Kids seem so slow these days ! What's up with that ?

There are a lot of issues here, but I'd just like to tackle one and leave the others to others.

We have been emsculated as parents. When I was a kid it didn't happen often, but once in awhile I got spanked, on the butt, hard. I was never "beaten," but corporal punishement was deemed proper. I remember in Jr. High School if a guy acted out he was paddled with this huge board. Whack!! And that was considered ok, in loco parentis. When I was a kid if I got bad grades, my parents got on my case and demanded I do better.

These days if you look at your kid with cross eyes it's considered child abuse and as likely a not the Children's Protective Services will take your kids away. You can't touch a kid--ever, and the fact is, they know it and use it against you. If the kid is 18 and still in high school, as mine was, as a parent you're not even entitled to see their grades! You're expected to pay their entire bill at college, but you have no say in what they do.

This is completely insane. If the government takes away our ability to BE parents, we can hardly be blamed if we have trouble doing it. And that's just one issue of many.

i have worked with youth, ages ranging from 3-18, for over 15 years- as a social worker, a teacher, a counselor, as well as the occasional group home gig and the countless after school programs. i have worked with a wide variety of youth labelled as: at risk, developmentally challenged, learning disabled (ADHD, ADD, ED and the rest of the alphabet soup of diagnosis), gifted, accelerated and affluent.

it didn't matter the child's label- kids are kids, and they crack me up, amaze me and humble me, and i will always adore them.

however, i will say that i have noted a general, albeit consistent, decline in their ability to process information, to retain information, and to exercise their imaginations. not just the 'at risk' youth, but across the gamut.




of course, this is a generality, and many of the children i work with have a brilliance and a savvy my generation sorely lacked (i am an "Xer", btw).

and yet, i am miffed how i can teach a concept that they seem to understand, and then, mere moments later, they will have no clue what we just went over.

as well (and saddest of all to me), is that their imaginations are cluttered with Harry Potter and Angry Birds and countless pop references, and those pearls of childlike whimsy and fantasy are becoming more and more rare, replaced by the latest fad.

lastly, they have a difficult time with independent thought, and with processing and formulating information on their own, without some serious guidance.



there are countless culprits, but i do blame the INSTO-MATIC information overload culture we live in.

they are saturated with constant info-tainment marketing schemes meant to snare their vulnerable and forming minds. they stand little chance against this juggernaut of pixelated puppetry.

as well, we live in an instant gratification society... everything is a google away. this makes us lazy, complacent, and uncomfortable with the natural state of "wondering". images are given to us... we do not have to conjure or discover them for ourselves.

geez... i can go on and on, but i'll stop. you get the idea.


i dearly care for our youth, and cherish their presence, but i do feel that there is a subliminal force corrupting them, even as it corrupts us. i realize this sounds rather conspiratorial, but hey... it's ATS.
i promise... i only make a few of them wear tinfoil hats.


Love & Wonder do Bless our Children... and protect them from the horrors we wield.

Originally posted by Cataka
reply to post by randyvs

 

Poison in the air they breathe, poison in the water they drink, poison in the water they bathe in, poison in the food they eat, poison in the pills they take, poison in the clothing they wear and wash their clothes in, and poison in the injections they are given.

Couple that with a pathetic schooling system and 24 hour blasting of reality shows that teach them the only thing of concern in life is how to be more like the people from Jersey Shore and you've got a war for their mind you can't win.

Correct, but "young children" who are watching Jersey Shore are obviously not in the care of decent parents.

To the people in here with 1st grade grammar and spelling blaming the parents....

We don't have TV in our house...
We eat only organic foods and drink natural spring water...
We don't have a fluoridated water supply in our town...
We have a decent school system in our town....
The only tech our kids use are DS's & only for short periods of time...
They play outside daily and get lots of fresh air...
We try to be good examples to them by practicing what we preach...
We don't vaccinate them for anything and they never get sick...

I could add a few more things but you get my point. Regardless of our best efforts, their brains are retarded when it comes to retaining new information. So all you experts out there who don't have kids of your own, what advice do you have that we can try besides what I mentioned?

reply to post by JibbyJedi


Nice, Cosby was spot on.

the youth of today are preoccupied


text-ing or using the gizmos or even gam-ing takes up their attention

yeah, the new-math to you or I sounds exotic--- but it is still in the realm of 'remedial mathematics'
no matter what the teachers say
1 day of instruction will convince you that the exotic formulas are just a different 'dialect'
and not some new or complex language of the Intellectual

so don't think that these rug-rats are super challenged in classroom studies->
after all its just the logic and exercise of the brain that is involved...

no increased intelligence is involved ! or even expected... the kids are just as self absorbed as we were at that age

Originally posted by schuyler
There are a lot of issues here, but I'd just like to tackle one and leave the others to others.

We have been emsculated as parents. When I was a kid it didn't happen often, but once in awhile I got spanked, on the butt, hard. I was never "beaten," but corporal punishement was deemed proper. I remember in Jr. High School if a guy acted out he was paddled with this huge board. Whack!! And that was considered ok, in loco parentis. When I was a kid if I got bad grades, my parents got on my case and demanded I do better.

These days if you look at your kid with cross eyes it's considered child abuse and as likely a not the Children's Protective Services will take your kids away. You can't touch a kid--ever, and the fact is, they know it and use it against you. If the kid is 18 and still in high school, as mine was, as a parent you're not even entitled to see their grades! You're expected to pay their entire bill at college, but you have no say in what they do.

This is completely insane. If the government takes away our ability to BE parents, we can hardly be blamed if we have trouble doing it. And that's just one issue of many.

edit on 1/25/2012 by schuyler because: (no reason given)

I believe in corporal punishment to the max. My mom would make me go out to our peach tree and pick a switch for her. Then I suffered the wrath of her lash. Always with my cloths on of course but man, that thing did hurt. And you know what ? I can't believe she didn't just kill me for the things I was doing. I deserved what I got and prolly more.
Spare the rod , spoil the child.

Kids today just have different skills. I bet if you put a pack of them together and sent them out to the wild they would fare better than a similar pack of kids 50 years earlier. There is significantly more general knowledge in their heads than kids had 50 years ago.

I believe in corporal punishment to the max. My mom would make me go out to our peach tree and pick a switch for her. Then I suffered the wrath of her lash. Always with my cloths on of course but man, that thing did hurt. And you know what ? I can't believe she didn't just kill me for the things I was doing. I deserved what I got and prolly more.
Spare the rod , spoil the child.

Hahahaha! You just gave me some not-so pleasant flashbacks. I would always bring my mom the biggest damn switch I could find because they seemed to hurt less than the little ones.
Looking back I'd say I deserved all the whippings I got too, but the whippings didn't stop me from doing what I wanted to do. Grounding me was much more effective.

Originally posted by Bone75

I believe in corporal punishment to the max. My mom would make me go out to our peach tree and pick a switch for her. Then I suffered the wrath of her lash. Always with my cloths on of course but man, that thing did hurt. And you know what ? I can't believe she didn't just kill me for the things I was doing. I deserved what I got and prolly more.
Spare the rod , spoil the child.

Hahahaha! You just gave me some not-so pleasant flashbacks. I would always bring my mom the biggest damn switch I could find because they seemed to hurt less than the little ones.
Looking back I'd say I deserved all the whippings I got too, but the whippings didn't stop me from doing what I wanted to do. Grounding me was much more effective.

edit on 25-1-2012 by Bone75 because: (no reason given)

Hey Bone,
I was such a terror, nothing worked for me. Ground me and I was out my bedroom window and off into the night and down to the construction of the sixty freeway I went. Start up an earth mover =and drive it in the night up and down the freeway all night long. Just me and two other young outlaws. I was off the hook.

Originally posted by Bone75


Grounding me was much more effective.

Lately, I've been doing that. Everything and Anything that she wants, I take it away. If she doesn't go to school, then she can sit in her bedroom all day and play barbies. No music, No sims, No computer, no nothing.

Then 10 minutes later, she comes out dressed for school. So, I know she knows. I think I'll do that that tomorrow, with her taking a shower as well, no nothing. Until it gets done.

lol, I just told her mother, the rules, and she's like, you can tell her she can't go on your computer, but don't tell me how to discipline my child. I have to discipline her to do things. No, wonder this kid don't listen.

reply to post by Manhater


It is the parents then.
Could this be a conspiracy after all ?

reply to post by randyvs


Those two are so much alike at laziness, talking non stop, have to explain everything in detail, you just can't give me a dang synopsis of the story?, with attitude, it's pathetic, Kid acts just like her father and just like her mother. It's like disciplining two children. Geez and their not even my own kids. Be damned if my possible kid turns out to be like those two.

Originally posted by randyvs

Hey Bone,
I was such a terror, nothing worked for me. Ground me and I was out my bedroom window and off into the night and down to the construction of the sixty freeway I went. Start up an earth mover =and drive it in the night up and down the freeway all night long. Just me and two other young outlaws. I was off the hook.

Ahhh the good ole days. Yeah it sounds like your mom should've used the superglue and duct tape method on you