Villainous Company

"Baby Loves Disco."

I bet baby does. Indeed, as I reflect on disco music, I think it may be only babies who really have any right to love it.

There must be a middle ground here, though. I agree that FbL's colleagues were... er, awful. Plainly, the sort of person who brings children into the world expecting the rest of society to pay for them is not blessed with brains or morals.

Yet, there is something to be said for a world that is "adult centric" rather than "child centric." I think it is good for children to encounter and start thinking about the adult world early and often.

I'm not sure discos are a part of the "adult world," but let's leave that.

A child needs space for fantasy and safety, but so does a man (or a woman). A man needs time for faith and the power of story, and so does a child.

There are some mysteries that should wait, and indeed must wait -- I remember having seen some racy movies as a kid, and just wishing they'd get back to the interesting parts. It's not all that easy to corrupt children, who really are innocent in a perfect sense of the word.

We have to protect the children, but not too much. Killing pedophiles, that I can assent to doing. Trying to remake their parents' world to reflect juvenile interests, though, is too much. It's good for them to encounter the adult world, a little bit at a time.

But what do you do when 6th graders are having sex, in class?? Something went very wrong, in more places than one (first, the parenting, second, that the teacher could not see ever inch of the classroom just by looking around).

When I was little, I always thought I would get married out of high school and have a family. As I got older, dreams changed and I went to college. Now, I'm in my mid-30s, never married, but I still want to have children. But, I would never purposely bring a child into the world without providing that child with a stable home with two loving parents. I know sometimes circumstances can catch up with you (e.g. - the death of a spouse, making one a single parent).

None of my siblings have kids. None of us are married (although the oldest of my sisters has been dating the same guy for almost 3 years, and although not "engaged", we know it is going to happen eventually). I do have cousins who have kids, most of which are here in the same town as I am.

The oldest of my cousins (R.A.) is about 2 years my junior. He and his wife (M) have a 14-month-old (J), and just found out there is another on the way, come November. Their marriage also managed to survive a still-born, practically full-term child. Erich would be about 6 now. They were married first, and they are financial stable (as far as I can tell).

Now, my cousin's youngest brother (R.E.), on the other hand, got his 17 year old girlfriend (C) pregnant. I'm not sure of the age of consent in Texas, but I'm guessing he's lucky her family didn't press charges (let's just say he's a bit older than she is). Their little girl (A) will be 2 come June. They just had a new baby around the holidays. This second pregnancy was on purpose. My aunt passed away New Year's Day morning. Now, the oldest son has learned that his youngest brother and his wife were financially dependent on their mother, and they got pregnant again anyway. Now, who knows what is going to happen. Anyway, M told me that C told her she should take J to the dentist. M was thinking "I can't afford that, and for teeth he's going to lose anyway", but C takes A to the dentist and it gets covered by some sort of entitlement, which means I, and everyone here in Texas, or possibly the US, is helping to pay for my cousin and his wife to take their little girl to the dentist, when my other cousin and his wife, who own a nice home and pay their own way, can't afford to take their son.

As for the bathing suits, you can still find modest swimwear for little girls. I picked up a part-time job at a Carter's retail store (you know - they are the ones who make clothes for babies and children). They have a fairly wide selection of little girls swimsuits that would cover everything. I have no idea what would possess someone to think that putting a little girl in a thong is a good idea....

I think that's a wise idea, Grim. I saw some of that over-dose of child-centric view when I was teaching. I think it left children far too immature in some ways.

You know, it almost seems like we've got it flipped--in areas in which children should remain innocent for longer (sex, adult realities of life in the big, bad world, etc.), they are often forced too "grow up" too soon; but in areas in which they should grow up sooner than most seem to be doing (recognizing the difference between the child world and adult world and respecting it, learning manners and self-control, losing a bit of the childhood egocentricity, etc), they are being allowed to maintain levels of immaturity far longer than appropriate.

And come to think of it, that creates exactly the kind of woman I've been cursed to work with recently...

Today, I took the wee one (no longer particularly small, the wee one) on a hike on Sawnee mountain. They've laid trails on her, now -- when I was a boy, you had to find your own way to the old mines, and the Indian Seats that the Cherokee carved to overlook their domain.

Not long after we arrived at the top, a young lady turned up with two kids. The girl was carrying a sack of Cheetos. Her name was Sophia, which I learned because the adult kept having to call her back from the precipice.

They left the Indian seats before us, and on our way down, I discovered the Cheetos sack laying there on the trail. I picked it up, and told the boy we'd track them down.

Sure enough, we kept a much better pace than them, and eventually came on them resting on the trail.

I tipped my hat to the lady, and offered her the Cheetos sack. "My son thought," I said, "that you might have lost this on the trail."

The lady looked around accusingly at the children. "Who dropped this?" she demanded.

"Was it you, Sophia?" I asked, looking at the little girl.

The girl looked back at me with wide eyes. "How do you know my name?" she wondered.

"I heard the lady say it," I answered. The lady in question announced that she was their aunt.

I nodded to her, and then looked at the girl. "Sophia means 'wisdom' in the Ancient Greek," I told her. "A wise girl should know not to litter in a nature preserve."

With that, the boy and I proceeded past them and down the mountain.

That is what I mean about introducing them to the world of adults. Every part of that accorded with the laws of courtesy and gentlemanly behavior, yet a correction was given. Both the girl and my boy are better for having been party to it.

You know, I have a void in my life.

I'm getting a cat.

Yes, Grim. Exactly!

And I just read the whole article about the Disco. Yikes! I thought it was just a place where they kid would have a naptime/daycare environment while the parents partied. But the kids are right in the middle of it. Weird!

Grim, that's classy.

I do notice a lot of...well... folks equating physical maturity with mental and social maturity.

I was a very mature child. It annoyed EVERYONE, I assure you. But I still can't get into oogling models, I still have no desire to dress in thongs (that might be weight related) and the only man I've felt physical desire for is the one I'm engaged to.
This, apparently, makes me "weird" or even a sexually-repressed freak.

Not to be too self-laudatory, but I think the world might be better if more folks were raised so they ended up kinda like me....

Oh, and those sick kiddies clothes? I'd actually be pleased to see a store that sells 5-year-olds pants with "sexy" across the butt sued for encouraging pedophiles.

Grim, I have to praise you for your story.

During my childhood, I met several adults who took an interest in my life that way. While I did not always learn the direct lesson, I did learn that there were adults who cared that I mature. (That maturity thing is still a work in progress...oh, never mind.)

And as far as protecting children, I have to agree with your first set of comments.

On Sunday I saw a pair of little girls out for a meal with their family at a restaurant I frequent; neither could've been older than 10 (if that old), yet they both had heavy eye makeup on, such as you might see in a glamour magazine.

It made me think about what happened to little Jonbenet (sp?) Ramsey...

Grim: This reminds me of a similar incident. I was at a bootfair, and saw a group of mother and two children. All of them were black - im not saying that because im racist, it is relivent to the story.

The family bought some food - I cant remember specifics, but some type of icecream or similar - and both children droped their wrappers on the ground - dispite the convenient bin situated about three steps away.

I picked up these wrappers, handed them to the children, pointed to the bin, and said something to all three of them about not littering. I cant remember my words, but they were neither particually polite nor impolite.

At which point the mother went crazy, and started shouting loudly at me, accusing me of racism. 'Is it cos I is black! Are you saying black women can't raise their children!'

We call people like that Izzits - people of a minority group who use their status as PC-protected for personal advantage.

Rules of our house WRT our 13 year old daughter:

- no exposed midriff
- no words across the butt (for the life of me, I can't understand why parents want eyes drawn to their daughters backside)
- no phone calls from anyone we don't know
- IM blocked to all but school mates

She's still young enough that these limitations don't bother her all that much, but that will surely change in the next year or so.

As it is, she's so full of hormones that we could tap her like a maple tree and set up a nice estrogen donor program.

As it is, she's so full of hormones that we could tap her like a maple tree and set up a nice estrogen donor program.

ROFLMAO! Best definition of a teenage girl I've ever heard. :)

I used to teach a class comprised of nothing but 12 to 14-year-old boys. I always said there was so much testosterone floating in the air I had to take a shower afterwards for fear I'd absorb it through my skin.

This is somewhat off the original topic, Raven, but I'm not sure it really does work to their advantage. Another story: When I was in a Master's program, one of the other candidates was a young black lady. It was fairly obvious that she had managed to get through High School and into college, and then get through college and into graduate school, without having learned the basics of proper English. This was true both in speech and writing.

We had a class where we all read and then commented on each others' papers, and then the professor would offer her critique. She would present these papers that were often incomprehensible, or that could be comprehended only with great difficulty. No one ever said anything about it.

I wondered about it at the time, and still wonder about it. I know why nobody commented on it: the problem you cite above, amplified by the fact that colleges now have structures set up to enforce such complaints. Had she taken offense to the criticism and labeled it racist, a student might be expelled; an untenured professor might be fired, or at least lose any hope of becoming tenured.

In an atmosphere of trust, you might have offered a critique. But there is no such trust. She made occasional references to historical figures as being "racist" (which the figures in question probably were, of course). That was enough to keep an edge in the air: here was a woman who was ready to use the term, and had access to those institutions.

Therefore, no one found it worth the risk to point out that she couldn't write or speak. I expect she graduated and got her Master's Degree one day, and perhaps went on to get a Doctorate.

What she didn't do was learn how to write and communicate her ideas. Having read several of her pieces, I have only a vague idea that she was interested in a unique black culture that existed on the sea islands of Georgia (the Gullahs).

Someday she finished school, and needed to find work. At that point, a lot of doors were closed to her that should have been open. Had she used her years in school to learn these skills, she could have gone very far indeed -- the academic world would love nothing more than to find a smart black woman to hire.

That "protection" served her very poorly, I suspect. I'm sure others must have felt similarly, but the rules and institutions set up to combat racism are quite powerful. The threat of them meant it wasn't worth the risk for anyone to try to correct her.

Where are the Child Protective Service agencies in these cities? (No doubt harrassing some parent who actually dared spank their kid, but that's another rant.)

Adults(!) can choose to endanger their hearing in these joints, but children don't know any better, and. apparently, neither do their parents. Every dance club I've ever been in has multiple spots where hearing damage is not just possible, but certain, and, in many of them, there's no place in the club which has below damaging levels of sound.

"...one has to wonder: just who is in charge here? Where have all the adults gone?"

Silly, silly Cassandranitanova. You answered that question a long time ago.
On second thought, perhaps this was prescience working for you. Say, you wouldn't by any chance have any random numbers floating around in your head just begging for attention, would you? Say, about seven of them?

jus' axin'

The problems with proper use of English start at a young age. It doesn't take much, as an adult, to gently correct poor grammar. I've done it often during my student teaching last semester and while subbing this semester. And I do it regardless of the race of the child. Just take what they said, convert it to proper English, and repeat it back to the child, then have the child repeat the proper statement back to you. Same thing if you are assisting with/grading written work - point out the errors they've made and how to make it better.

Grim - the woman you mention was failed throughout her academic career, and it's now going to cost her...

Do people not understand and honor love and commitment anymore? If I only knew who to blame for this.

Outthaway, ho!

You're blocking the cameras!