Aisha Dubaiwali

I made a blog entry but thought I would share my thoughts here as well as they are related to this forum; Parenting.

Hypodermic Theory states or at least the gist of it is a person follows what the majority does and is silent about something that they feel strongly about because it goes against what the majority feels or believes in.

I feel kids these days are getting out of hand. Some government laws maybe which hinders beating the child to teach them about the right or something else could be the reason kids are becoming so weird in general these days. Without pointing fingers at anyone and just a general observation I feel:

• Kids these days think it is so cool to use swear words. It is different when you are an adult and know you are swearing. I feel kids these days are swearing to be cool and be part of a group or gang. I feel swearing is the thing that is giving them some commonalities amongst kids of other nationalities in a multi cultural environment.
• Kids are losing their roots and sense of culture. They find it awesome to say bad things about lets say Punjabi and think highly of English which is in an essence their adopted first language. Yes agreed you were born outside your country but it does not give you a licence to treat other kids or people who speak Punjabi indifferently.
• Kids are losing respect for adults. It is so cool to call their grandma a pothead or talk bad about their mother. Remember a mother is a person who is scared to get married, has sex with most probably a stranger(arranged marriage) and get's pregnant, goes through gestation, then the pains of labour and finally all her life tries her best to raise you in the best possible way(most of the times - not to say there are rare cases where mother is not there for a person or beats them up as in abuse etc) and still some children or people forget about what their mother did for them and hurl obscenities at them and think it is OK to treat their mothers like dirt. It is OK to think we are the supreme beings, my mother was born in Pakistan in a village and she does not know **** and I know everything.

I feel a kid's brain is very penetrable and impressionable. Kids do not know what is right or wrong, it is up to the adults to guide them and tell them what is right or wrong. If you will not speak up and stay silent like the theory suggests because, you will be singled out as the uncool person, kids will never know or learn. It is time to tell kids what really is right or wrong. They are not going to learn this from their peers i.e friends.

somegroovychick

there is a lot of pressure these days to "be cool" and "act cool"- its not easy being a kid! instead of beating your child into submission, it might be better to speak to them about dealing with these pressures so they don't feel it necessary to conform.
but this is something easier said than done.

Niksik

Aisha great topic. And I agree with the 3 points noted.

I feel that in the initial years of a child, a parents needs to spend quality time with their child so as to instill the right values and thought process. The reason why this isn't being done is because either the parents have become too busy (not work necessarily but social commitments/activities) or parents come from a totally different educational background and can't keep up with the current requirements.

In the city where I live, there is a family that has moved from back home. The husband and wife are not very educated, the gentleman drives a cab and his wife is at home with 4 kids ages 7 to a few months old. The older 2 kids go to school and bring back homework and reading assignments, they also attend Islamic ed classes to learn Qur'an. We've talked to the parents many times because the little kids are really stressed and are not performing well in school or Qur'an and the simple reason for that is that the dad is so busy trying to make ends meet and mom has 2 babies in her arms, can't understand much of school and takes out her frustration on her kids.

This is just one example. I can tell you that it is way more common than we know.

Then we have examples where perfectly well educated families are so confident that their aura is enough to transfer values to their children so they don't even try.