(09-24-2014 09:07 AM)BCBronco Wrote: Quote:If people weren't so afraid to discipline their children and students before as they are growing up many of these young men wouldn't be in trouble today. It is time that we start teaching our children to be accountable and responsible for their actions
That's a simplistic view of things, for many of these kids it isn't about parents being afraid to discipline, as it is many coming from impoverished single parent homes with few resources, and with mom or dad often working two jobs to support the family and are rarely home.
Some of these families deal with intergenerational abuse and neglect that cascade from one generation to the next. We're at a point where many parents themselves were not parented and don't know how to parent either. It's a much more complex societal issue than parents being afraid to discipline their children. Ozzie and Harriet are dead.
I grew up in a single parent home. My mother had a routine. She would go to work in the morning, come home and maybe make us some mac and cheese or fried potatoes, then she would go to the bar (leaving me home to babysit) then come home and go to bed just to do it all over again 5-7 days a week. We had little to no food and I would go to the neighbors and ask if they had any food. The clothes I wore were never new, they were second hand, hand-me-downs. I never wore new clothes until I reported to basic training on July 25, 1986, 2 months and 4 days after I turned 18. Occasionally I was disciplined by my grandfather but I didn't understand discipline until I joined the Army.
I was never part of a gang and because people would rather bully and pick on me I kept to myself. So, I had no outside influence on how I thought about how I should live or what I should do. So, I was never tempted by and succumbed to peer pressure to steal, assault and/or kill.
So this idea that it is a mental thing doesn't fly with me. I read in this thread that Rawls wasn't even thinking about it until his two buddies started getting into his ear. Like most people who want to feel accepted by his friends, he felt the only way to be accepted was to break the law and steal a woman's purse and credit card, instead of doing the right thing and turning it into security.
I v don't care what anyone thinks of me: at church, here, at work, anywhere. I know who I am, what I stand for and where my heart is and if anyone doesn't like it or me that's their problem, not mine.
If a person is still a kid in between 18 and 23, then the legal age to drink, smoke, vote and join the military should be 24.