stella41b
Posts: 4258
Joined: 10/16/2007 From: SW London (UK) Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LaTigresse Stella, there is a line that is crossed. Communication and holding accountable is one thing. Allowing young people with immature brains and reasoning to do whatever they want and say it's okay because they are doing it at home is something entirely different. She can treat them like adults all she wants, the fact is, they are not adults. Treating them as so, does not make it magically happen. In my opinion it sends the signal that their poor choices are acceptable choices. I'm sorry, but I somehow don't get the impression that she's running a shebeen or keeping a brothel at weekends (and though Wyzardsgirl may think it's a fair comparison with the father abusing alcohol with his daughter and making a public nuisance but I strongly disagree here and think that such a comparison is unfair and unjustified). In fact I'm inclined to believe from knowing the woman personally that there's some degree of control. Liberal parenting it may well be, but irresponsible? In my opinion not. Is it what I would do personally? No again I don't think it is. I agree with you that they are not adults either in the legal sense or emotionally and I also agree that they don't become adults magically. I think I've already made that point above. But you know you and I and everyone else here may agree that a 16 year old isn't an adult, we know that but we only know that because we have become adults ourselves. But many 16 year olds themselves get it into their heads that they are adults and refuse to see any difference in those two years which makes them legally an adult. And that is why they make usually piss poor choices until life itself knocks sense into them and they realize, usually at the age of 18 that they were still a kid at 16, and then in their early twenties they realize yet again that even at 18 they're still not an adult. I think this is called puberty, it starts around the ages of 12 and 13 and goes right through until they're in they're mid-twenties it's probably one of the toughest periods for a parent to go through and throughout that process the adolescent varies from acting like a 3 year old to acting like a mature and sensible adult. I'm sorry but I cannot agree that it's so unacceptable and irresponsible and that we all didn't make piss poor choices and experimented as teenagers and abused alcohol and drugs and had sex. Indeed, what Prin is doing was a very popular pattern of parenting back in the 1960's and 1970's and I don't think it adversely affected those of us who had such parents. Or would you prefer to look the other way and pretend that it doesn't happen and that your kids wouldn't make the same poor choices? I live on the fringes of Stockwell, an inner city district of South London, and I get 13 year olds asking me for a light for their cigarettes, and among those people buying drugs are teenagers from other areas and seemingly from 'responsible' parents. In fact how can you be so sure that your kids aren't making the same piss poor choices? What you don't see you don't miss. And can you be really sure you know absolutely everything your teenage offspring gets up to out of your sight?
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