Seeking fame and fortune

A couple of interesting things came across my computer in the past week – funny how things "cluster" sometimes – that I wouldn't mind reader opinions on. The subject is those seeking fame and fortune. One case involves "influencers," the other involves a singing career.

I don't follow any influencers, but as a category they're received a bad rap (or maybe "annoying rap" is more accurate) over the last few years. Influencers are known to disrupt restaurants, gyms, grocery stores, and other public places for their antics. They often reek of entitlement, such as offering to "collaborate" with restaurants or businesses for freebies in exchange for "exposure."

People will often do the strangest things to get attention. Consider this article documenting how people (usually women) in Palm Beach, Florida will dress up in designer clothes and hang around street corners for hours in a desperate bid to get noticed by some local who started a "best dressed" social media account.

The article says: "Palm Beachers are desperate to make it on the glitzy beach city's unofficial best-dressed list to show off their glamorous clothes and designer accessories. The South Florida beach town is known for its posh residents, but now there is a new social status symbol residents can aspire to - being feature on 'Class of Palm Beach.' Class of Palm Beach, which has amassed millions of views on TikTok, parades the town's best dressed and asks them where they bought their chic outfits from.

"The wildly popular social media page is the brainchild of one Millennial resident, who often found herself stopping wealthy people on the street and asking which designer shops they had bought their clothes and accessories from. Some Palm Beachers have become so determined to make an appearance on the account – which has 672,000 followers – that they wait on the busiest avenue for hours in the hopes of being noticed by the page's in-demand admin."

(Honestly, folks, don't you have anything better to do with your time?)

That said, presumably there's something to "influencing" if people can earn a living from it. Shrug. Not my cup of tea, but whatever.

This leads to a random article I came across in which a mother was seeking advice concerning her teenage daughter who wanted to become an influencer.  She wrote:

"How do you talk to your kids about how social media isn’t a measure of their worth? I am a single mother to two daughters, “Carina” (19), and “Kylie” (23). When the girls were younger, I limited their access to social media. However, Kylie has always had a passion for social media, and the summer after she graduated from high school, she began a lifestyle/vlogging YouTube channel that quickly amassed hundreds of followers. Now, she is a fairly popular influencer making good money across several platforms. This inspired Carina, who believed that anyone could make a livable wage off social media if they put in enough work. She too began a YouTube channel after she turned 18, and I’m now worried that she may have become too obsessed with gaining followers and likes.

"Every day, Carina laments that her channels aren’t gaining traction like her sister’s. Whenever she comes out of her room in the morning, she’s always on her phone or comparing her account to other vloggers in a similar age bracket. She posts content almost every day, then gets upset when it gets hardly any views or likes. I’m genuinely alarmed at the downturn that her mental well-being has taken, and I’ve tried to talk to her about how her worth isn’t tied to what people 1,000 miles away think of her internet persona. It falls on deaf ears. Kylie has had the same conversation with Carina, which just made Carina angry because she thought that Kylie was just trying to “eliminate the competition.”

"Because Carina is an adult, I can’t just take away her social media. I understand that I could stop her from having access to it (my friend has suggested that I change the WiFi password, threaten to evict her, etc.) but I’m worried that forcing her hand might push her away and limit my ability to help her. On the other hand, I know I’m not being very useful right now! I’m scared for my daughter and I could really use some advice."

The answer the advice columnist gave this mother was to gently steer her daughter into other interests, including a job, in an effort to break the daughter's obsession.

And that's the first thing I wouldn't mind reader input on. What advice would you give a mom whose adult teen daughter is obsessed with this career choice?

Not quite in the "influencer" category but still in the "seeking fame and fortune" mindset, consider this wail of worry from another mother of a teen daughter:

"My daughter Lailah is going to be a junior next year, and ever since she was little she LOVED watching shows like American Idol, The Voice, etc., and dreams of being a famous singer. While I think it's all well and good to sing as a hobby, she is simply not good at music.

"Lailah has a rather high-pitched voice, kind of like a cartoon or young toddler, and when she sings it sounds like nails on a chalkboard. I'm certain she's tone deaf, because she insists her voice is not high at all. I know that's awful as a mom to say, but it's true. We even hired a vocal coach before COVID and the lady outright told me she felt guilty about taking my money because [Lailah] "simply has no musical talent," in her words.

"She loves to sing at family events and it always results in chuckles at best or insults at worst from younger kids. She's always kept her head up and never let these comments get to her, which I admire a lot, but I wish she had more realistic adult plans by now.

"Lailah's grades have been struggling for years (mostly Ds) and we argue about it all the time. Her excuse is always "I don't need to learn this because I will be a famous singer!" This obsession has become a legitimate problem because she shoots down anything unrelated to singing when it comes to thinking about college or a job, which she also insists she will never need because one day she will become a world-famous singer.

"Today I told her she should be looking for a summer job and she again refused, and said now that she's old enough she wants to audition for a singing competition (undecided on which). I know these shows; most of them will have a poor-singer audition, only to mock them on TV.

"I'm not letting that happen to Lailah and told her I am no longer tolerating this obsession, and that she needs to apply herself in other areas soon if she hopes to get any sort of career, because she simply is not a good singer. She started bawling and called me an abusive mother. I feel like an a** now and am not sure if I should have handled this differently. Am I the [jerk]?"

The mother went on to answer questions from others, who made suggestions like having vocal coaches give the daughter their honest opinion to her face. The mother replied, "They have said it to her face, but she does not accept their input" and "I've done that. She still thought she sounded like Carrie Underwood" and "She took lessons a lot as a kid and has taken choir almost every year at school, and has been told honestly about her skills. She insists everyone is wrong."

Upon the suggestion the daughter should be recorded and let her listen to her own skills, the mother replied, "I've done that. She still does not get it, and even argues with music coaches."

One person responded, "I used to be a vocational employment specialist. ... You don't need to be the one to crush her dreams. You don't want to be. The best way to get through this, and to avoid backlash or appearing unsupportive, is to treat her aspirations as completely serious. Let her audition. Encourage her to put up videos on social media. Let her ram her head repeatedly into the wall until she gets tired of knocking herself out. And when she is good and ready, she'll quit, and you can be there, just as unwaveringly supportive as ever, when she moves onto the next, more realistic phase of life."

Others pointed out, "I used to wonder how all those horrible singers on American Idol got that far, thinking they were the next Whitney Houston. Someone should have told them before they embarrassed themselves in front of millions of people. You're protecting your child and that's exactly what you're supposed to do."

Both these mothers are facing the situation in which their daughters are infatuated with fame and fortune and are pursuing it obsessively. What advice would you give to either encourage or discourage these teenage girls' ambition?

A hopeless situation?

I came across a very sad post last night I haven't been able to stop thinking about. It's entitled "AITA [Am I a Total A***] For Telling My Wife We Can Adopt Her Nephews But Not Her Niece?"

Here's the post, slightly edited for clarity:

My wife's sister was recently found guilty of dealing [drugs] to support her habit. She will be sentenced this week and is looking toward a long term [in prison] because this is not her first time caught dealing.

She has three children: two boys (ages 4 and 5) and a girl (age 14). No one on her family's side wants to, or are in a position to, take the children except for me and my wife.

However, I'm demanding two conditions. If we're going to take the children in, I want us to adopt them. I don't want 50 people looking over our shoulders trying to tell us what to do. If we're going to be legally responsible for them, I want to be able to parent them as we see fit.

The second condition is that I'm willing to take the two boys, but not the girl.

The two boys have not had any rules in their lives and are terrors, but they're still young and can be taught right from wrong. The girl has gone past the point of no return. She's been suspended from school several times for things like fighting and smoking illegal substances on school grounds.

She's also stolen from us and other family members. She's dating a gang member who was arrested on a home invasion charge, but was released because it was his first time and his age.

This is a mess and we've been arguing about it for an entire week. I don't want to risk our financial and personal security, but my wife argued that we can't just throw [the girl] away.

At this point we're not even sleeping in the same bed, but I'm hesitant to open our house up to the girl and her lifestyle. My wife argues that if we don't take her, she'll go into foster care; but I pointed out if we don't take any of them,  they'll all go into foster care.

The original poster later added an extensive update:

I left out a lot of info because I was in shock, and still am. We're both in our late 20s, have been married for a little over two years, have no kids, and I just graduated with my advanced degree last year.

Last month we were talking about maybe having kids when we're in our mid-30s. Last week my wife came home, sat me down, and told me we're taking in three kids. I know nothing about adoption laws, CPS, or anything related to raising children, much less troubled children.

I knew what was going on with her sister, and was told my wife's parents were going to take the kids in. Apparently they decided they are too old to take care of three kids.

Of everyone in her family, we are the most financially secure and have a house, so when everyone backed out, she [his wife] volunteered without asking me. That was the crux of our argument until I realized that it [the adoptions] was happening with or without my agreement. That's when I told her we can take care of the boys, but not the girl, which started another round of arguments.

I've never raised any kids, so I know I can't deal with the baggage that the girl will bring into our lives. I can't begin to tell you all how shocking the whole thing is. Sometimes I feel like I'm outside watching my life spin out of control.

My first thought is this man is completely naïve when it comes to the process of adoption, much less adopting troubled kids. The two young boys are not guaranteed to learn "right from wrong." This is a thorny dilemma no matter what.

The comments that followed were interesting. Quite a number told the man he's a jerk for not wanting to take in all three kids. Samples:

• Turning [the girl] into the throwaway kid is just plain sad, and sends a message to the boys that they are disposable. That alone makes you the devil.

• What makes you think you can even adopt the children? The parents have to willingly give up their rights or the state takes them away. So you're going to manipulate her into it? We won't care for them unless you give up your rights?? What kind of monster are you? I think it's awful you'd split up siblings. Her upbringing and circumstances are not her fault.

•  She is 14 years old, not 21. She is still a kid who needs support and a lot of counseling. Throwing her away because it's not easy is horrible. Those two boys are terrors but can be taught? Are you still the same person you were when you were 14? Most people aren't.

However some experienced social workers and foster parents then stepped in and added their opinions. Here are some of their thoughts:

• Signing adoption papers as soon as they come to your home will NOT be an option, unless both parents agree, clear it with a judge, lawyers, psychologists, etc. It just won't happen that way.

Where I disagree with most [other commenters] is about taking in the 14-year-old being inappropriate.

If you do not feel you can care for her, you shouldn't. But that shouldn't stop you from being a resource for the two kids you are capable of protecting. ...

A 14-year-old with a gang affiliation, substance use, major trauma, and behavioral concerns is NOT something most people with good intentions are equipped for. You can't just "love and therapy" all those issues away.

This kid sounds like she needs a higher level of care than you are equipped for. You aren't wrong for recognizing you can't give her what she needs. She needs an experienced parent with trauma-informed skills, and a ton of one-on-one attention.

• I work in children's social care, and totally agree. I wouldn't take the 14-year-old in. Not because I don't think she deserves a loving family, but because I am not equipped to deal with a gang-affiliated teen, and also because the two younger children have a better shot at life if they don't have any further exposure to that kind of sh**.

• I feel like many of the people responding to this thread have never been in the circumstances of adopting children. My aunt adopted two children from similar circumstances: a male infant and a 4-year-old girl. My aunt and her husband are very well off; he's a doctor and she is also in the medical field.

The children had every advantage growing up. They went on luxury vacations all over the world, had tutors, and special schooling to account for the time they missed in prior care. My aunt/uncle were active in their extracurricular activities, including coaching their sports teams

Despite the efforts, therapy, and an engaged family life, the children wre unable to overcome their prior upbringing. They both fell into drugs, the female into prostitution. My relatives paid for numerous stints in rehab, and are still very much still funding their lives well into their 20s/30s. It ruined my aunt and uncle's marriage and put them in many dangerous circumstances.

This is a significant undertaking, and one that is being severely downplayed. The perceived right thing to do is to take all three children, but that will not provide the full-time support that is needed to overcome the potential challenges resulting from the early developmental circumstances.

• My cousin and his wife adopted a brother (6 or 7 years old) and his 13-year-old sister. Both kids were pretty damaged, but the girl more so. After countless problems with the girl, they decided to try this center for troubled kids. They spent over $100,000 on this treatment. The girl ran away a month later and hooked up with her birth mom, after which she started threatening the family.

After countless threats and heartache, his wife took her own life. He lost his life savings, and more importantly his wife, just to try and help out. So I'm on the fence. I wouldn't want to see a child suffer, but is it worth losing everything?

This post really stuck with me because of its heartbreaking nature. There is no good solution for any of the parties involved, either for the children or the adults.

I've had a couple friends in somewhat similar conditions (stepchildren in one case; foster-care adoption in another), and it has wreaked absolute havoc in the lives of both these friends. They genuinely went into these situations believing their love and support could make a difference, and came out bitter, prematurely aged, heartbroken, and broke.

But of course, the children are innocent of the circumstances which screwed them up in the first place. How can their lives be turned around, or are they hopeless "throwaway children"? Can they get the help they need? Will therapy and counseling in foster care straighten them out? Can the trajectory of the 14-year-old be altered? These are unanswerable questions.

Yes, tragedy all around. As speculative as this all is, let's not forget these are real people involved. They could use a lot of prayer – especially the 14-year-old girl.

Why kids are stressed

Here's an interesting article I stumbled across this morning: "I work with kids. Here’s why they’re consumed with anxiety."

The writer is a Baptist youth pastor from North Carolina named John Thornton Jr. who ministers to children from 6th to 12th grades. In investigating why the youth he works with are continually stressed and anxious, he found they are consumed with -- their future.

"I’d heard from parents, teachers, and friends with children that kids today live increasingly busy and stressful lives compared to previous generations," writes Thornton. "I wanted to know not only what that looked like but how the kids themselves felt and thought about it. What I discovered gave me a good deal of pause about the world kids live in today and what it’s doing to them."

Thornton found children are constantly being pushed to "optimize their futures." Rather than experiencing happy-go-lucky childhoods where school is bracketed by play, instead they are being forced to think about their careers at increasingly young ages.

"The kids often used workplace lingo to describe their lives," notes Thornton. "One sixth-grader talked about a school assignment in which she had to develop a life plan that included her future career, which schools she should attend, and what she ought to major in at her chosen university. It was only later that I realized visualizing the future like this meant that every grade, every volunteer hour, every achievement or failure carried the weight of fulfilling that imagined future."

This article gave me pause. To those of us who are now competent mature adults, I think we forget how burdensome adulthood can seem to children -- especially if it's pushed on them at too young an age.

Don (born in 1957) and I (born in 1962) are possibly the last generation who remembers childhood as that mythical happy-go-lucky period. When school let out, kids ran shrieking into the streets, scattering to their homes before re-emerging to engage in ball games, bike races, climbing trees, building forts, reading books while lying in a field, jumping rope, and other decidedly non-academic engagements.

Don was more suburban during his youth, and spent hours each day playing with his friends outside before darkness and empty bellies pulled everyone home. I was more rural, and spent my hours roaming the hillsides around my home, watching the wildlife, until my dad's shrill two-fingered whistle called me home for dinner.

These kinds of non-academic activities allow children to decompress from the stress of school. It allowed them to achieve (pardon an overused term) a work-life balance.

Who has that kind of childhood anymore? Instead, kids are constantly sent to "enriching" after-school activities -- language classes, music lessons, sports, civic organization meetings, and endless other pursuits meant to give them an edge over their peers and, ultimately, impress admissions officials at universities.

...Which accounts for this classic Zits cartoon:

"Kids today live with the baggage of their parents’ economic anxiety," writes Thornton. "Kids today have to constantly consider the perils of work and career with enough specificity to worry about it. At the same time that they stress about the future that’s so very far off, they live with technology that keeps that anxiety consistently in the front of their minds."

What Thornton observed was children being forced to internalize and personalize the economic anxiety of their parents, the Gen Xers and Millennials who came of age during an economic downturn, saddled with massive student-loan debt, poor job prospects, and skyrocketing real estate prices. As one Millennial woman put it, burnout is "the millennial condition. It’s our base temperature. It’s our background music. It’s the way things are. It’s our lives."

It's understandable and natural for parents to want their children to do better than them; but at what price? "While many of us who work with kids don’t want to name the likelihood that the generation behind us will do even worse than us, it’s hard not to see that we communicate it to them regardless," says Thornton. "These kids aren’t even being told that the point of all the work and the stress is a better life -- they’re being told it’s necessary just to survive. These kids live with what philosopher Pascal Bruckner calls 'tension without intention.' They’re constantly stressed, and they’re growing aware that there’s no payoff for it all."

Today's children face more than just their parents' economic anxiety. They are being subjected to concepts of breathtaking complexity and maturity, at younger and younger ages. Must a six-year-old pick his gender and decide to take puberty-blocking drugs while opting to amputate body parts? Must a 10-year-old be given a wide variety of sexual practices through every possible bodily orifice to choose from? Must 11-year-old boys dance in drag in gay bars and dress like drag queens? Why do we do this to children?

Why can't kids be kids? Why must they be little adults?

No wonder modern kids are stressed.

Attention urban parents!

When Don and I first decided to start a family, we were full of trepidation. It wasn't just the usual "Oh wow, this is a huge step" type of trepidation; it was compounded by the fact that at the time we were a penniless young couple surviving on a startup craft business, and our income (to put it charitably) was wildly uncertain.

These concerns were additionally multiplied by the horrific articles we'd see every so often about the high cost of raising children. "Warning! Danger! Horror! It costs [insert insane and completely unrealistic sum here] to raise a child to age 18!!!!!"

So, panicked and discouraged at these fiscal considerations, we waited five years before we gave any serious thought to having kids. But we wanted children. Then a friend gave us some sage advice: If we waited until we could afford to have kids, we'd never have kids.

Since we were already students of extreme thrift (we didn't have much of a choice, really), we decided to take the plunge. We vowed our baby would never suffer from any supposed lack of income. It was about this time I also realized something: much of the "high cost" of raising children reported in these scary articles didn't correlate in the slightest with how we wanted to raise children.

We learned that, aside from the usual considerations for children (some necessary furniture and a bit more room), most of these "high costs" are unnecessary and extraneous. In fact, the biggest "cost" associated with this figure is housing, in which parents presumably move to a bigger house in a "better" neighborhood with "better" schools to give their little darlings the "better" advantages.

But we took a different tact. We stayed in our tiny house in Oregon (850 square feet) and remodeled a large closet into a small bedroom. We did without all the usual stuff babies supposedly need -- changing table, walkers, even a stroller (we lived rural and a stroller was useless). Anything we did need (crib, high chair) was purchased second-hand (the exception being car seats). We homeschooled, so we didn't have to worry about the quality of the local school system (which, as it turned out, was a huge blessing when we moved to Idaho).

In short, articles like this, published January 9, are -- ahem -- full of baloney: "Raising a child is as expensive as buying a FERRARI! Costs to raise offspring from birth to adulthood spiral to $233,000."

The areas factored into this figure are "housing, food, transportation, health care, education, clothing and other miscellaneous expenses."

The article does admit it costs "a bit less" to raise children in rural areas (they said Idaho is one of the cheapest states) and "a bit more" in urban areas. Since "up to a third of the total cost is housing, accounting for 26 to 33 per cent of the total expense of raising a child," this figure essentially includes rent or mortgage: "USDA comes up with those numbers by calculating the average cost of an additional bedroom -- an approach the department says is probably conservative, because it doesn't account for those families who pay more to live in communities that have better schools or other amenities for children."

But for heaven's sake, they put the cost at $12,680 when the child is between 0 and 2...!!!!! I can tell you one thing for certain, Don and I spent nowhere near that amount when our kids were toddlers!! At the time our budget was so tight, spending that much would have sucked down a vast percentage of our income.

Articles like this are, I believe, unrealistic and misleading. They are also wildly discouraging to young couples or new parents.

So here's what I'd like to do: To all you dear readers with children in urban areas, what do you do to raise your children frugally? What are your fiscal tips for NOT spending exorbitant amounts of money while still raising your children to be decent, respectful, wonderful people? I'm not saying rural parents can't chime in either, but urban parents are the ones needing the most encouragement in the wake of these figures.

So, fire away. Give us your best -- and cheapest -- childraising advice.

It takes all kinds

An unusual article appeared on Drudge yesterday: Self-made millionaire reveals how she made her money - aged just NINE

This little girl, it seems, got her start on the infamous Toddlers and Tiaras show (child beauty contests, for those unfamiliar with the genre).

Encouraged by her success on the show, the child launched her own bling-style clothing and jewelry line at just six years old, which has made her a multi-millionaire by age nine.

Quoting the article: Isabella said: "It feels awesome because I know everybody looks up to me which is a big responsibility. My fans love me, they tell me I'm really cool and just really pretty - there's nothing not to like about being famous."

Reaction to this whole child beauty contest beginning gave a lot of people the willies, since so many kids got pushed into it by stage moms. But undoubtedly many girls loved it -- loved the spotlight, loved the attention. This little girl is doing nothing more than capitalizing on that platform, and doing it perfectly legally.

There's no indication whatever she is being abused or forced into this lifestyle. Her family seems very loving and supportive. By all accounts she's rich, successful, and confident. She appears to be an extremely motivated and entrepreneurial young lady.

So why do I find the whole article slightly nauseating?

The-opposite-of-affluenza parents

Doubtless most of you have heard of Ethan Couch, the rich teenage "affluenza boy" who killed four innocent people while driving in a drunken stupor. Nine more were injured, one of whom suffered a horrific (and presumably permanent) brain injury.

The brat's scuzzy defense is best summed up on the Wikipedia page: "G. Dick Miller, a psychologist hired as an expert by the defense, testified in court that the teen was a product of 'affluenza' and was unable to link his bad behavior with consequences because of his parents teaching him that wealth buys privilege."

This was the defense, you understand, after murdering four people and injuring nine more. Affluenza. Puh-lease. I don't know how that psychologist sleeps at night.

To make things worse, a few weeks ago Ethan was seen on video violating his probation by drinking, so his mother let him miss a court-mandated meeting with his probation officer. Then mother and son skipped the country and went to Mexico. They were apprehended and returned to the U.S. Both are now in custody, and both are now in deep, deep doo-doo.

It's a sordid tale. Touching on the issue of young people in general and Couch in particular, the New York Post had a superb and blistering commentary regarding how kids are being raised these days, particularly the hothouse flowers who get attacks of the vapors whenever they witness something that offends their delicate sensibilities. Parts of the article are worth highlighting:

We can lament the poor decision of the judge who let Ethan off scot-free, but this is less a story about our judicial system than it is about modern parenting. Ethan is a symbol of an era when parents lost their backbone.

If it were ever going to be clear what spineless helicopter parenting has wrought, this year should do it. The college-campus protests have comprised people who are supposed to be young adults — people old enough to serve in the military — withering over Halloween costumes, running to safe rooms when a dissident speaker appears on campus, demanding the purging of professors, books and even dining-hall food that irritates their sensibilities.

What’s particularly galling, though, is that their parents, those wild-and crazy Gen-Xers, are so intent on protecting their children’s delicate sensibilities that they are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars while their children protest the free exchange of ideas. That these kids are ill-prepared for the real world is obvious to anyone with eyes to see.

I started interviewing homeschooled kids about 15 years ago. Back then the assumption was that these boys and girls would be socially stunted because of their lack of exposure to their peers. It turned out to be the opposite. They were better able to interact with adults and quickly found themselves leaders among their peers.

What these kids have in common, along with others I have met in religious communities, are parents who don’t care what the rest of the world thinks. They are completely unconcerned with the broader messages of the culture. They aren’t interested in whether other kids have iPhones or boyfriends or watch some television show.

Parents who don't care what the rest of the world thinks...

To an extent, this statement is both right and wrong when it comes to how we (and I hope, you) have raised kids. I never cared what the rest of the world thought about the clothes we wore, the vehicles we drove, or the (lack of) personal electronics we (didn't) possess.

But we DO care about how our children, now young adults, handle themselves in the world. We care that they present themselves as clean-living and wholesome. We care that they look others directly in the eye and speak clearly and intelligently. We care that they're honest and hard-working. We care that they have the self-control to make smart decisions as they enter adulthood.

I'm guessing these qualities are harder to acquire with (cough) "parents" like Mr. and Mrs. Couch.

Roots and wings

A reader just sent me these immortal words from Goethe:

There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.

Beautifully stated.

Poor brainwashed child

Now this is fascinating -- and very very sad.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column for WND entitled Help! My 15-year-old daughter is having sex! It sparked a lively debate among readers, many of whom flatly disagreed with my stance and defended teen sex as normal and healthy.

Just this morning (I get notifications of such things) another comment was added to the column from a 15 year old girl as follows. Some horrific swear words were "bleeped out" (I get the unedited version). Before reading her comment, please read the column first to understand the context.

As a fifteen year old girl, who is a virgin, a straight A student, a feminist, and a liberal (things you obviously don't agree with) the first thing that came to my mind after reading this is what the ***.

Firstly, I would like to comment on the homeschooling/ private school section of this. Children put in private schools, especially religious ones, tend to have sex earlier and party harder because when you are put in a strict environment you tend to want to rebel. Children who are homeschooled, if they don't have enough extracurricular activities, are weirdos. Sorry, but people have to interact with other people their own age. A fifteen year old shouldn't be spending all her time with her parents. You need friends and interaction to be able to learn how to function in society and be able to create your own opinions and ways of thinking.

Next, lets talk about the slut shaming in this. Having sex, no matter your age, does not make you a whore, slut, bad person, or anything negative. Sex is a decision between two people and they can choose to do whatever makes them comfortable. You cannot speak for someone you have never met. You do not know why she chose to have sex and you can't say it was from pear pressure because you do not know. Maybe she felt ready and her boyfriend felt ready so they made the decision to have intercourse with each other. Maybe she thought it would make their relationship better. Maybe she was horny and decided to just go for it. You don't know and it's not your place to guess or to judge. You also cannot speak for this girl's mother when you talk about what you think her parenting style is. You have not met any of these people so you cannot speak about them or for them.

I will also talk about how you say staying married is important. Single parents can raise a child perfectly fine. A person doesn't need a mother and a father, they just need female and male role models. Staying married won't change how early someone has their sexual debut.

Now lets talk about contraceptives. These are so very important because whether you like it or not teenagers are having sex. In every generation in the past, present and future teenagers have always been and will always have sex. Contraceptives like condoms, the pill, IUDs, the shot, the patch, etc. reduce the chance of a person getting pregnant. This is important because sometimes people don't want a kid. Is that surprising to you? People are going to have sex no matter what so providing birth control is necessary to prevent teen pregnancy.

You also made a facetious comment about abortions. Any living creature has the right to decide what happens to THEIR body and who gets to "use it". This means no one gets to use their body without permission. That could be a man, a woman, or in the case of abortions a fetus. You are in control of your own body and no one gets to use it unless you say okay. So if someone decides to terminate a pregnancy because they don't want a child to grow inside them, that is their *** damn business and it should not concern you. I am not pro-abortion, I am pro-choice. Meaning that I believe no one else should have a say in what you decide.

To close my argument, although i have so much more to say about this, I'll talk about this comment, "Too often, modern parenting techniques are antithetical to the old-fashioned time-tested ways to raise children, complete with restrictions, religious values, discipline, repercussions, training and high expectations of moral behavior." The reason for modern parenting techniques instead of old-fashioned time-tested ways is that people evolve with the times. If we didn't we all would be sold into marriage, people would be stoned for committing crimes, and we would burn "witches" at the stake. Times change and so should parenting techniques. When your baby cries you probably shouldn't give it whiskey or wine because we now know that alcohol is bad for people, especially infants. Swaddling techniques have changed. Car seats have changed. Dietary habits for kids has changed. Disciplinary acts for teenagers has changed. Approaches to dealing with teenagers expressing their sexuality has changed because now we now better. Do we know everything? No. Is that okay? Yes. Should we be open to other opinions? Yeah. Should you realize that things change and thats okay? Yup. No matter what you tell your kids are they still going to make their own decisions? Yes because everyone is an individual and you have to realize that. Get with the times and open your *** damn eyes because sheltering your kids isn't going to help anyone.

To be quite truthful, I feel achingly sorry for this child. Liberals like to accuse conservatives of "brainwashing" their children to be good moral decent citizens. But can you honestly say this poor kid hasn't been brainwashed into liberalism? She parroted every talking point in the left-leaning spectrum without, I'm guessing, any true comprehension of how easy sex, easy contraceptives, and easy abortions can impact a young girl's life forever.

The progressive mindset that self-control must equal repression is a clear sign of this girl's immaturity. Hey, the sky's the limit, do whatever you feeeeeel like doing! Who cares what the consequences might be? If the 15-year-olds in question feel "ready" for sex, whoo-hoo! The kids are "horny" so they shouldn't bother their little heads about about self-control -- go for it! If the birth control fails, that's what abortions are for!

Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather have teens who are "weirdos" (her term) than teens like this young lady. I don't want to "get with the times" if the "times" produce fruit like this.

Stop reading to your children! It's unfair!

Holy cow. Just when you think things can't get any whackier, things get whackier.

We all understand, academically as well as emotionally, that children raised in a loving family do better in life. That love often translates into doing such wonderful things as reading to your children.

But what happens if you have the audacity (gasp) to raise your children in a loving family, and the temerity to (gasp) read to them? You're being unfair to children who don't have those advantages!

So what's a good loving family to do? Rather than encourage more parents to be loving, instead parents should stop being loving because they're giving their children an "unfair advantage" over other children who may not be lucky enough to have loving parents who read to them.

Or so concludes a whack-doodle progressive "professor" (I use the term lightly) in England. Only in academia could the obvious conclusion be twisted so badly.

"I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally," British academic Adam Swift told ABC’s Joe Gelonesi.

In his article, Gelonesi added: “This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion that perhaps – in the interests of leveling the playing field – bedtime stories should also be restricted.”

Don came in from the shop laughing his head off after listening to Rush Limbaugh blast this fellow to pieces. From Limbaugh's transcript:

"One wacko, one lunatic, one extreme leftist who is obsessed with this perverted definition of fairness and equality and who is determining that parents who can read to their kids at night are giving them an unfair advantage. ... All of this is rooted in the idea that nobody should be any different – we should all be the same, we should all turn out the same.

"But, of course, we’re not all the same. Every damn one of us is unique. We are not like anybody else, by design and by definition. We all have different talents, characteristics, abilities, albatrosses, liabilities, differing levels of ambition. We have differing degrees of health, genetic codes. ... Nobody’s the same. And these people always insist, nevertheless, with enforcing uniformity on everyone.

"As liberals, the answer is not to help the kids who are not in good families. They become the lowest-common denominator. They become the baseline. Everybody must be made to be like them in order for everything to be fair and equal. The natural tendency of the left is to punish success, to punish achievement, to punish anything that they believe gives an unfair advantage."

It's comforting to know that while I may have major philosophical differences with liberals, even they admit this kind of logic is, well, dumb.

Now get out there and read to your kids.

Provoking our children

I've been cogitating lately on Colossians 3:18-21, "Instructions for Christian households." This chapter includes the fiery verses so many people (especially women) find objectionable, namely "Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord."

But putting aside the horrific (to feminists) word submit, it's verse 21 that caught my eye: "Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged." The King James Version has it translated, "Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged."

It is, of course, necessary to discipline children. That’s biblically mandated. But what does it mean, to provoke or embitter children?

We all hear about the duties of children toward their parents – it's enshrined in the Ten Commandments, after all – but what duties do parents have toward their children, beyond taking care of their physical needs? Do they have a duty not to "provoke" or "embitter" them? And what does that mean?

Endless people will interpret that verse in endlessly different ways, but I think a lot of it has to do with nagging or forcing kids to do things against their nature. Children must be "forced" to do things they don't want, for many years – they must be "forced" to share household chores, "forced" to do their schoolwork, even "forced" to attend church. But at what point does forcing backfire and rebellion ("bitterness" or "discouragement”) results?

I'm no psychologist, but my guess is it happens when parents totally and completely disregard the wishes, needs, natures, or interests of the children as not important or worthwhile. Kids are not robots who will unquestioningly obey regardless of their opinion. Children have their own personalities, emotions, and opinions. Within the bounds of rationality, these should be respected.

In the patriarchal hegemony of the Bible, children were expected to instantly obey a father's directives without question, regardless of their opinion. Fathers were expected to know best. They were expected to guide their children away from whatever dangers awaited. They were expected to shield their children from the dangers and temptations they knew existed in the world.

But undoubtedly many parents (particularly fathers) took this to such an extreme that the children naturally rebelled. Enforcing rules that are too strict or oppressive will make children hate whatever it is you’re trying to encourage, including matters of faith.

Child rebellion is as old as the Bible (hence the many verses in Proverbs addressing it) but parental despots were also common. As Colossians 3:21 illustrates, such unyielding dictatorship could result in bitter and discouraged offspring.

I've met parents who suppress every original thought their child harbors lest it depart from parental supremacy. Yet our children must learn to think independently, even if they go through stages where they’re wrong, or where we disagree (again, within the bounds of rationality).

And sometimes rebellious kids will grow into adults, still harboring those rebellious thoughts – and won’t learn differently until they’re clunked upside the head with Real Life.

As young children developing their theories of their world through observations, a child may tell his mother that "the sun goes to bed at night." Mother scoffs and tells Junior what a dumb idea it is. Does this reaction encourage Junior, or embitter him?

Growing older, again while trying to make sense of the adult world they are soon to enter, teens may develop opinions contrary to that of their parents in an effort to either claim independence, or to provoke. Many parents quash these contrary views and tell the teen he's wrong to believe thus-and-such and he'd better darn well change his mind OR ELSE. This often causes the teen to cling harder to his idea until it becomes part of him rather than just a passing fancy.

If this keeps up – if children are not allowed or permitted to have their own unique opinions, thoughts, or conclusions – then they may indeed become provoked to the point of embittered. I've seen it. It's sad… particularly because teens change as they mature into adults. Had they not been provoked or embittered, these young adults might eventually have dovetailed their opinions and attitudes with those of their parents – except they were provoked otherwise.

In short, while children have the biblical mandate to obey their parents, I believe parents have a biblical obligation to their children as well, not to provoke or embitter them lest they become discouraged. It's not our job to stifle their creativity, their opinions, their emotions, or their interests. It's our job to guide those qualities into acceptable and respectful channels.

Just my $0.02.

Does our stuff own us?

A few weeks ago there was a thought-provoking piece on ZeroHedge entitled Do We Own Our Stuff, Or Does Our Stuff Own Us? (reprinted from OfTwoMinds.com)

The essay asked, "The frenzied acquisition of more stuff is supposed to be an unalloyed good: good for "growth," good for the consumer who presumably benefits from more stuff and good for governments collecting taxes on the purchase of all the stuff. But the frenzy to acquire more stuff raises a question: do we own our stuff, or does our stuff own us? I think the answer is clear: our stuff owns us, not the other way around."

This post got me wondering whether we (the Lewis family) fall into that category of who owns who.

We certainly don't subscribe to the "frenzied" acquisition of anything. The "normal" stuff most people think about acquiring leave me cold. I am utterly indifferent to fashion, jewelry, shoes, or other traditionally feminine interests. Yet I could (if not fettered by a budget) spend umpteen dollars on books. Hey, we all have our weaknesses.

That said, we have certainly acquired a fair amount of stuff, some of it very expensive (most recently, the wood cookstove and the tractor). These are items we feel will enhance both our livelihood and our self-sufficiency.

So as to the question of whether our stuff owns us, at this point I'd have to say "yes." But let me qualify that statement.

We moved from Oregon to Idaho in 2003 in part to obtain more land at a cheaper price so we could expand our livestock-raising efforts (we only had four acres in Oregon). Livestock, as anyone knows, ties you down. We can no longer take trips as a family; one of us must always be home. I suppose we could hire a house sitter, but so far it's never been necessary.

So who owns who? After giving the matter some thought, I realized that our "stuff" is also our livelihood. Our computers (since I'm a writer), our livestock, our garden, this blog, the shop with all our tools... all these contribute toward how we make a living.

In this regard, most people are "owned" by whatever obligations they undertake to earn an income. Short of winning the lottery, most people are not free to just jaunt off into the sunset, leaving their jobs behind them.

The article's writer states, "Frankly, I wouldn't accept a new big-screen TV, vehicle, tablet computer, etc. etc. etc. at any price because I am tired of stuff owning me. I don't want any more entertainment or computational devices, musical instruments, vehicles, clothing, kitchen appliances, or anything else for that matter, except what can be consumed with some modest enjoyment and no ill effects."

I certainly agree with this sentiment. Possessions like those listed above leave me cold anyway. I'm a Luddite when it comes to electronics, and fight tooth and nail against even downloading new computer programs (my husband will chuckle when he reads this since he knows how true it is!).

But the author of this piece seems to think those who own anything are enslaved by them. My question is, if you owned nothing, what would you do? Take off and travel the world? On whose money? Except for those who are independently wealthy, the rest of us have to be grounded enough to work for a living.

The secret, I think, is to enjoy what you do. Yes we're "enslaved" by our livestock and garden and work-at-home lifestyle, but since we like owning livestock and like growing a garden and like working at home, we don't feel enslaved. Indeed we feel freer than many people, since we can grow and raise a significant portion of our food, and we don't have to commute.

Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman once said, “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car, and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”

Kinda spot-on, isn't it? Unquestionably there's a higher correlation between material possessions and work hours which can become a vicious circle. You work hard and so have less time, so you buy time-saving devices which cost money, so you have to work harder to pay for those time-saving devices.

In the book Better Off by Eric Brende, the author and his new bride lived for 18 months among a conservative Mennonite community utterly devoid of modern technology. They cooked on woodstoves and traveled by horse-and-buggy and plowed by horse and harvested and threshed by hand, etc. The book was a fascinating analysis of which tools are truly useful, which are not, and the value of labor.

At one point Mr. Brende even questioned the need for horses, pointing out how much labor goes into feeding and housing the animals that powered the community. If the number of horses were reduced, he argued, then presumably the amount of work and expenses associated with them would lessen as well.

And if this argument can be made about horses, how much more can it be made for $50,000 automobiles, massive mortgages, designer wardrobes, and consumer electronics? How much labor must people undergo to pay for those things?

Mr. Brende did admit that without the constant atmosphere of industrious work in the low-tech community, there would then be the risk of idle hands, particularly among the youth. If too much leisure occurs, what kind of mischief would then happen?

Interestingly, after the Brendes left the Mennonite community and rejoined the modern world (they now have three children), they continue to live as low-tech a lifestyle as is possible in an urban environment. Recently I saw a YouTube interview with them, filmed several years ago. At first I found myself steeped in admiration at how well they've managed to stay true to their values -- Mr. Brende points out how we spend most of our time serving the needs of technology rather than having technology serve our needs -- but then I began to wonder. Unlike the Mennonite group they lived in when first married, where everyone lived a similar lifestyle, the Brende's children are growing up in a place where they find themselves at odds with their peers. As the kids get older, will they reject their parents' philosophy and embrace a high-tech lifestyle? I don't know.

It occurred to me, as I watched my children on their laptops, that maybe it's not good for children to be TOO low-tech in a high-tech world. Once they leave the nest, they have to get along in the world and will have to make competent, mature decisions about the amount of technology they will want in their lives. But since our girls have grown up without iPads and smart phones and other hand-held wonders, they've never become addicted to tiny screens. They've never walked into walls or ditches because they're not paying attention to their surroundings.

So maybe, just maybe, it's better to introduce a judicious amount of technology during adolescence (NOT childhood) as long as it doesn't get out of hand.

On the other hand, Mr. Brende points out something very important during the YouTube interview: his home is the center of his life. He doesn't spend his time serving technology; his wife and children join forces to achieve things without the technology. Their lifestyle is family-centered and focused on what's truly important.

In that respect, he certainly has the right idea.