Parenting

Having kids is a real trip- I love my kids and I think that I've generally done pretty well with them, but other parents continually baffle me. They won't give their kids straight answers and then expect the kid to not only not ask anyone else but also to trust what they say over anyone else. And God forbid that their kid asks you and you have the gall to answer them honestly. Do other parents really think that they are protecting their kids by avoiding talking to them about sex and drugs and other less than savory subjects until they are "old enough" and someone else has already answered their questions? I find the concept utterly flawed. 

My kids and I have had an ongoing discussion going about sex and drugs from the time that they were just old enough to ask what a cigarette was and why people smoke them. By the time that my kids were old enough for the schools to be thinking about teaching them sex ed, my kids were not only more well informed on the subject than most of their classmates, but their teachers were using them as back up on topics not covered by the textbooks, because they already had the correct information. Meanwhile, other kids are getting pregnant and ruining their lives with drugs because their parents won't tell them anything and the schools are waiting too long because the parents don't want them to bring it up and so the kids are asking other kids and getting bad advice. Other parents accuse me of pushing my kids to grow up too quick, or pushing them toward things they "aren't ready for," but I would argue that my kids speak for themselves. I have 2 in technical college programs (Computer Aided Manufacturing and Culinary) and 2 still in High School. All getting good grades, no drug or alcohol issues, no pregnancies or STDs or anything like that, and I have generally good relationships with all of them. My kids are the type that teachers generally love- they listen, they learn quickly and they are always doing research on stuff. You can bring up topics with them that most other kids have no clue on and my kids probably not only know what you are talking about but probably know stuff about it you don't.  Example: My 14 year old, Scott, was having a discussion with his teacher about behavioral psychology (started by a classroom discussion of the play Oedipus). It was the last class of the day, so Scott stuck around to continue talking with his teacher while the other kids slowly wandered off. Scott and his English teacher have a lot of great discussions and the other kids from the class will often stick around to listen because they always learn something when Scott starts talking. They began talking about the Oedipus syndrome and various ways that that tendency shows up in most people, such as girls tending to search for guys that have similar character traits to their dads, or boys wanting a girl who shares a talent with their mom, etc. and moved into a debate on the merits of Freud's work and after a few great points about how many of Freud's theories having a grain of merit that was often just taken to an unreasonable extreme, Scott's teacher commented that he seemed to be very knowledgeable about behavioral psychology and asked if that was what he planned to pursue after high school, to which Scott replied, "No, I'm going into Biochemistry. This was just something that I was reading about for fun." **Note this story was originally told to me by one of the other kids in the room and then later repeated to me again by the teacher during a conference.**  

All in all I think that I have done pretty well with my kids, so why is it that other parents don't seem to like them and routinely tell their kids that my kids are a bad influence? How? My kids are never in trouble, they're well behaved, outgoing, helpful, generally polite, and always willing to help their friends learn something new. Their friends love coming to our house and we've had more than a few of them want to move in. Why? Is it because we let them do whatever they want? Hell, NO! We have a very simple set of rules. Everyone in the house has a set of chores that they are expected to do and kids under 18 have a curfew and if the older ones are not coming home for the night they have to let us know before 9pm. Other than that our only rule is "Don't be that guy." I tell people that and they tend to look at me like I'm crazy, but it works. 

And who is "that guy"? We all know that guy. He's the one that pisses off everyone by playing pranks that no one else thinks is funny. He's the one that thinks that it's ok to not do the things they're supposed to because someone else will pick up the slack. He's the one that takes your stuff out of your room, wallet, purse, house, whatever, without asking and might return it in a couple of months if it is still mostly usable. He's the one that has no idea when it's ok to be loud and joke around and when it's better to be quiet. He's the one that bullies people into doing things their way all the time instead of letting other people have a turn leading once in a while. He's the one that never cares how anything he does affects anyone else. Hopefully you get the point. 

Early on, we just got in the habit of stopping the kids and pointing out something that someone was doing that we thought fell into the "that guy" category and just saying, "Look! it's that guy again." or if they were doing it, "Would you like it if that was done to you? No? Then don't be that guy to anyone else."  If they asked what was wrong with something, we told them. "It's rude and hurts people's feelings." Or "he almost ran into those people and that would have really hurt." or "he's hurting himself and the people who are around him." or "it's not his." As the kids got older the explanations were asked for less and often could be a lot more technical, but the point is that their questions got answered, even it was "I'm not sure, but let's look it up." 

One of Scott's best friends' parents moved their family to the next town over and out right told their kid that now that they were in this new place Scott was not welcome. They are allowed contact with all their other friends, but not Scott. Why? Where is the logic. Scott helped this kid pass History last year and has tutored him in grammar. How is he a bad influence? Answer: He has too much freedom. They think that the fact that I was letting Scott ride the public bus on his own at age 10 was too soon. They think the fact that my kids know how to cook is dangerous. They think that the fact that my kid knew more about the research on the actual effects of extended use of assorted narcotics than they do means that we are encouraging them to use drugs. In short, they think they are protecting their kid, who is 2 years older than Scott and in total rebellion over all of this.  

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but I am frustrated and baffled.  

So, Life happened and I stopped writing for awhile, but I'm back. Did you miss me? Probably not, but that's ok-  Here we go!

Feminism? No thanks, I'll stand by my men

So, there's this nasty trend that is going on that just has my panties in a bunch, so to speak.  It seems that everywhere I turn there is another famous lady coming out as a die hard feminist. Now I have no issue women wanting to be treated fairly, but the feminist movement is much more than that and I'm tired of being told that I'm either obviously not a woman at all or obviously a self-hater because I refuse to tow the feminist line.

Feminism is advertised to the masses as being all about equality: Equal pay, equal rights, etc. That I have no problem with, but when you look closer at their history and the women who often lead these groups there are some truly disturbing things to be found. Many of them take the philosophy to extreme of hating men. They want to rule over men, make them weak, hurt them and in some extreme cases basically outlaw them all together. 

I have a husband that I love dearly he's always treated me as an equal partner in our relationship. Over the years we have taken turns being the parent at home and being the working parent, we've made decisions about the budget together, raised 4 awesome kids together and generally just never had the need to be the one in charge of the other. 

Three of our kids are boys and I look at the world that they are preparing to venture out into as adults (the oldest is 18) and I am terrified for them. What is this MADDNESS? Thanks to the Feminist movements, did you know that in many parts of the world a guy can be locked up because a girl he never saw before said that he raped her? Someone told me that and I didn't really believe them, so I did some research. In California for example, it is actually legal for a guy to be accused of rape and put on the sex offenders list with no proof except the girl's say so. I read a case file recently- aside from names being redacted this stuff is usually public record, folks, so don't take my word for it, look it up- where the only evidence that was presented against this guy was that the girl pointed him out to police from across the room. There was no DNA, no witnesses, no rape kit from the emergency room- nothing.  And when the guy's attorney asked about additional evidence, it was insisted that to press the girl for more evidence would be like raping her all over again, so since this guy had no alibi, he was automatically declared guilty.  In another case, a girl and guy are dating. They have sex a couple of times and the guy secretly tapes it, intending to use them to help keep himself from cheating while he is out of town for a few weeks. He comes back and finds that the while he was gone, the girl had second thoughts about their relationship and decided to turn him in for raping her. Well fortunately for him the date that she gives police happens to be one of the sessions that he taped, so to exonerate himself he produces the tape of the encounter which shows that not only was she not raped, but she was initiating everything. Case closed, right? Wrong. Now he is being sued for taping her with out permission with intent to sell as porn despite the fact that until this came up he hadn't shown the tape to another soul and had not kept a copy for himself after turning it over as evidence in his defense. Plus there is now a movement to get taking videos of sex acts labeled as rape so that they can get him on that count too. 

In addition, to that nonsense, there are movements now to get all sorts of innocent stuff labeled as rape. There are some Feminists who claim that a man can rape a girl by simply disagreeing with her publicly. It sounds ridiculous, and everytime I hear one of these ideas my first thought is "That's got to be fake!" but with very few exceptions my research always supports it. You know how everyone's all mad about how women are kept subservient and/or generally demeaned in Islamic countries? Many feminist groups are working to turn our country into a place where that is pretty much how they treat men. If I don't want that for my daughter, why the hell would I want that for my son?  There is a fantastic article from... I think it was Rolling Stone Magazine... done by a lesbian feminist who wanted to expose the "privilege" enjoyed by men in our society. So, to prove her point, she decided to disguise herself as a man and live as a man for 1 year.... By the end of the year, she was so traumatized by her experiences that she had to be institutionalized for a mental breakdown. When she was finally moved to out-patient treatment, she wrote a very different article than the one she had originally intended because what she found was that "white male privilege" is at best a myth, which (if it was ever true at all) is the opposite of truth these days. 

My point in all this is simple. Feminists say that they want equality, but what they are accomplishing is anything but. I'm all about Fairness and equal treatment, but I can't support feminism anymore than I can support male chauvinism. Both of those -isms are about domination and power over the opposite gender and I would rather stand by my man's side than over or under him.