OK . . . I'm going to get on my soap box here . . . don'[t judge me, just explain to me how a parent can be SO TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS to the needs and well being of their children.
I grew up in NYC surrounded by middle class working families. ALL the dads went to work, nine to five. ALL the moms stayed home and took care of the kids and the home. A parent's job was to make the world a better place for their children AND more importantly to teach your children how to be good, honest, hard working, caring individuals. As a parent your main focus was the care of your child and that meant disciplining them so they would learn right from wrong and how to behave in a civilized manner,.
Kids respected their parents and all the other adults that they encountered. That included police, fire men, teachers and even the little old guy who owned and ran the little deli down the street where you could go for a loaf of bread or a soda on a hot summer day. The kids were respectful and the adults, while expecting to be addressed with respect, were never mean or condescending. (Well most of the time. Every neighborhood had at least one cranky old fart who would yell at you if you came too close to their yard.) If you mis behaved out in public you were reprimanded by an adult or your parents if they were there. It was not uncommon for a stranger to correct a kid if the kid was acting stupid.
Families functioned as a group. Everyone had their job and place and everyone KNEW their job and place. Parents taught kids how to behave and then expected their kids to follow through with good behavior. I don't EVER remember anyones parent EVER not being around unless they were dead or dying. Parents were visible and active in their kids lives. Parents did not have lives of their own, they lived for the family.
Fast forward to today . . . HOLY CRAP !!!! What the hell has happened to our world and the family unit ? I look at parents today and don't recognize them as the adults in the family dynamics. More often that not it is the kid who is in charge because mom and/or dad is too busy having "ME TIME". Do you know what my mother's "Me Time" was ? It was while she was walking the mile and a quarter to the grocery store pulling her shopping cart there and back. She had all that time alone to be at one with herself while she got exercise and planned her schedule for the rest of the day. This was the time that she could think about how to stretch her grocery money to the max for the rest of the week and how she was going to find time to get me to the dentist, never mind how she was going to pay for the dentist. My dad's "Me Time" was his drive back and forth to work every day in traffic. He got to think about how he was going to make ends meet with the pay check he got and if he would have enough time to fix the broken kitchen door when he got home that night.
And life was good !
Today we spent the afternoon with The Man's youngest grand daughter. She is ten and is a nice kid but she has been dealt one of the crappiest hands in life that I have ever seen. This kid was born a crack baby. Her mother was on drugs her entire pregnancy and the kid has some learning issues because of it. The Man has told me how he could not go to see her when she was born because of the terrible state this child was in after her birth. He doesn't talk much about it but I can see how terrible it must have been.
After Little D was born she went to live with her father because her mother was in jail for drug use. Right there you can tell this is not going to be a "Happily Ever After" story. Little D has lived with her dad for ten years now and if ever there was a kid who I wanted to "fix" this is the one. Her father runs a bar so Little D spends most of her days sitting in a slum of a bar surrounded by the dregs of the earth who tend to frequent hole in the wall joints. When she isn't at the bar she is with her Aunt and her cousins who live in town but from what I gather Auntie isn't much better than the dad or her mother but at least Little D gets to be in a home setting rather than a run down dirty bar.
Little D calls me Grandma because she never really knew her birth grandma who died shortly after she was born. Grand pa, aka The Man, isn't that involved with Little D because of the history of his relationship with Little D's mother who is his daughter.
It is a screwed up family and nothing like what I have know all my life. My friends and my family are NORMAL . . . super great people, wacky at times but always loving and putting each other first.
It just blows my mind to deal with Little D's father who is one step this side of the "good old boys" in the movie "Deliverance". Today I called this man to ask him to bring his daughter, Little D, out here to see her grand father and me. I had gotten the child something that she had wanted for her birthday and it had finally just arrived Friday. We had had a birthday party for the kid here at the farm three months ago and along with ice cream and cake we gave here other gifts but this one BIG thing that she wanted was on order and she has been waiting patiently for 3 months for this thing to arrive. I would talk to her every so often and she would text me keeping up to date on its arrival so when it got here on Friday I immediately called her. OF course she wanted it right away but by then it was late afternoon and grand pa doesn't do afternoon adventures. Besides that The Man now has a bug up his butt that he will be damned if he is going to drive ALL THE WAY to then next town to go to the crappy bar to see his grand daughter. (He's got a point but it is also something that you do for the kid . . . it's NOT about YOU !). Yesterday came and went without either man giving an inch so this morning I took over and called the father and asked him to please bring Little D up here so we could give her the gift. I guess I frightened Mr. Dad because he was all sweetness and agreement when I spoke to him. They did show up a couple of hours later, Little D LOVED her gift and all is well with the world. I was sure to thank the father several times for "going out of his way" to do this for me. (I really wanted to slap him senseless). But I am still shaking my head wondering what in God's name is our world coming to when people can't see that they have to make sacrifices for the good of their children. I'm not talking about buying kids everything they want or letting the kids run rampant doing anything they want. I'm talking about showing a little kindness to others and not just putting yourself first.
No comments:
Post a Comment