I wish I could like this 1,000 times. I work in education and have observed this for years. Well-intentioned (and some less so) people never want to see kids struggle. Medication is a “quick fix” that everyone relies on. Normal behavior is made into a diagnosis to avoid dealing with it. And IEPs are relied upon to place the burden of making things easier for kids on adults rather than teaching the children how to overcome their struggles themselves. It absolutely has created many of the problems we see in young people today.
I grew up with lawn darts and recall trying to throw them vertically as high as I could. It was only when I threw them into the high sun that I ran because I couldn't see where they were coming down. In the 70s and 80s when I was in school, the teachers were amazing. They rarely had to be authoritative because the parents did that. I certainly did not want the school calling my parents. Even when I was throwing up at school I hated the idea that my parents would be called and involved. I felt safe and despite being bullied a bit--which helped me grow up and gain strength in many ways--it was not a bad experience. By high school things were changing, but I kept my head low and did OK--no meds!
Oh too funny. My experience too! Babysat my nephew at 14 and no sooner had mom and dad left or he started crying! 4 months old. Not to be stopped. Cured me once and for all.
My mom worked for a few years on and off in the 60's but mostly stayed at home too. She and my dad agreed on that, 1. to raise me the way they wanted 2. my dad worked hard and long hours and someone had to do everything at home.
I grew up in the latch key generation, but I worked for the family business 6 days a week and worked our farm on Sundays. Throw school on top of that. I bitched about it 24/7, but I wouldn't change a thing.
My parents 1st house, built in the early 1900's, had a milk box. This was basically a window big enough for a gallon of milk and maybe eggs. There was a small, not too thick wooden door on both inside and outside.
On a few occasions, when we all left the house without a key and since I was a small skinny kid, it was me who was always hoisted up to crawl in to the house via the milk box and open the door.
I was asking around the cul-de-sac of families for someone to be guardian of my eight year old ..(.daughter, boys, calm down, females know they aren't full grown at eight....) for two hours after school.
That's when a real dingbat woman said to me: "Oh, just leave her the key. Don't you know? That's how we raise kids now, it's called "latchkey kids".
Thirty-five years later and I'm still.....??????? WTF?
Yep. The "tell a vision" had propagandized that as a ...wait for it... a"trend".
And that's all they had to do to make it real. Fucking Disneyland unreality. At least I know why near every kid now is so familiar with sexual abuse.........as well as every other kind of trash
70s kid here. The best times of my life. Riding bikes all day, walking a mile to school with all the neighborhood kids, playing in the creeks, playing tag outside after dinner in the summer. I even had a hippie teacher that would let me bring my dog with me to school. He stayed in the classroom all day every day and everyone loved it!
thanks for taking it to the limit.....yuk yuk yuk....I wish every dumb insecure male could watch a 24 hr. rerun of himself drooling, pissing and shitting himself, and completely crying and dependent on his creator.
Our Little League umpire actually did have both arms ripped off at the elbow by industrial rollers. He was beloved and returned to call balls and strikes with his new hooks.
Don't worry, I and K, I was just joking! I totally agree with everyone here about how we were a bit tougher in those days. However, when people start bringing up these "Back in my day!" stories, I can't help thinking of that old Monty Python sketch were the old geezers are trying to out do each stories about how terrible their childhoods were.
Ps- in elementary school we lived just within the mile for which one was made to walk to school where I grew up backing the 70s. Yes...I really did have to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways. 😂🤣 . ( honest! But...they weren't huge hills...)
I get depressed too about the sheepish majority. When the heck do they wake up? What do the globalists have to do to them before they get it? However, it's important to remember that it's always a bloody-minded minority who change things in society. Maybe the French Revolution isn't a positive example, but in 1789, there were 27m French people - yet it only took 1000 of them to overthrow the Bastille.
I think it's always, universally the pattern - a "bloody-minded" minority that change the status quo.
As for the sheeple - more than a few are simply cowards. Exhibiting that most detestable trait of hoping someone else bears the brunt while they escape special notice. Not lifting a finger to right a wrong lest they too be targeted for "special treatment" (like our J6ers). IOWs, they value "security" more than freedom, calculating relative risk/reward.
Agree. In Junior High (former term for Middle School) mean girls tried to bully me. After telling Grandma after school, her response was, "well, what are YOU going to do about it?" and the next day I did - in class - let the girls know they were off-base with their taunts. Never got bullied again. In fact, they wanted to be "friends" and I said no. That age is just horrific to go through.
It's a dog eat dog world. When I was 11 I was in a fight with the "bad kid" because he hated that I kept scoring on him in hockey. I wound up pounding on him, then felt so awful afterwards that I cried in the boy's bathroom. I wasn't sad that I beat him up, I was sad that others were cheering me on and congratulating me afterwards. However, right after lunch the teacher put us on the same group task and, from opposite sides of the table we both looked up and laughed at each other. All was well. No harm and I disregarded the sheep that couldn't do the fighting themselves.
That worked for lots of us girls, also. Pick the biggest mean girl and knock the crap out of her. Of course, it helped that I was almost six feet tall by the time I was 13 years old. Not too many of the girls would risk it but I had to put a few boys in their place.
If not, I might have been scared of you. I was a late bloomer. Ended up at 6 foot , but I was 5'4" entering junior year of high school. Grew 6 inches in a year and then another 2 freshman/sophomore in college.
Lawn Darts, LOL, can’t believe we survived our childhood playing with those things! Not to mention playing “war” with our BB guns (pre airsoft days) - terrible idea - please don’t try that… I’ve still got a scar on my forehead right above my eyes. Yes, my friends and I were pretty stupid, but boy did we have fun on those long summer breaks!
Yeah teachers have to have 20 in service days DURING the school year instead of doing it in the summertime like our teachers did 40 years ago. Getting soft in the ones educating our kids and sh!t rolls downhill to the kids.
You too??? We used to take wax and heat it up in our fingers and put it in our pellet guns and shoot it at each other. Boy, that hurt. Never watched "A Christmas Story" until adulthood, sadly--"You'll shoot your eye out, kid!"
My little brother hit me in the ass with a BB gun when I was riding my bike. My dad got a hold of him, made him walk out to the firing line and turn around. He was shitting his pants as dad pretended to aim and got ready to fire. He never did, but the lesson was learned. Eddie the Eagle couldn't have done a better job. Haha!! Gotta love the 70's.
I'm a middle-aged very respectable looking lady and a few years ago my when I broke my ankle the doctor asked me why I had a BB in my foot. I laughed about it pretty hard bc of the memories of my childhood flooded back. The young doctor looked horrified at my reaction.
I don't know if I agree with you on older doctors being so shocked. They spent time experiencing things, too and Buttercups are not generally becoming doctors. 🙂
I remember a time as a young USMC officer when we would play drunken lawn darts and try to hit each other with them. Fortunately we were drunk and had bad aim. I’m guessing that is no longer a thing.
So true. I’ve grandchildren and the kids of dear friends that I have seen go through these IEP or resource school programs that are supposedly there to help kids who are struggling in some way. Not yet have I seen them actually help anyone. Instead it stops all progression in their education, as far as I can tell. What would be more helpful is bring back vocational training and courses like the arts, and foreign languages and useful life skills like home economics and wood or auto shop. Restricting the use of all devices like smart phones and tablets and gaming systems would help our children immensely as well.
You just have to look around to see the base line intelligence of our culture is deteriorating. All according to plan.
You are dead on. But remember if they took away their phones and gaming systems the adults might have to interact with their own kids and they really don't seem to want to do that.
Most likely, and now they're doing it to their kids. The odd thing about most helicopter parents is while they fuss over every little thing their kids do, the ones I knew didn't seem to have conversations with them.
It’s very distressing. And it’s not just kids and young people who can’t seem to break the hold screens have over multitudes of us. Everywhere, all the time when I’m out in public, I see people with their faces buried in their phones. Walking from the car to some other place, sitting and eating out at a restaurant, at parties, waiting for the kids in the school pick up lines. We’ve stopped looking at one another ( the whole COVID clown show certainly exacerbated this as well), having conversations and engaging in random conversations with strangers. Social isolation on many fronts is clearly one of the strategies being used against us.
I can't say much. I spend tooooo many hours a day reading Substack articles and comments. I don't have anyone to talk to. I don't use my phone much away from home. When I do, I'm usually waiting alone in my car to meet a friend for lunch and I play solitaire. 😏
I'm a private special ed tutor and used to work in schools. What you say is right. Now special ed is obsessed with "wellbeing" and cuddly IEP targets. Ironically, most of my Special ed students share my point of view and hate all the cuddly Woke crap.
It is, Sue. The parents are rich but most of them seem to have their heads screwed on and have avoided spoiling their kids. It's usually a pleasure working with these young people and realising that not all Gen Z are blue-haired land whales!
This is so true and I believe it really began once there was a movement in sports to give everyone a medal no matter how poorly they performed. That was the beginning of the end IMHO.
It's gotten so much worse with things like Attention Deficit which now apparently every kid (and adult) has and therefore needs the cure-all meds which as we know just takes a somewhat normal person and makes them totally abnormal. Thus, the cycle begins and never ends.
The kids have ADD because they are never told "no". Parenting is all redirection, ridiculous time-out, and let's make a deal. (God forbid a swat on the behind.) Kids are instructed that the world revolves around them, and their every whim and demand, from toddler to adulthood.
Being around kids like this is never an enjoyable experience. They demand their own way, but are never content. Screen time is literally the only break for the parent.
You know what it is,.......it’s asserting individuality. IF YOU CANT SHOCK YOUR PARENTS ONCE, YOU ARE NOT A TEENAGER.
Kids want to belong to something their parents are not.
Like when mini skirts were in.......when guys started wearing earrings, when ripped jeans became the norm.
But nothing shocks the parent anymore,............no attention there. I’m afraid this busy lifestyle is creating lone little freaks that don’t care about what the rest of the world thinks,.......although they have created quite a trendy, must fit in style. Talk about protesting the wrong problems. Hopefully they will realize we are in the middle of a war, where they are being used as pawns, and help us.
But IEP's made it possible for my son to get the best education I could provide. One that was stimulating, challenging and devoid of the bullshit high school jocks-stoners politics that still fuck with my head. My kid (now in his 30's,LOL) reads literature and has a career. Sadly, the IEP gave me more options, which I used to my child's advantage.
But, on the other hand, we did not coddle him. He learned some hard lessons. And he is a better man for that.
I could only relate my experience with the children of several good friends and others close to me.
I’m sure individual kids will have different experiences with the people at their schools who ran the programs. And 30 years ago things were very different at many schools across the land, compared to how things have now devolved.
You sound like a family who kept their hand in the game. That is often the thing that tips the scales one way or the other.
Rings so true...Grew up in the 40's and 50's in a small farming community. Risky behavior was a given. I can't recall a time when there wasn't someone at school without someone wearing a cast, sling, or brace. A classmate in high school competed nationally as a rodeo bull rider. He was always banged up. Hard lessons learned hard, but they were learned.
Conversely, the next time we complain, let’s hope someone has the guts to say that to us. If we don’t burst out laughing, we need more time in the squat rack!
Devil's advocate, sort of: If someone asked me, "So why don't you cry about it?", I can easily see myself deflecting and dismissing that non sequitur by just saying, "Because I don't feel like it."
I concede the point that some people really are just crybabies or whiners, but there are some situations in which to refuse to complain is to enable tyranny. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I don't happen to be Christian, but this is arguably the meaning of the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8).
We played Smear the Queer (we didn’t know what a queer was haha) which was everyone dog pile on one person. Idk who won or how it ended. In tears probably. 😂
Parents’ fear dictates their kids’ lives. This is not being a parent (I hate the word “parenting.”) YOU are the adult - master or mask your fear and let kids do the stuff. ALL the stuff. There will be blood and broken bones and potential fire or flooding in your house, and you still let them do the stuff. (When we went on date night we told our kids “DO NOT CALL US except for fire, flood, broken bones, or copious amounts of blood!”) Will you be scared? Of course. Should you let the kids know that? Absolutely not. And you should also FOLLOW THROUGH with discipline. If you threaten a consequence, you have to follow through with it no matter how “inconvenient” it is. Helicopter parenting is one of the worst ills on society.
my dog makes me go outside several times a day. Nice weather is okay, but when it rains she refuses to go unless I do too. I also have 2 dog like cats that follow me around so there comes our little train !
One does not have to be a parent to act like an adult, especially with kids. Adults have ceded acting as role models in fear of the reactions of others, to the detriment of children's development. I was taught to respect adults as a default. If they didn't deserve my respect my parents dealt with things.
I only half agree with that. Respect should never be automatic; it needs to be earned. If I were a kid, I would respect very few of the adults I see around me today.
Respect means very different things in different cultures.
For celtic/germanic-originated cultures it means something you give freely and something you work to deserve to be given; it cannot ever be demanded or forced from someone.
Have you served in the Middle East? Doesn't mean even remotely the same thing there: to them, it means showing deference and acquiescence to the stronger. Thus it can be demanded and forced from someone via (the threat of) humiliation and abuse.
A big part of the problem is that kids aren't allowed to work anymore. I'm sure there are still openings, but in my day it was a given that you could deliver newspapers and do the milk round. It was great being an "adult" and earning some good money.
In the catagory of grab your smelling salts..my Dad used to call me “ my son Martha” and would take me to the Hardware store with him and then be his assistant teaching me how to fix stuff, etc. My first marriage , I was the one with the tool box who did simple repairs... when my now husband and I were dating he was dully impressed that I had a tool kit, mitre box , electric drill, etc... I recoil when women say “ oh, I can’t do that... “ Thanks Dad!!
That is awesome!!!. I wrestled when I was in school and they'd give me smelling salts and stuff a tampon up my nose if it started bleeding and then shove me back out in the ring!
The number of under-30s I've heard sing the song of "I could never do that, I'd die" about things like marching 20 miles wearing a measly 30 pound backpack, on a trail or similar exercises...
The gold medal goes to the ones who breathlessly ask "How do you know how to make a fire in pissing rain? Which prepper-expert do you follow online?". They get snippy like old spinster harridans when you reply - innocently - with "I've got a three-digit IQ?"
Make a fire. Dig a shit-pit. Splint a leg. Build a hut or a bivouac. Make a harpoon for fishing. Simple traps. Know your berries and roots. There's not one swedish man my age doesn't know how to do that, no matter if theywere boyscouts or conscripts or not.
Today's juves, they buy bottled water. In a country where you can drink from virtually every stream or creek or lake.
It's why all of the fast food restaurants are struggling to stay open. It's meant to be a job for kids in high school/college but not many kids that age are working anymore.
Wow,This is almost verbatim what I tell my Hapkido students when they get frustrated! " If this art was easy,everyone would be doing it,and if you already knew how to do it proficiently, you wouldn't need me to guide you. Now... do it, again."
Oh, I remember that one well. Had no idea why they were so obviously blinded to my plight, but I certainly knew it meant suck it up buttercup. And I did. Also contributed to anger issues for not being heard, ever. But I worked through that too (no drugs or therapy, lol).
Tim Ferriss shared this quote this week, and it’s pertinent:
“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. All these and other factors combined, if the circumstances are right, can teach and can lead to rebirth.”
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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Compassion without struggle is soul-destroying, but so is struggle without purpose. Before we tear down Chesterton’s Fence of Achievement Awards (and we ought to), we need to find out why it’s there.
The people who went through *that* system created *this* one. The aggressors cemented their strategies and the victims their resentment.
The smaller the stakes, the uglier the game. And now, the Fed and bureaucratic totalitarianism have created a hamstrung ecosystem of dependency and meaninglessness, and people are desperate to make sense of why they are so miserable.
Buttercup gotta toughen up, but also needs a *reason* to.
Civilization needs a beating heart, and the throne has been usurped by technocratic diktat. We have to also add back purpose and meaning.
Eight year old girls getting brutally beaten by 13 year old racist bullies on the school bus aren’t experiencing coddling, they are just experiencing misery. That is not the way.
The beat downs in schools we are all seeing thanks to ubiquitous cell phones are, of course, horrifying. That is definitely not what is meant by toughen up buttercup. In those cases the teachers, principals school administrators and all those in the chain of command need to be the ones to toughen up and deal with what’s going on. And this thought spring to my mind…I’m old enough to remember how at least half of my teachers growing up were men. For my children as well, especially in middle school and on up. It sure seems like most teachers nowadays are female. I suspect a lot of the brutal behavior in classrooms would cease if men were more prevalent in the classrooms.
Yes, I’m not suggesting that the Cat thinks that abuse is appropriate. It’s more a question of how we got here and to recognize that there are real reasons, good and bad, why we did.
Of course. It’s a Gordian knot situation for sure. It’s just heartbreaking to see the trajectory overall is almost always downward for so many children, who end up as unhappy, confused and angry adults.
It's partly that, but it's also for the same reason real men are starting to avoid the military: Why go into a professional environment where you will be hated and where people far less able than you will get promotion because of their sex, skin color or orientation?
It’s all set-up to fail. Only acceptable solution is to raise taxes so GovInc can throw more money at it via some half-baked latest ideology program which never works.
My husband was a naughty little imp in Jr. High. Before school started one day, he was inspired to whip out his pocket knife he always had with him (Oh the horror! He still carries one every single day) and began to alter the sign on his Arts and Crafts classroom door into Farts and Crafts. His teacher (a man, who also taught him in wood shop and metal shop) caught him red-handed; and next thing he knew he was lifted up from behind by his ears, spun around, and the teacher back-handed him across the face. Then he was pulled into class and had his bottom spanked with a paddle in front of the entire classroom. And then summarily sent to the principles office. End of story.
Spot on. At the school I teach, 90% of the men are homosexuals or beta-guys who out feminine the women. The remaining 10% of real men keep a very low profile and somehow never move up the ladder. Oh, and the "Wellness Counselor" is a transgendered male. Glad I got out of there.
when I was a kid we had female teachers for girls and male for boys. Only when we went higher up, there were first one and then several male teachers in our all girls school
Thank you el gato malo - nailed it. One thing I heard (once or twice) as a girl, after being disappointed or hurt was "don't trip over your lip."
I was raised by a single Mom and her folks. After a rare day trip to a local small town, we all got a piece of candy while there. Think "designer chocolate." This was a bit of a big deal, because money was tight. Well, after I got home, I took a bite, put it down on a napkin to save for later. I went back later - gone. Grandpa had eaten it, asked me what I was looking for..."this will teach you - don't trust anyone, not even me." But he said it laughing, not with malice. One of the best lessons ever.
Nana, What was your friends name?? I’m pretty sure it was be me!! LOL!! My Dad had a collection of classics directed at independence and self reliance... my now favorite which at the time was harsh but highly effective... he’d rub his thumb and index finger together and ask me “ do you know what this is? World’s smallest 🎻!” ❤️❤️❤️
Meanwhile those who rule over us are busy actually erasing/altering actual pathologies like psychopathic from clinical diagnosis books, because they will not tolerate calling things what they actually are. That also applies to your main point. Along with “toughen up buttercup”, we need to bring back “calling a spade a spade.”
YES. I have autistic kids, and not the just quirky kind. The low-verbal and self-abusing kind who can’t master their own bodies. I refuse to medicate them, even though everyone says to. (I obediently did for a while, and it was terrible.) And now ridiculous humans are trying to erase real pathologies in the name of inclusion and people are rushing to diagnose themselves to belong. It’s ridiculous and dangerous and ignores the real problem that - as much as I love the Gato here, he doesn’t recognize, either.
But I will always support a rant against antidepressants. Medication is killing us.
Thanks, I was wondering if anyone else was thinking the same thing I was.
And just as it isn’t compassionate to protect our kids from struggle, it isn’t compassionate to tell someone who is struggling with psychological damage that they are normal. Medication isn’t the answer either - something happened to screw them up and it needs to be dealt with, not ignored, normalized, or drugged into oblivion.
I make it look easy. It is anything BUT. I can't tell you how many people over the years have told me that I just don't have the struggles they have (and it's not fair!).
Because my life looks easy to people who do not see my normal life struggles; because I don't whine about it -- I am told I have "privilege."
There are so many people my age (older) who talk about their privilege guilt. (this is another way of inducing people to attack themselves).
Life is supposed to be hard, and you get knocked down. Then you have a choice -- stay there and complain about it, or pick yourself up, dust yourself off, learn the lesson and grow from it; toughen up while you develop compassion and good boundaries. This can happen in a healthy environment, which we currently do not have.
until they really sit down with you and get to know you very well, people think your life is easier than theirs. Either you live on and make the best of it or you welt like a plant without water. The train rolls on with or without you, whatever you sit and cry you loose! Great comment Dani thanks! But they all are LOL All get a medal today
I just wonder if our desire for individualism and freedom as a culture, both good things generally speaking, has actually added to our sense of loneliness and separation. Add that to working from home, social media addictions, no organic free play for kids... yikes. How do we fix this?
We are fortunate to have a close family and to live in the same city as our adult children, and this is our core unit against the world. We are also Gen X (hubs is very late Boomer) and have often repeated some of these same tough phrases to our progeny, hearing with great angst that we were the meanest parents. But we aren’t paying their bills, they don’t live in the basement and they all know what gender they are. I’m sure we will all face tough times. I have battled mental health issues, which seem to be genetic after having lost a parent and great aunt to suicide, but the meds they gave me made it far worse.
Would love to hear everyone’s suggestions for retrieving our resilience as a people.
Tall Chick, I think that a part of the problem is that, like so many of the big words, the meanings of "individualism" and "freedom" have changed. Individualism for me conjures up images of Davy Crockett or Alexander Solzhenitsyn, men refusing to be broken by nature or evil totalitarianism. Today it has much more narcissistic connotations: dying your hair blue and suing bakers out of existence because they use the wrong pronoun. Same thing goes for freedom: It used to mean doing what hell you wanted in life unless it harmed other people or encroached on their rights. These days, "freedom" means getting to choose which arm you get tattooed or what TikTok vids you can download. Many kids are unhappy because of the harmful changes in the meanings of these two vital words. I've had depression many times in life and, funnily enough, found that the anti-deps helped a lot. They gave me a window of time to make some positive changes. I fully agree though that they are vastly over-prescribed. Stay strong and carry on being the great parent you obviously are!
Spot on! And I did find better living through chemistry, so there were indeed physiological factors, but the doctors throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and sadly it kills some people in the process. Almost got me and convinced it got my mom.
Excellent take on how these two ideals have changed. I should add that people now greatly prefer safety, or at least perceived safety, over freedom. Have had they exact discussion with progressive (former) friends. But like the current generation who has never lived without a cell phone or the internet at their fingertips, how can they imagine our former existence? We can’t imagine life without electricity or cars and I’m sure our elders were frustrated with us. They must learn to live the best way they can with the new normal and we owe it to them to guide them as much as possible. I can only hope they find their way. It’s scary as shit though.
Visited the zoo on Monday with my 12 month girl. She’s a climber. Her hand got stuck climbing up a bench. She was screaming Bc she was angry. I encouraged to push. That’s it. People stared at me like I was alien. 3 seconds later, she’s free and bouncing on top of the bench. She’s more like a silver back. I was disturbed at people’s reaction. That letting her work through a difficulty was some horrific miscarriage of parenting.
it all leads back to pharma, illegal drugs, alcohol.
That "pink haired girl with the eyebrows" looks hilariously funny.
My dad and I were wandering (loitering) around a Bed Bath and Beyond store way back BC (before covid)
He was about 95 I think, and we saw a girl and her mom shopping for college clutter. She had eyebrows exactly like that girls, but blacker and wider. When I first saw her in the store, serious face, loading up the shopping cart with her mom.... I could not believe what I was looking at, and immediately burst out laughing uncontrollably - laughing so hard I was trying to contain it and I really was not able to. My dad looked at me (and he does like a good laugh) and I dragged him over to another aisle and tried to explain the appearance of that girl. So we went out and dad gazed in that general direction. He started laughing too. Then we both needed to leave that section of the store. My daddy said (he is from Holland) those eyebrows were as fat as Hitlers mustache.
Aaah the little things. I think we laughed about that for a whole week. So seeing this on your blog today brought back that memory. when we left the store, both of us were so sore in the stomach from laughing
It would be nice to have tougher kids. My son in laws mom was very spoiled protected and coddled and she ended up raising two rather wimpy sons. Physically they are strong, but mentally they just blow up.
I am "suffering" the consequences of that for the past 10 months.
Your story reminds me of a similar encounter that I had sometime around 2006. My kids were then ages 5 and 3. We were in a restaurant waiting to be seated and there was a teen girl nearby with multiple facial piercings, tattoos and unnaturally colored hair. At the time, such a sight was not as common as it is now. My 5 year old daughter asked me what was wrong with the girl (even a 5 year old in 2006 recognized that something was “wrong” with this girl). I immediately responded that the girl hated her mother or perhaps both parents and that physically hurting herself by branding herself this way was her way of also hurting her parents. Both kids were very interested in this response and asked lots of questions. They are both in college now and they both still bring up this story. What’s more, they tell me that I was right - the people around them who look like this are generally among the lot suffering from some “mental issue”, have issues with their parents and are strange.
What always strikes me strange is the "NoEffOFF" of the badly coiffed tonsure contrasted with those on trendy 'come hither' On Fleek eyebrows. She just comes across as clueless.
At the last multi-day power outage, the condominium tin-pot hall monitors known as the board sent out a notification that candles were not allowed because it was important to keep the kiddies safe. Of course, to use or not use candles should be the parents' decision, but how are kids supposed to figure out how to use fire safely if they don't have experience with it when they're young? Bozo the clown world.
The wording suggested that candles weren't even allowed in apartments with no kids. Screw that. I use candles.
“all we have to do is stop describing any struggle as disease and discord and let humans go be humans to struggle and strive and fail and succeed but most of all to grow and grow confident and self-sufficient.”
“and we will once more begin to thrive.”
AMEN TO THAT! You are one, awesome, bad cat. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Maybe try putting your kids (and yourselves) on a natural human diet - meat, meat and more meat ! Sprinkle in some fruit and veg if you want. Treat all the middle isles in a grocery store where all the packaged garbage is sold, like a toxic waste zone and for god sakes pump some iron ! I don’t care how old you are. You can thank me later.
15 years ago I bought myself and my 3 eldest sons boxing gloves and mouth guards. We'd go into the back yard and pound on each other. It was fun, for me at least. Kidding, we all had fun and made sure that we didn't punch/kick at 100%. The neighbours seemed amused and no authorities were ever called. We said 'suck it up, buttercup' though.
I wish I could like this 1,000 times. I work in education and have observed this for years. Well-intentioned (and some less so) people never want to see kids struggle. Medication is a “quick fix” that everyone relies on. Normal behavior is made into a diagnosis to avoid dealing with it. And IEPs are relied upon to place the burden of making things easier for kids on adults rather than teaching the children how to overcome their struggles themselves. It absolutely has created many of the problems we see in young people today.
I grew up with lawn darts and recall trying to throw them vertically as high as I could. It was only when I threw them into the high sun that I ran because I couldn't see where they were coming down. In the 70s and 80s when I was in school, the teachers were amazing. They rarely had to be authoritative because the parents did that. I certainly did not want the school calling my parents. Even when I was throwing up at school I hated the idea that my parents would be called and involved. I felt safe and despite being bullied a bit--which helped me grow up and gain strength in many ways--it was not a bad experience. By high school things were changing, but I kept my head low and did OK--no meds!
Perhaps the common thread of people who read Gato is that we all grew up this way and became self-governing.
All y'all who were 'latch key kids' rise your paws! * raises mine*
Babysat 3 kids under age 5 (unrelated to me) for a week, including overnight, when I was 17 then did it again when I was 18. Excellent birth control.
Oh too funny. My experience too! Babysat my nephew at 14 and no sooner had mom and dad left or he started crying! 4 months old. Not to be stopped. Cured me once and for all.
had a stay at home mom
My mom worked for a few years on and off in the 60's but mostly stayed at home too. She and my dad agreed on that, 1. to raise me the way they wanted 2. my dad worked hard and long hours and someone had to do everything at home.
We were truly blessed.
I grew up in the latch key generation, but I worked for the family business 6 days a week and worked our farm on Sundays. Throw school on top of that. I bitched about it 24/7, but I wouldn't change a thing.
Paws up. Everyone I grew up with was a latch key, too.
My parents 1st house, built in the early 1900's, had a milk box. This was basically a window big enough for a gallon of milk and maybe eggs. There was a small, not too thick wooden door on both inside and outside.
On a few occasions, when we all left the house without a key and since I was a small skinny kid, it was me who was always hoisted up to crawl in to the house via the milk box and open the door.
Gee, I could have grown up to be a cat burglar!
So sad!!
I was asking around the cul-de-sac of families for someone to be guardian of my eight year old ..(.daughter, boys, calm down, females know they aren't full grown at eight....) for two hours after school.
That's when a real dingbat woman said to me: "Oh, just leave her the key. Don't you know? That's how we raise kids now, it's called "latchkey kids".
Thirty-five years later and I'm still.....??????? WTF?
Yep. The "tell a vision" had propagandized that as a ...wait for it... a"trend".
And that's all they had to do to make it real. Fucking Disneyland unreality. At least I know why near every kid now is so familiar with sexual abuse.........as well as every other kind of trash
Yup. And I had two younger brothers to take care off. And laundry and meals.
I was well prepared for college...lol...
I was left home unsupervised for 8-10 hours per day from the time I was 9 years old. With my sister who was 18 months younger.
w
Exactly. Not sure when you grew up, but for me it was the 70's and I can't think of a better way to have lived life as a kid.
FREE RANGE to learn basic skills of life.
70s kid here. The best times of my life. Riding bikes all day, walking a mile to school with all the neighborhood kids, playing in the creeks, playing tag outside after dinner in the summer. I even had a hippie teacher that would let me bring my dog with me to school. He stayed in the classroom all day every day and everyone loved it!
Me too!
I had both arms ripped off by a combine-harvester at the age of 7. Hey, but in those days, we just walked that kind of thing off. :)
Darned rights! You just gritted your teeth when you went through the threshing drum : )
Yep. And if we didn't cry, we got a cup of gravel for breakfast as a reward! :)
thanks for taking it to the limit.....yuk yuk yuk....I wish every dumb insecure male could watch a 24 hr. rerun of himself drooling, pissing and shitting himself, and completely crying and dependent on his creator.
Our Little League umpire actually did have both arms ripped off at the elbow by industrial rollers. He was beloved and returned to call balls and strikes with his new hooks.
😬
Omg. I'm so sorry.
Don't worry, I and K, I was just joking! I totally agree with everyone here about how we were a bit tougher in those days. However, when people start bringing up these "Back in my day!" stories, I can't help thinking of that old Monty Python sketch were the old geezers are trying to out do each stories about how terrible their childhoods were.
Ps- in elementary school we lived just within the mile for which one was made to walk to school where I grew up backing the 70s. Yes...I really did have to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways. 😂🤣 . ( honest! But...they weren't huge hills...)
Oh....whew! ...I also award you bo us points for using one of the more obscure MP skits as a referent.
( my husband thinks Monty Python is ' low-brow humor'... is it no wonder we're permanently separated? 🤣)
Yeah like in my day I walked 5 miles uphill both ways in my pyjamas.........
“I lived in a cardboard box in the middle of the road…”. I just used that line on my kid last night. That is one of my favorite Monty Python bits.
... and evidently, our numbers grow ever so statistically fewer compared to the rest of the herd.
Where does it end?
Don't know.
But the survivors will be the ones who "walk it off".
I get depressed too about the sheepish majority. When the heck do they wake up? What do the globalists have to do to them before they get it? However, it's important to remember that it's always a bloody-minded minority who change things in society. Maybe the French Revolution isn't a positive example, but in 1789, there were 27m French people - yet it only took 1000 of them to overthrow the Bastille.
I think it's always, universally the pattern - a "bloody-minded" minority that change the status quo.
As for the sheeple - more than a few are simply cowards. Exhibiting that most detestable trait of hoping someone else bears the brunt while they escape special notice. Not lifting a finger to right a wrong lest they too be targeted for "special treatment" (like our J6ers). IOWs, they value "security" more than freedom, calculating relative risk/reward.
True, and afterwards they'll say, "Of course I never believed in the vaccines/Putin was Hitler/Trump was a Russian asset....."
You may have something there
Agree. In Junior High (former term for Middle School) mean girls tried to bully me. After telling Grandma after school, her response was, "well, what are YOU going to do about it?" and the next day I did - in class - let the girls know they were off-base with their taunts. Never got bullied again. In fact, they wanted to be "friends" and I said no. That age is just horrific to go through.
It's a dog eat dog world. When I was 11 I was in a fight with the "bad kid" because he hated that I kept scoring on him in hockey. I wound up pounding on him, then felt so awful afterwards that I cried in the boy's bathroom. I wasn't sad that I beat him up, I was sad that others were cheering me on and congratulating me afterwards. However, right after lunch the teacher put us on the same group task and, from opposite sides of the table we both looked up and laughed at each other. All was well. No harm and I disregarded the sheep that couldn't do the fighting themselves.
Exactly and a lot of this prattling nonsense would just take care of itself if boys were allowed to be boys.
Some of my better friends are guys who I had a little fist to cuffs with.
That worked for lots of us girls, also. Pick the biggest mean girl and knock the crap out of her. Of course, it helped that I was almost six feet tall by the time I was 13 years old. Not too many of the girls would risk it but I had to put a few boys in their place.
Ha. I could've benefited from a friend like you.
If not, I might have been scared of you. I was a late bloomer. Ended up at 6 foot , but I was 5'4" entering junior year of high school. Grew 6 inches in a year and then another 2 freshman/sophomore in college.
Yup,that's how it usually works out! Same here Ryan
Great story!
Good on you!
Unfortunately for boys sometimes you had to throw the first punch before the bully understood you.
If you really wanted them to understand then hit the biggest one first.
I recently had to tell my 12 year old boy that. Damn the consequences.
If not, the bullying only gets worse.
Girls at that age can be some of the nastiest creatures on the planet. Most grow out of it to be nice young ladies.
Lawn Darts, LOL, can’t believe we survived our childhood playing with those things! Not to mention playing “war” with our BB guns (pre airsoft days) - terrible idea - please don’t try that… I’ve still got a scar on my forehead right above my eyes. Yes, my friends and I were pretty stupid, but boy did we have fun on those long summer breaks!
And don't forget playing with fireworks like cherry bombs!
Yep - been there, done that too - winging bottle rockets at each other! Fun times indeed!
Yup. You only had to point it the wrong way once to figure out how to make sure you had it the right way
Lol. Exactly.
My favorite was lighting one just as one of my buddies was teeing off on the golf course...or anytime for that matter.
Fire! FIRE!
Those were the days.
We still have our Jarts (lawn darts).
"Long Summer breaks." Now they get, what, 3 weeks for Summer break? It's absolutely ridiculous!
Yeah teachers have to have 20 in service days DURING the school year instead of doing it in the summertime like our teachers did 40 years ago. Getting soft in the ones educating our kids and sh!t rolls downhill to the kids.
Agree
Yep - good ole Jarts! :)
And the helicopter parents send them off on Japanese Maths camps.
Yeah, like being perfect isn't stress enough.
You too??? We used to take wax and heat it up in our fingers and put it in our pellet guns and shoot it at each other. Boy, that hurt. Never watched "A Christmas Story" until adulthood, sadly--"You'll shoot your eye out, kid!"
Oh my little brother took one in the eyelid when he was 12.
It was only at that point my mom confiscated the pellet and bb guns.
.....temporarily
My little brother hit me in the ass with a BB gun when I was riding my bike. My dad got a hold of him, made him walk out to the firing line and turn around. He was shitting his pants as dad pretended to aim and got ready to fire. He never did, but the lesson was learned. Eddie the Eagle couldn't have done a better job. Haha!! Gotta love the 70's.
BB guns were for losers! We used to make bow and arrows out of sticks and catapults out of metal coathangers. Those were the days!
That’s hilarious! Awesome dad! Thanks for the laugh!
LOLOLOL.
That is classic
hahahaha - glad he's ok (I assume)
He's all good and tough as nails now
Right?! Lol. How else were we supposed to keep score?!
We even went so far as building POW "prisons"
I'm a middle-aged very respectable looking lady and a few years ago my when I broke my ankle the doctor asked me why I had a BB in my foot. I laughed about it pretty hard bc of the memories of my childhood flooded back. The young doctor looked horrified at my reaction.
I would think, nowadays the "old" doctors would look horrified, too. It seems no one does anything out of the ordinary, or gets hurt.
I don't know if I agree with you on older doctors being so shocked. They spent time experiencing things, too and Buttercups are not generally becoming doctors. 🙂
I don't think the teachers are "well-intentioned". Most them are extreme Left and fully buy into the BS they teach.
When meeting my friends' parents, my mother would always tell them (within earshot) that they had permission to beat me silly if I did something dumb.
Then I'd get beat again at home for embarrassing the family.
This was a very effective strategy.
I remember a time as a young USMC officer when we would play drunken lawn darts and try to hit each other with them. Fortunately we were drunk and had bad aim. I’m guessing that is no longer a thing.
So true. I’ve grandchildren and the kids of dear friends that I have seen go through these IEP or resource school programs that are supposedly there to help kids who are struggling in some way. Not yet have I seen them actually help anyone. Instead it stops all progression in their education, as far as I can tell. What would be more helpful is bring back vocational training and courses like the arts, and foreign languages and useful life skills like home economics and wood or auto shop. Restricting the use of all devices like smart phones and tablets and gaming systems would help our children immensely as well.
You just have to look around to see the base line intelligence of our culture is deteriorating. All according to plan.
Oh my, you are singing my song. Ditch the screens and the meds. Get the kids (and adults) outside. Teach them actual usable skills. Voila!
what a bliss to read throught these comments LOL Thanks to all who made me happy I am this old !
You are dead on. But remember if they took away their phones and gaming systems the adults might have to interact with their own kids and they really don't seem to want to do that.
💯Because they are too traumatised by NOT being allowed to grow up properly. The majority were helicopters to within inch of their lives!!🤗
Most likely, and now they're doing it to their kids. The odd thing about most helicopter parents is while they fuss over every little thing their kids do, the ones I knew didn't seem to have conversations with them.
It’s very distressing. And it’s not just kids and young people who can’t seem to break the hold screens have over multitudes of us. Everywhere, all the time when I’m out in public, I see people with their faces buried in their phones. Walking from the car to some other place, sitting and eating out at a restaurant, at parties, waiting for the kids in the school pick up lines. We’ve stopped looking at one another ( the whole COVID clown show certainly exacerbated this as well), having conversations and engaging in random conversations with strangers. Social isolation on many fronts is clearly one of the strategies being used against us.
I can't say much. I spend tooooo many hours a day reading Substack articles and comments. I don't have anyone to talk to. I don't use my phone much away from home. When I do, I'm usually waiting alone in my car to meet a friend for lunch and I play solitaire. 😏
I’m on substack frequently some weeks too. No judgment here!
I'm a private special ed tutor and used to work in schools. What you say is right. Now special ed is obsessed with "wellbeing" and cuddly IEP targets. Ironically, most of my Special ed students share my point of view and hate all the cuddly Woke crap.
That's encouraging.
It is, Sue. The parents are rich but most of them seem to have their heads screwed on and have avoided spoiling their kids. It's usually a pleasure working with these young people and realising that not all Gen Z are blue-haired land whales!
Yes, and medical/social/educational iatrogenesis has been baked into the economic cake. Dysfunction and remediation sells.
This is so true and I believe it really began once there was a movement in sports to give everyone a medal no matter how poorly they performed. That was the beginning of the end IMHO.
It's gotten so much worse with things like Attention Deficit which now apparently every kid (and adult) has and therefore needs the cure-all meds which as we know just takes a somewhat normal person and makes them totally abnormal. Thus, the cycle begins and never ends.
The kids have ADD because they are never told "no". Parenting is all redirection, ridiculous time-out, and let's make a deal. (God forbid a swat on the behind.) Kids are instructed that the world revolves around them, and their every whim and demand, from toddler to adulthood.
Being around kids like this is never an enjoyable experience. They demand their own way, but are never content. Screen time is literally the only break for the parent.
You know what it is,.......it’s asserting individuality. IF YOU CANT SHOCK YOUR PARENTS ONCE, YOU ARE NOT A TEENAGER.
Kids want to belong to something their parents are not.
Like when mini skirts were in.......when guys started wearing earrings, when ripped jeans became the norm.
But nothing shocks the parent anymore,............no attention there. I’m afraid this busy lifestyle is creating lone little freaks that don’t care about what the rest of the world thinks,.......although they have created quite a trendy, must fit in style. Talk about protesting the wrong problems. Hopefully they will realize we are in the middle of a war, where they are being used as pawns, and help us.
True.
But IEP's made it possible for my son to get the best education I could provide. One that was stimulating, challenging and devoid of the bullshit high school jocks-stoners politics that still fuck with my head. My kid (now in his 30's,LOL) reads literature and has a career. Sadly, the IEP gave me more options, which I used to my child's advantage.
But, on the other hand, we did not coddle him. He learned some hard lessons. And he is a better man for that.
I could only relate my experience with the children of several good friends and others close to me.
I’m sure individual kids will have different experiences with the people at their schools who ran the programs. And 30 years ago things were very different at many schools across the land, compared to how things have now devolved.
You sound like a family who kept their hand in the game. That is often the thing that tips the scales one way or the other.
Rings so true...Grew up in the 40's and 50's in a small farming community. Risky behavior was a given. I can't recall a time when there wasn't someone at school without someone wearing a cast, sling, or brace. A classmate in high school competed nationally as a rodeo bull rider. He was always banged up. Hard lessons learned hard, but they were learned.
Best to learn young while you can still heal....
Kitties love spilt milk, so stop ur cryin’!
Me too.
In praise of lawn darts is my most favorite el gato too and I link it instead of saying cry about it!! <3
well, now you can have a two pronged armamentarium!
(seriously, try the cry about it thing. i have. it is spec-tac-ular)
Conversely, the next time we complain, let’s hope someone has the guts to say that to us. If we don’t burst out laughing, we need more time in the squat rack!
In my family any whining is met with “you want some cheese with that whine (wine) 😂😂
Agreed. My Son has started using that tactic with me. I know it’s coming so I think more critically about what I want to say.
Yeah and if they do start crying tell them "dry it up".
That was my dad's best way of telling me don't be a wussy.
And guess what it works.
The other response we got was “do you need a hanky?”
My day was worse - it was quit the crying or I’ll give you something to cry about! There was a lot of fear and terror back in the day.
Ooh that's the best one.
Gonna have to break that oldie but goodie out with my 12 year old twins
The Lawn Darts article was the first thing I ever saw from you and I said to myself, “This cat’s GOT something!”
I love when you do these essays. It's fun to be nostalgic and hear everyone's stories/experiences growing up.
Only one response to complaining in our house....whoopty do.
I tell people to start a support group.
Devil's advocate, sort of: If someone asked me, "So why don't you cry about it?", I can easily see myself deflecting and dismissing that non sequitur by just saying, "Because I don't feel like it."
Yeah. Cuz your smart and not a cry baby
I concede the point that some people really are just crybabies or whiners, but there are some situations in which to refuse to complain is to enable tyranny. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I don't happen to be Christian, but this is arguably the meaning of the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Unjust_Judge
As good as the ol' "Don't dish it out if you can't take it" and "I'll give you something to cry about."
Remember King of the Mountain? In our most frequented playground it was a large concrete hill. That was a rough and tumble game.
King of the mountain was played on the piles of snow in winter where I grew up. Now they don’t let the kids play on them.
It's so sad. They've stripped the playgrounds of...wait for it...tetherballs.
What a weak society. I say this often; but I hope this last 2 generations doesn't have to defend us older folks.
Pretty sure at this point I'd rather do the fighting than have all these pudgy kids I see these days.
I can still feel the sting of a tetherball to the face!
Oh God or a kickball...and worse a basketball.
And for all the baseball I played I don't remember anyone ever suffering Commotio Cordis.
Or the dodge ball slammed at our bare legs. Boys loved it (us girls wore dresses and skirts in elementary school).
Tetherball is gone? That is awful.
Gone 5-10 years ago
We spent days hollowing them out into Snow Forts. Wet mittens still scraping freezing hands and the hot bath after stung. Good times.
They don’t even let kids play Dodgeball!!!
We played Smear the Queer (we didn’t know what a queer was haha) which was everyone dog pile on one person. Idk who won or how it ended. In tears probably. 😂
best game ever. I still have a 2 inch "strawberry" on my left elbow.
It’s my all time favorite as well and the one I have shared most.... 🎯
Parents’ fear dictates their kids’ lives. This is not being a parent (I hate the word “parenting.”) YOU are the adult - master or mask your fear and let kids do the stuff. ALL the stuff. There will be blood and broken bones and potential fire or flooding in your house, and you still let them do the stuff. (When we went on date night we told our kids “DO NOT CALL US except for fire, flood, broken bones, or copious amounts of blood!”) Will you be scared? Of course. Should you let the kids know that? Absolutely not. And you should also FOLLOW THROUGH with discipline. If you threaten a consequence, you have to follow through with it no matter how “inconvenient” it is. Helicopter parenting is one of the worst ills on society.
Straight up truth.
Kids don’t even know the thrill in trying to become the neighborhood legend anymore.
To me that was the beginning of the competition that is life.
Same, in my case there were 6 of us, so we were a gang.
You know I enjoy technology but I would still rather be outside just about any day.
I think that would take care of 50% of the "mental" health issues with children.
Get your lazy butt outside and play.
my dog makes me go outside several times a day. Nice weather is okay, but when it rains she refuses to go unless I do too. I also have 2 dog like cats that follow me around so there comes our little train !
One does not have to be a parent to act like an adult, especially with kids. Adults have ceded acting as role models in fear of the reactions of others, to the detriment of children's development. I was taught to respect adults as a default. If they didn't deserve my respect my parents dealt with things.
I only half agree with that. Respect should never be automatic; it needs to be earned. If I were a kid, I would respect very few of the adults I see around me today.
Respect means very different things in different cultures.
For celtic/germanic-originated cultures it means something you give freely and something you work to deserve to be given; it cannot ever be demanded or forced from someone.
Have you served in the Middle East? Doesn't mean even remotely the same thing there: to them, it means showing deference and acquiescence to the stronger. Thus it can be demanded and forced from someone via (the threat of) humiliation and abuse.
A big part of the problem is that kids aren't allowed to work anymore. I'm sure there are still openings, but in my day it was a given that you could deliver newspapers and do the milk round. It was great being an "adult" and earning some good money.
How many men do you know under 30 who could change a doorknob out?
Kids don’t learn how to work with their hands anymore and have no idea how things are "made".
Voila they just show up at the front door as if it were magic.
I truly believe these are two areas that have led to where we're at with the youth in America.
In the catagory of grab your smelling salts..my Dad used to call me “ my son Martha” and would take me to the Hardware store with him and then be his assistant teaching me how to fix stuff, etc. My first marriage , I was the one with the tool box who did simple repairs... when my now husband and I were dating he was dully impressed that I had a tool kit, mitre box , electric drill, etc... I recoil when women say “ oh, I can’t do that... “ Thanks Dad!!
That is awesome!!!. I wrestled when I was in school and they'd give me smelling salts and stuff a tampon up my nose if it started bleeding and then shove me back out in the ring!
Lol
Make that doorknob a lightbulb...
The number of under-30s I've heard sing the song of "I could never do that, I'd die" about things like marching 20 miles wearing a measly 30 pound backpack, on a trail or similar exercises...
The gold medal goes to the ones who breathlessly ask "How do you know how to make a fire in pissing rain? Which prepper-expert do you follow online?". They get snippy like old spinster harridans when you reply - innocently - with "I've got a three-digit IQ?"
Make a fire. Dig a shit-pit. Splint a leg. Build a hut or a bivouac. Make a harpoon for fishing. Simple traps. Know your berries and roots. There's not one swedish man my age doesn't know how to do that, no matter if theywere boyscouts or conscripts or not.
Today's juves, they buy bottled water. In a country where you can drink from virtually every stream or creek or lake.
Because they can't think.
Yep. We now allow fully capable adults to take up those entry-level jobs that taught teenagers so much. Safety, you know.
It's why all of the fast food restaurants are struggling to stay open. It's meant to be a job for kids in high school/college but not many kids that age are working anymore.
Nothing worth it is ever easy. If it was easy, everyone would already be doing it.
Wow,This is almost verbatim what I tell my Hapkido students when they get frustrated! " If this art was easy,everyone would be doing it,and if you already knew how to do it proficiently, you wouldn't need me to guide you. Now... do it, again."
In my home it was "I'll give you something to cry about," which was code for a momentous ass beating. It was highly effective.
Oh, I remember that one well. Had no idea why they were so obviously blinded to my plight, but I certainly knew it meant suck it up buttercup. And I did. Also contributed to anger issues for not being heard, ever. But I worked through that too (no drugs or therapy, lol).
Same
Tim Ferriss shared this quote this week, and it’s pertinent:
“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable. All these and other factors combined, if the circumstances are right, can teach and can lead to rebirth.”
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh
(Click here to share on Twitter)
Compassion without struggle is soul-destroying, but so is struggle without purpose. Before we tear down Chesterton’s Fence of Achievement Awards (and we ought to), we need to find out why it’s there.
The people who went through *that* system created *this* one. The aggressors cemented their strategies and the victims their resentment.
The smaller the stakes, the uglier the game. And now, the Fed and bureaucratic totalitarianism have created a hamstrung ecosystem of dependency and meaninglessness, and people are desperate to make sense of why they are so miserable.
Buttercup gotta toughen up, but also needs a *reason* to.
Civilization needs a beating heart, and the throne has been usurped by technocratic diktat. We have to also add back purpose and meaning.
Eight year old girls getting brutally beaten by 13 year old racist bullies on the school bus aren’t experiencing coddling, they are just experiencing misery. That is not the way.
The beat downs in schools we are all seeing thanks to ubiquitous cell phones are, of course, horrifying. That is definitely not what is meant by toughen up buttercup. In those cases the teachers, principals school administrators and all those in the chain of command need to be the ones to toughen up and deal with what’s going on. And this thought spring to my mind…I’m old enough to remember how at least half of my teachers growing up were men. For my children as well, especially in middle school and on up. It sure seems like most teachers nowadays are female. I suspect a lot of the brutal behavior in classrooms would cease if men were more prevalent in the classrooms.
Yes, I’m not suggesting that the Cat thinks that abuse is appropriate. It’s more a question of how we got here and to recognize that there are real reasons, good and bad, why we did.
Of course. It’s a Gordian knot situation for sure. It’s just heartbreaking to see the trajectory overall is almost always downward for so many children, who end up as unhappy, confused and angry adults.
And if the men in the classroom were men NOT grown soy boys or gay.
I'm pretty sure most "men" don't go into teaching, because it doesn't pay enough.
It's partly that, but it's also for the same reason real men are starting to avoid the military: Why go into a professional environment where you will be hated and where people far less able than you will get promotion because of their sex, skin color or orientation?
Don't forget the good, old-fashioned suck-ups. I'm pretty sure they still exist. 😒
As a teacher you are tasked with maintaining order and discipline in class (though you aren't allowed to call it that).
You're also forbidden from using any methods that actually work.
And when everything therefore devolves into monkey-business, it's your fault.
It’s all set-up to fail. Only acceptable solution is to raise taxes so GovInc can throw more money at it via some half-baked latest ideology program which never works.
Absolutely!
My husband was a naughty little imp in Jr. High. Before school started one day, he was inspired to whip out his pocket knife he always had with him (Oh the horror! He still carries one every single day) and began to alter the sign on his Arts and Crafts classroom door into Farts and Crafts. His teacher (a man, who also taught him in wood shop and metal shop) caught him red-handed; and next thing he knew he was lifted up from behind by his ears, spun around, and the teacher back-handed him across the face. Then he was pulled into class and had his bottom spanked with a paddle in front of the entire classroom. And then summarily sent to the principles office. End of story.
Major street creed with his peers that day.
Spot on. At the school I teach, 90% of the men are homosexuals or beta-guys who out feminine the women. The remaining 10% of real men keep a very low profile and somehow never move up the ladder. Oh, and the "Wellness Counselor" is a transgendered male. Glad I got out of there.
when I was a kid we had female teachers for girls and male for boys. Only when we went higher up, there were first one and then several male teachers in our all girls school
Yep. I remember having massive crushes on my female teachers. Except for the snarky old bat who taught maths. She was a prototype Karen!
Thank you el gato malo - nailed it. One thing I heard (once or twice) as a girl, after being disappointed or hurt was "don't trip over your lip."
I was raised by a single Mom and her folks. After a rare day trip to a local small town, we all got a piece of candy while there. Think "designer chocolate." This was a bit of a big deal, because money was tight. Well, after I got home, I took a bite, put it down on a napkin to save for later. I went back later - gone. Grandpa had eaten it, asked me what I was looking for..."this will teach you - don't trust anyone, not even me." But he said it laughing, not with malice. One of the best lessons ever.
The lip comeback is great! 🤣🤣🤣
I had a girlfriend who told me her parents would tell her a bird was going to come perch on her bottom lip when she’d pout growing up. Good times!
Nana, What was your friends name?? I’m pretty sure it was be me!! LOL!! My Dad had a collection of classics directed at independence and self reliance... my now favorite which at the time was harsh but highly effective... he’d rub his thumb and index finger together and ask me “ do you know what this is? World’s smallest 🎻!” ❤️❤️❤️
My dad. "The world's smallest violin, playing 'My Heart Bleeds for You.'"
I still tell people that every so often.
A lot of good basics no longer instilled... also “The Boy who cried Wolf” applies to our state of the nation... I don’t believe anyone!!!
That’s the way I learned the violin one as well. A classic!
Her name was Barbara. Which if that is yours would be quite the co-inky-dink! Lol
That's what my Grandma would tell me.
That's a good one, too.
Yes, I forgot that one. I always heard “don’t trip over your lower lip” Thanks, I am going to revive that one
Meanwhile those who rule over us are busy actually erasing/altering actual pathologies like psychopathic from clinical diagnosis books, because they will not tolerate calling things what they actually are. That also applies to your main point. Along with “toughen up buttercup”, we need to bring back “calling a spade a spade.”
YES. I have autistic kids, and not the just quirky kind. The low-verbal and self-abusing kind who can’t master their own bodies. I refuse to medicate them, even though everyone says to. (I obediently did for a while, and it was terrible.) And now ridiculous humans are trying to erase real pathologies in the name of inclusion and people are rushing to diagnose themselves to belong. It’s ridiculous and dangerous and ignores the real problem that - as much as I love the Gato here, he doesn’t recognize, either.
But I will always support a rant against antidepressants. Medication is killing us.
Exactly, which is why I had to rewrite Dr. Roger McMillen's tweet to read:
Myself, and many others, are fed up with psychiatric disorders being turned into normal human experiences.
For decades, we have been normalizing aberrant behavior...
Thanks, I was wondering if anyone else was thinking the same thing I was.
And just as it isn’t compassionate to protect our kids from struggle, it isn’t compassionate to tell someone who is struggling with psychological damage that they are normal. Medication isn’t the answer either - something happened to screw them up and it needs to be dealt with, not ignored, normalized, or drugged into oblivion.
I make it look easy. It is anything BUT. I can't tell you how many people over the years have told me that I just don't have the struggles they have (and it's not fair!).
Because my life looks easy to people who do not see my normal life struggles; because I don't whine about it -- I am told I have "privilege."
There are so many people my age (older) who talk about their privilege guilt. (this is another way of inducing people to attack themselves).
Life is supposed to be hard, and you get knocked down. Then you have a choice -- stay there and complain about it, or pick yourself up, dust yourself off, learn the lesson and grow from it; toughen up while you develop compassion and good boundaries. This can happen in a healthy environment, which we currently do not have.
until they really sit down with you and get to know you very well, people think your life is easier than theirs. Either you live on and make the best of it or you welt like a plant without water. The train rolls on with or without you, whatever you sit and cry you loose! Great comment Dani thanks! But they all are LOL All get a medal today
I just wonder if our desire for individualism and freedom as a culture, both good things generally speaking, has actually added to our sense of loneliness and separation. Add that to working from home, social media addictions, no organic free play for kids... yikes. How do we fix this?
We are fortunate to have a close family and to live in the same city as our adult children, and this is our core unit against the world. We are also Gen X (hubs is very late Boomer) and have often repeated some of these same tough phrases to our progeny, hearing with great angst that we were the meanest parents. But we aren’t paying their bills, they don’t live in the basement and they all know what gender they are. I’m sure we will all face tough times. I have battled mental health issues, which seem to be genetic after having lost a parent and great aunt to suicide, but the meds they gave me made it far worse.
Would love to hear everyone’s suggestions for retrieving our resilience as a people.
Tall Chick, I think that a part of the problem is that, like so many of the big words, the meanings of "individualism" and "freedom" have changed. Individualism for me conjures up images of Davy Crockett or Alexander Solzhenitsyn, men refusing to be broken by nature or evil totalitarianism. Today it has much more narcissistic connotations: dying your hair blue and suing bakers out of existence because they use the wrong pronoun. Same thing goes for freedom: It used to mean doing what hell you wanted in life unless it harmed other people or encroached on their rights. These days, "freedom" means getting to choose which arm you get tattooed or what TikTok vids you can download. Many kids are unhappy because of the harmful changes in the meanings of these two vital words. I've had depression many times in life and, funnily enough, found that the anti-deps helped a lot. They gave me a window of time to make some positive changes. I fully agree though that they are vastly over-prescribed. Stay strong and carry on being the great parent you obviously are!
Spot on! And I did find better living through chemistry, so there were indeed physiological factors, but the doctors throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and sadly it kills some people in the process. Almost got me and convinced it got my mom.
Excellent take on how these two ideals have changed. I should add that people now greatly prefer safety, or at least perceived safety, over freedom. Have had they exact discussion with progressive (former) friends. But like the current generation who has never lived without a cell phone or the internet at their fingertips, how can they imagine our former existence? We can’t imagine life without electricity or cars and I’m sure our elders were frustrated with us. They must learn to live the best way they can with the new normal and we owe it to them to guide them as much as possible. I can only hope they find their way. It’s scary as shit though.
Visited the zoo on Monday with my 12 month girl. She’s a climber. Her hand got stuck climbing up a bench. She was screaming Bc she was angry. I encouraged to push. That’s it. People stared at me like I was alien. 3 seconds later, she’s free and bouncing on top of the bench. She’s more like a silver back. I was disturbed at people’s reaction. That letting her work through a difficulty was some horrific miscarriage of parenting.
it all leads back to pharma, illegal drugs, alcohol.
That "pink haired girl with the eyebrows" looks hilariously funny.
My dad and I were wandering (loitering) around a Bed Bath and Beyond store way back BC (before covid)
He was about 95 I think, and we saw a girl and her mom shopping for college clutter. She had eyebrows exactly like that girls, but blacker and wider. When I first saw her in the store, serious face, loading up the shopping cart with her mom.... I could not believe what I was looking at, and immediately burst out laughing uncontrollably - laughing so hard I was trying to contain it and I really was not able to. My dad looked at me (and he does like a good laugh) and I dragged him over to another aisle and tried to explain the appearance of that girl. So we went out and dad gazed in that general direction. He started laughing too. Then we both needed to leave that section of the store. My daddy said (he is from Holland) those eyebrows were as fat as Hitlers mustache.
Aaah the little things. I think we laughed about that for a whole week. So seeing this on your blog today brought back that memory. when we left the store, both of us were so sore in the stomach from laughing
It would be nice to have tougher kids. My son in laws mom was very spoiled protected and coddled and she ended up raising two rather wimpy sons. Physically they are strong, but mentally they just blow up.
I am "suffering" the consequences of that for the past 10 months.
meh.... it could be worse.
Your story reminds me of a similar encounter that I had sometime around 2006. My kids were then ages 5 and 3. We were in a restaurant waiting to be seated and there was a teen girl nearby with multiple facial piercings, tattoos and unnaturally colored hair. At the time, such a sight was not as common as it is now. My 5 year old daughter asked me what was wrong with the girl (even a 5 year old in 2006 recognized that something was “wrong” with this girl). I immediately responded that the girl hated her mother or perhaps both parents and that physically hurting herself by branding herself this way was her way of also hurting her parents. Both kids were very interested in this response and asked lots of questions. They are both in college now and they both still bring up this story. What’s more, they tell me that I was right - the people around them who look like this are generally among the lot suffering from some “mental issue”, have issues with their parents and are strange.
What always strikes me strange is the "NoEffOFF" of the badly coiffed tonsure contrasted with those on trendy 'come hither' On Fleek eyebrows. She just comes across as clueless.
The worst thing you do to a good, besides sexual abuse, is to spoil them.
At the last multi-day power outage, the condominium tin-pot hall monitors known as the board sent out a notification that candles were not allowed because it was important to keep the kiddies safe. Of course, to use or not use candles should be the parents' decision, but how are kids supposed to figure out how to use fire safely if they don't have experience with it when they're young? Bozo the clown world.
The wording suggested that candles weren't even allowed in apartments with no kids. Screw that. I use candles.
I’d light the doormat on fire just for fun.
Gaye, best reaction ever. :)
'Cause you and your kids are supposed to sit in the dark all evening?! Or are you required to spend every cent you have on batteries?
“all we have to do is stop describing any struggle as disease and discord and let humans go be humans to struggle and strive and fail and succeed but most of all to grow and grow confident and self-sufficient.”
“and we will once more begin to thrive.”
AMEN TO THAT! You are one, awesome, bad cat. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Maybe try putting your kids (and yourselves) on a natural human diet - meat, meat and more meat ! Sprinkle in some fruit and veg if you want. Treat all the middle isles in a grocery store where all the packaged garbage is sold, like a toxic waste zone and for god sakes pump some iron ! I don’t care how old you are. You can thank me later.
15 years ago I bought myself and my 3 eldest sons boxing gloves and mouth guards. We'd go into the back yard and pound on each other. It was fun, for me at least. Kidding, we all had fun and made sure that we didn't punch/kick at 100%. The neighbours seemed amused and no authorities were ever called. We said 'suck it up, buttercup' though.