Kids

Aren't kids grand? Seriously. The other day I was practicing my Guitar, and not feeling like I was doing so well... ok, that's an understatement. The thoughts going through my mind were along the lines of, "I must be about the worst player who has ever touched a Guitar!" Anyway, I finished the song I was working on, and my daughter, sitting there watching me with a big grin on her face says, "Wow Daddy, you are SO good!" I can't tell you how that warmed my heart. Of course, if you're a parent, I'm sure you already know what I'm talking about.

This is not to say that things are always rosy. Kids talk back, they get disrespectful, they hear only what they want to hear, and sometimes they seem to forget who the parents are. All of this, however, is where discipline and teaching enter the picture. For the most part when kids do these things, they are testing their boundaries, finding out just how far you're going to let them go. This is why it's good to stop them short a little, because otherwise, they will push just a little farther, and then, just a little farther still, and leave you wondering how they ever got so far out of control. This is natural stuff, and how to deal with it is the age old parenting question that everyone thinks they have the answer for, and yet every parent has to find their way through it on their own. Of course some kids have real self control issues, but even most of these can be handled through discipline, guidance, and teaching, and if it can't, there are resources available.

Even in our self absorbed culture today, many parents still place a very high priority on protecting and nurturing their kids. There was a time when it could be said that most parents put that as their number one priority, but even though that's probably not the case in this "looking out for number 1" culture that we live in, it still ranks near the top. There are, of course, a very wide range of idea's when it comes to how best to do this, but most parents do have their hearts in the right place... even if their heads are full of bologna!

Unfortunately however, there seem to be more and more people who view children as a commodity. Either as status symbols, or, disgustingly, as sex objects. There is not much that can be done about parents who view their kids as status symbols (look at how great my kid is, see, I'm so great because my kid is so great) since they, at least, are still usually protecting their kids (after all, a broken one isn't much of a status symbol) after a fashion, they just aren't preparing them to deal realistically with life.

The ones you have to really look out for are the ones that hurt kids. Either through physical or sexual abuse. Sadly, it can be difficult sometimes to figure out if someone is doing it to their own kids, but we have to be very careful who we trust with ours. If you find out that a close friend or relative is sexually abusing your kids, and you manage to restrain yourself sufficiently to avoid killing them outright, do everything you can to put them in prison for a LONG LONG time.

This post took quite a turn from what I was thinking about originally, however, it's all true, and you can never be too prepared, or too careful.