THis is why kids are all bastards nowadays

[monsterrod]

^^^"Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter."

Well put.

[mcm1610]

If I've learned anything from history, it's that:

a) religions are all bullshit rationalizations for things people can't explain

and

older generations have bitched about the perceived shortcomings of younger generations for as long as society has existed.

[lonesomexloveus]

I have a two year old who loves to hit. He thinks it's hilarious. My wife, who is a service coordinator for kids with disabilities says that what you're supposed to do is say, "No! We don't hit!" and if the kid hits you again you're supposed to but him or her in time out.

That shit doesn't work. He still hits. A part of me thinks the reason it doesn't sink in is that we tell the kid we don't hit but he doesn't understand why. Maybe if someone cracked him upside the head he would know that we don't hit because getting hit sucks.

my mom tells this story to me all the time: when i was 2 or so she took me to the grocery store with her. i was being a brat and didn't get my way, so i grabbed her hand and bit it. she turned right around, grabbed me, and bit me back. apparently i just looked really startled, said 'ow! that hurt!' and she said 'yes, that's what it feels like when you bite people' and i said '...oh' and never bit anyone again.

sometimes little kids don't understand that what they're doing hurts people or has an effect on them. i'm not saying you should bite your kid, necessarily, but it got the point across to me.

[jblahmaster]

we have become so soft and politically correct about everything. its a damn shame what it is all turning out to. look at the generation after the 2nd world war. the economy, hardworking communities, shit made well, people with manners and respect.

it is a shame because i think it is sad that so many that grew up in that "rough" time period wanted their children to live a different life. it is like the parents had good intentions of giving their kids stuff they didn't have and a means of living they never got (as a meal and roof over your head was a good means of living). although while it had good intentions, kids were not mature enough or smart enough to handle it and took advantage of it (ALL of this is generalizations based on majority of people, thus obviously there are exceptions).

i mean who in today's time wanted to take over mom's flower shop, or work on dads farm, or be a coal miner. technology, while amazing, seems to almost thrown us backwards and we are losing so much of what so many hard ass working people sweated and bled for. my dad seems to know how to change his oil, build guns, run a lathe, work in an office, use a computer, milk a cow, fix the washing machine, fix the lawnmower, restore cars, change the electrical boxes, build cabinets, lay concrete, build cabinets, etc etc i could go on for a mile. he is 48 and it seems those that are 47, 46, 45....25, 24, 23....13, 12, 11...etc etc know less and less of that. idk i am probably missing a lot of points for the sake of typing fast, but it just saddens me what we have turned out to be like.

at least we know how to sue people, watch tv shows, work the dvr, type 110 words a minute, complain about next day shipping, complain about our cellphone reception, bicker about cold starbucks coffee, and all the other shit. life is so short and i guess a lot of shit hit me about 5 years ago when i was in college and my uncle died (after a 3 year battle) from ALS. made me see a grown single sad man who went fly fishing every summer with us turn into a baby who needed help shaving, eating through a damn feeding tube in his stomach, changing the tv station, bathing, etc etc. made me realize a lot of stuff. i think its some of the small things in life that keep me sane (even though i fight my social anxiety, the loss of a high school sweetheart years ago, and staying a hermit in my apt) like vinyl, music, shooting photos on film, and the other things in life that seem to be dying off every day.

/damn ive done a lot of ranting today. i got so much work to do as well....

ps: i unfortunately have not yet read any of the rest of this thread minus flipped through the article posted.

I agree with everything you've said. Everything has become far too convenient for everybody and therefore taking to certain aspects of life lazily. Luckily, growing up, I learned a lot from my grandfather and how they did things when he was younger.

[mcm1610]

I'm not saying I disagree with a lot of the points you guys are making, but this isn't the 1970s anymore. It's not the 1950s. Would it be helpful if I could change my own oil and rebuild an engine without paying someone else to? Sure. But is it worth my time? I don't know. I don't know how to fix a car because there's a lot of other stuff for me to be doing. Opportunity cost is not just an Econ 101 concept, it's very real. I'm not as useful when it comes to stuff like that because I'd much rather buy my shit and then go off and play hockey, which I value more than fixing a car and building a bookshelf.

I'm the most formally-educated person my family has ever seen, both sides of the tree. I can do a lot of things that previous family members have never dreamed of doing. Are my skills better? Are they worse? No, they're just different.

Does this apply to spanking your child? No, not directly at least. But let's not turn this into a rant about how "kids these days" can't do anything but play WoW and go on Facebook and they'll never amount to anything. They'll do just fine.. it's simply a different world. They will have this exact same conversation on the internet's web5.0 or something about how their kids suck ass and have no respect.

Seriously. Read some journals and other doc's from history. This exact conversation has happened millions of times throughout the ages. The world is just fine. Just make sure your kid isn't a disrespectful asshole in whatever way you can. No parenting technique is a fix-all solution, it takes attentive parenting, whatever that may be.