What type of legacy are we going to leave our Grand Children? What type of world are we leaving for our children? If your children are young and impressionable now, good. Because that's the one place where parents still have something to say about what they live... but if you have teens, I feel for you.
My children were teenagers during the time when gang violence was issue. My own son became involved, and as a result got a GED instead of a graduating from high school. #1, In the 7th grade, he was the one kid in the class that was bold enough to write "B___H" on a T-Shirt that the kids were presenting to the teacher. That caused him to get kicked out of school on the last day. But did I chastise him. Sure, I whooped him, but did it stop him from what he was doing? No. We were in church, and I had ministers counseling him, I took him to see a psychiatrist, I grounded him for days on end, but his behavior didn't stop until he went into a California Boys Ranch for stealing a car. Those were some very rough days. What could I have done different?
Last week, I heard in the news, that a man was ordered to either paddle his child, (a girl) or pay a $500.00 fine. What? Whoopin my sons behind didn't stop him from his behavior. And believe me, for two years, we sat around the dining room table counseling him, day in and day out... it didn't stop him from doing what he was doing.
Then one day as my Sister-In-Law was on her way to my mother's house, she drove up on a group of boys just whooping my son. I met them at the hospital, he chipped his front tooth that day... He was angry and to be really honest. I didn't know this boy. This wasn't the same boy that I played with when he was five or six years old. When he was still innocent. It makes me cry to remember our first years together... then to see what we had become. And I was raised old school. I tried to implement that same discipline on my own children, but I am here to tell you, they didn't work.
Now my son is nearly 30, and he can be found at the gray-bar. I cry about that, and I sometimes feel very inadequate at parenting, and won't give anyone advice about what to do during the parenting teenage years. Because all the ways that I believed would work, didn't. My son and I hated each other, and if you think that didn't effect my relationship with my other two children you're wrong, it did.
I said all that to say, that was then, and now, I see grown up school administrators fighting with students (that could have been my own son), but that's just one of the issues that is very wrong in this nation. Is John McCain going to be able to understand young parents? Or has he gone past that? Is John McCain going to be able to review the prison systems and how their being so overcrowded that they don't have the resources to take care of their basic needs? Is John McCain going to be able to address issues of Medical Care, or does he even care, since he's more about keeping things as status quo of what President Bush has left them. And what's the point of a free election if people who are democratic would vote in a status quo over a man who presents change, no matter how young he is. Bobby Kennedy was a young man, that didn't stop people from coming together to support him. John F Kennedy was a young man, and that didn't stop people from coming together to support him. Thank God that we have yet another opportunity to have a man who is obviously gifted to lay a hand at changing things. I hope that when the time comes to cast ballots, people will allow their hopes to guide them, and make the decision for change. Barrach Obama, We can Change.
