Saturday, May 31, 2014

Parental Failures

As I sit here with my drink, pondering life and why kids today are little fuckers, I am struck by the similarities in all the parenting. By similarities I mean their complete and total fuck-ups. Many of the parents I speak of today are my contemporaries because they waited longer than I to start a family. Perhaps this is part of the reason they raise their children the way they do. Maybe they are just idiots. But someone needs to get to the bottom of this quickly. On the heels of the Santa Barbara shooting spree, I feel the need to address poor parenting now more than ever. We are seeing a rise in teenagers going bat-shit crazy and nobody is taking a moment to figure out WHY?!?! Gun-control advocates are up in arms and NRA supporters are responding in kind. Is this really the issue? Partly. However, what I am seeing, what you should be seeing, is a bunch of kids with untreated, improperly treated, and/or undiagnosed mental illnesses and really crappy parenting.

Parents in denial. While it's very difficult to accept that your child isn't perfect, you are not doing your job as a parent if you ignore red flags. Nobody wants their child to have a disease. For some reason, it seems to be easier to accept that a child has diabetes or celiac disease than it is to wrap the mind around bipolar disorder. Yet all are diseases, all can be diagnosed, treated, and managed to help a child live a fairly normal life. So, why are parents afraid to open their eyes and truly see their children? Why is it so hard to say, "My child has a mental health issue" out loud...or in your head? Mine has anxiety disorder. Yes, my child suffers from panic attacks, just like dear old mom. Sweeping it under the rug would have made her life miserable. She'd have floundered in school, been unable to properly socialize, unequipped to cope with the stresses of daily life as a teenager in today's society. My love for my child was all I needed to make sure she got the help she needed.

But it isn't just diseases of the mind that cause children to go full-asshole. I blame shitty parents. Oh, you know who you are. The under-involved jackasses who use overindulgence to assuage their fleeting feelings of guilt for being unavailable to their children. The dumb shits who think they can be their child's friend and decide that treating a four year old like an equal, giving them more choices than they can emotionally handle and more power than they should ever have is a fantastic idea. The fucktards who use technology to entertain their little annoyances effectively rendering them brain-dead because they've only learned two things from this: instant gratification and zero attention span. The ass hats who never let their kids learn coping skills because they step in and rescue them at every turn, never teaching them accountability. What does this do to the developing little minds of children? Creates fucking monsters.



But you don't think so. You think you are doing a bang-up job. Kids raised this way are completely unequipped to handle life. The jackasses who try to buy their children's love are only turning them into greedy, entitled little shits who think that the world owes them something and can't accept no for an answer. Those kids grow up and think they'll get executive level jobs right out of college, and when they don't...they come back and live with you because life threw them a curve ball they couldn't catch. Good job, moron. The dumb shits who allow their kids to rule the house should start preparing now for the hell that is going to rain down on them when these bossy fuckers reach their glorious teenage years and decide they don't have to listen to you...their decisions have always been the driving force, why shouldn't they be now? And heaven help you if you think you are going to start lowering the boom at that point. They will laugh in your old ass face and do whatever they want to.

Now let's discuss my two favorites. The fucktards who jam iPads into the hands of two year olds to keep them quiet and out of their hair. Instant gratification isn't possible 24/7. But they expect life to be like the screen they stare at for hours and hours. It sure as shit ain't! Their lack of attention span will do them no favors in school when they get diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, but really, we all know it's because they've never had to sit down and do a task from start to finish. Tap the screen and a new game pops up, hit restart and do it over again. Never learning how to make mistakes and learn from them. Never acquiring the patience it takes to see a project through. Nice. And of course, the The ass hats who take on their child's stresses for them, berating teachers for giving too much homework or God-forbid saying their child is somehow imperfect. They will blame others, make excuses, and tell the teacher she is dead wrong. They don't let children take their punches. Kids can't fight anymore without parents stepping in and having discussions with the other child's parents to try to fix it. How will they ever learn disappointment? How will they figure out how to deal with anything negative? Oh, right, they won't. But are you willing to follow them to college and beyond, shielding them from life's blows?

This kind of ridiculous parenting is what is creating the monsters of today. The kids who have no impulse control. The ones who can't deal with the basics of life. Teenagers who think life owes them and get really, truly angry when they don't get what they believe they deserve. Frustrated and angry, they go through the day without the faintest clue as to how to feel better about themselves. They turn to drugs, alcohol, self-mutilation, eating disorders, risk-taking behaviors, sexual promiscuity, and taking it out on others...all in the name of gaining some kind of control over their world. Because they've never learned how! Thanks to your horrific parenting, these kids are drowning in a sea of their own shit with no way of getting out. Thanks to you, they are hurting themselves and others. Does your method still work for you? Are you friggin kidding me right now???