Another night of horrible sleep. I did not even fall asleep until about 2 am. This new med they gave me that is supposed to make me tired apparently has the opposite effect. When I was not tired and midnight swung around I was not worried. Tonight my wife works late so if I needed to I could sleep in. However, 1am came and went and then 2am and soon 3. I am sure that I dozed off here and there for 20-30 minutes but something kept waking me up. I am not sure if it was the shoulders, legs or back but something was waking me up.
I watched this show last night called Middle School Confessions. The show followed several groups of middle school kids and asked them questions about sex, drugs, bullying and a few other topics. They were basically covering all the issues that middle school kids come in to contact with but in the short 22 years since I was the age of most of these kids the answers have change, dramatically.
There is still bullying going on and that certainly needs to stop, schools need to be empowered to solve that problem as soon as it begins and many communities are allowing them to do so or are putting a community policing officer in each school to deal with these issue.
The drugs are an issue now as they were when we were kids, but the drugs have changed. Crack was new when I was in that age range but there was excellent programs to warn the kids of the danger of drugs and I can honestly say that I do not recall but a handful of kids that were in to the marijuana or any other drugs. Today the kids have all that to deal with as well they now have drugs like meth which is exploding in popularity among kids. Schools can have all the drug education programs they want but it needs to be enforced at home to be truly effective. Until many parent understand that school is not a proxy parent and that they still have to educate their own children, drugs will continue to be a serious problem.
The part of the show that floored me was the kids discussing sex. These are 12 year old boys and girls who are having sex and they find nothing wrong with it. In fact kids in some schools play a game where they see how many different kids you can have sex with in the given school year. They showed these kids at co-ed parties, which is not a problem provided they are properly chaperoned, but there was not a single adult present at any of the ones filmed. Where are the parents?
When they get to the parents and ask them questions about their kids sexual behaviors and not surprisingly many of the parents did not have a clue as to what their kids are up to. Even more so was that some of the parent did not seem to have a problem with the behaviors of these children. Very few of the parents had an inkling as to what was going on, one of them only because a concerned parent sent an anonymous letter about her daughters sexual behavior.
I have a child the same age as many of these kids and I could not fathom nor would I tolerate any of these behaviors. However I do not think that my wife and I will have many of these problems as we are very involved in his day to day life. We know all of his friends (he goes to a small school), he goes nowhere without us knowing who, what , where & when as well there has to be a parent present. We have the drug and sex talk often, we discuss how serious both of them could be and how they will effect your whole life. I think we have done a great job so far as he is willing to discuss this with us and when he has a serious question he is not afraid to ask either of us what is in his mind.
I have some friends who have children in the same age group as my son and I can clearly see where some of the problems with kids comes from. These parents would rather be their friends then discipline them. Our conversations about how we discipline our kids have left me shaking my head, they admit that they are afraid to punish their kids for fear that they will push the kids away and drive them in to harmful behaviors. I have news for those parents, you have already done so. These kids know that they can get away with just bout anything and they do.
The bottom line is that if you are a parent then you need to act like one.
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