's retarded now)
-Yu-Gi-Oh! (the title insists a type of exclamation, but tell me the last time you were exhilerated by playing CARDS, unless it involved a revolver a meat cleaver, and 14 pounds of columbian Flake.)
-Ed, Edd 'n Eddy (I'm not going to try.....)
-Tottaly Spies (three semi-saphic female stereotypes rip off the worst james bond movies in a 30 minute time span, while simultaneously ripping out my spine)
-Transformers Armada (Remember the Optimus Prime of our childhood? He got castrated.....and had a catalytic converter installed. The Bastards!)
-Degrassi (Look, Canada gives us lots of great stuff, like Maple Syrup and Paper, but a show that had a cast call poster that probably read "For gods sake, we'll pay you if you flop around on screen and act like high schoolers!!!!" is not one of them)
-Franklin (It's a kids show, but when I was a kid, I had Ren calling Stimpy a "Lazy piece of crap" and selling rubber nipples, not a fucking blob getting bored, and not being able to tell time. No shit, an actual T.V. guide qoute. Time, and boredom. Wow.)
I have antimocity towards these things, becuase frankly, I still watch cartoons, and it's slim pickin's nowadays. Sure you get Samurai JAck, and Courage, the enitre adult swim line up, and the ocasional anime series (And Daria reruns), but by god, what are we teaching these kids!?!
~Channel surfing, and praying for a new season of Reboot, Squire
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by callei on May 07, 2004 - 06:40 AM
(User info | Send a Message) http://http:// | we had the afterschool special, the smurfs, seaseme street, and Bugsy Bunny. and G.I. joe, moralistic bastard.
We had MTV back when it started, with no cartoons, new, special tv shows, or spring parties. It didnt even have much T&A for the first few years since the bands that made videos weren't the top 40 bands.
There was no cartoon network. Saturday cartoons were over at 9am. Anime was shown late at night on PBS.
Of course we played dodgeball. there was nothing else to do and we didnt get to have vicarious violence, we had to make our own.
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Re: Kids these days . . .
by ravinsaend on May 08, 2004 - 11:44 PM
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Yeah, it's really sad. I remember growing up...
Captain Kangaroo, G.I.Joe, the original transformers, the REAL X-Men, not this new crap they've come up with now, these pussified version of everything because a little violence or a robot that turns into a 9 millimeter is BAD for kids according to some idiot that says he knows about kids because he went to school for 30 years.
Spanking a kid's bad because it terrorizes em. yeah, damned right it does, the thought of gettin popped by your dad whether by hand paddle or belt scared you away from making the same mistake twice back in the day. now there's nothing to scare em into using their brains. some of these kids are actually 18 and 19 now..I'd attribute it to the baby boomers more than the gen x'ers due to the age of most idiots I know. just a tad bit younger than me. There IS no fear if divine retribution, they don't care what their parents think of what they've done because there parents catered to their every whim and now they've been in jail ten times for robbing their neighbors or some stupid crap like that.
most kids under the age of 10 I know..which is quite a few..and actually disciplined well enough to keep them from that future..but get above that..and you may as well build a special facility to lock em all in the rest of their lives.
TVs can't raise kids..but there IS still alot on to help teach em right. it works better if you get them watching somehting like Blues Clues and get em to show off how smart they are and all that..I used to do that with my niece..she's gone all genius these days and she's one of the best behaved kids I ever seen. It's nothing but Parents to blame. Not TV, not teachers, not schools..those haven't changed so much except to suit the parents' desires. it's all about the parents.
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