Interesting Article

[formylilgirl]

http://m.newyorker.com/arts/critics/boo ... ntPage=all

question - how do you manage this as a single dad? On one hand you want to give your kid everything and make their time with you special, on the other, you dont want to develop a useless human being. thought?

[CCR]

My kids earned most everything. There's no way I would tie their shoes, get their silverware, or anything they are capable of doing themselves.

At 19 and 20, they have full scholarships to college (I don't have to pay a penny), have jobs, and are the most responsible young women I know. The word "entitlement" is a dirty word in their vocabulary.

They know what they want and how to get it.....they do it the old fashioned way....they earn it.

[BubbaGumpShrimp]

That's a good read. These two paragraphs sum up what's wrong with our country. As a nation...we're too busy telling our kids that they're special to teach them anything (i.e. knowledge, life skills, etc.) anything that actually makes them special/productive.

Go watch the movie 'Idiocracy'. That's where we'll be in a few decades.

On a side note...the word special...and others like it (when applied to children) has been WAY over-used in the past decade.

There was an EXCELLENT high school graduation speech recently where a teacher told the graduating class that they're not special. That even if each of them were a unique snow flake and "one in a million"...that means that there are 7,000 people out there just like you. That's something that I think every kid coming out of high school needs to be told.

When anthropologists study cultures like the Matsigenkas’, they tend to see patterns. The Matsigenka prize hard work and self-sufficiency. Their daily rituals, their child-rearing practices, and even their folktales reinforce these values, which have an obvious utility for subsistence farmers. Matsigenka stories often feature characters undone by laziness; kids who still don’t get the message are rubbed with an itch-inducing plant.

In contemporary American culture, the patterns are more elusive. What values do we convey by turning our homes into warehouses for dolls? By assigning our kids chores and then rewarding them when they screw up? By untying and then retying their shoes for them? It almost seems as if we’re actively trying to raise a nation of “adultescents.” And, perhaps without realizing it, we are.