When daddy gets his permit, he'll drive me to school!!

[Paelos]

Parents have more influence on their kids than anyone else, from birth. Blame society if you want to because you failed as a parent, but if your 13 year old knocked someone up, YOU FAILED. If your kids shoot up a school, FAIL.

If my 14 year old kid ends up in the press over something illegal, I'm going to blame myself. You don't control your children, but you do educate them not to become the centerpiece of idiotic criticism across the fucking world.

[lamaros]

You have a 14 year old kid?

They sure grow up fast.

[MahrinSkel]

Do you jack-asses not remember being 13-14 years old?  Or were you momma's boys who never did anything without checking in first?  Because *my* parents considered it a good job that I made it through my teens without getting put in prison, and frankly were glad (once they found out) that they didn't know about most of the shit I got up to, because they couldn't have done a damned thing to stop any of it (not being able to afford a military boarding school I couldn't have broken out of in the first week).

No matter how hard you try to protect them from themselves, the fact remains that you can't.  Now, being so lax with their 13 year old daughter that it's now a matter for DNA tests to resolve which of 6-8 boys is actually the father is a major failure in parenting, but drawing a straight-line equivalency between that and a soft-headed "liberal" recognition of "children's rights" is pure bullshit.

Forget the question of "rights", there's two basic ways to raise children: Through fear, or through mutual respect.  Fear works only as long as it works, and creates adults with..."issues", they generally take out on *their* kids (and the parents, once it's time to arrange their "elder care").  Respect is harder, but more effective at creating functional adults.  *Neither* was at work in this case, the parents weren't parenting at *all*, they were providing food and shelter and otherwise the children were as much on their own as any "Lord of the Flies" scenario, the results are as predictable as they are sad.

--Dave

[stray]

I was a screwed up 13 year old too. My parents were fairly nice people.. I mean, I had some chips on my shoulder from family, but they definitely weren't dysfunctional. Yet, I smoked weed and cigs, dropped acid, snorted crank, coke, had two assault charges, and sucked on titties that were not my mom's by 14. Personally, I blame gangsta rap.

[Merusk]

Do you jack-asses not remember being 13-14 years old?  Or were you momma's boys who never did anything without checking in first?  Because *my* parents considered it a good job that I made it through my teens without getting put in prison, and frankly were glad (once they found out) that they didn't know about most of the shit I got up to, because they couldn't have done a damned thing to stop any of it (not being able to afford a military boarding school I couldn't have broken out of in the first week).

No matter how hard you try to protect them from themselves, the fact remains that you can't.  Now, being so lax with their 13 year old daughter that it's now a matter for DNA tests to resolve which of 6-8 boys is actually the father is a major failure in parenting, but drawing a straight-line equivalency between that and a soft-headed "liberal" recognition of "children's rights" is pure bullshit.

Forget the question of "rights", there's two basic ways to raise children: Through fear, or through mutual respect.  Fear works only as long as it works, and creates adults with..."issues", they generally take out on *their* kids (and the parents, once it's time to arrange their "elder care").  Respect is harder, but more effective at creating functional adults.  *Neither* was at work in this case, the parents weren't parenting at *all*, they were providing food and shelter and otherwise the children were as much on their own as any "Lord of the Flies" scenario, the results are as predictable as they are sad.

--Dave

If you're worried what they're doing at 13-14 you failed years ago.  You spend time with them, talk to them and educate them as children, not teenagers.  From 9-12 is the most important as they're developing their morals and 'oh shit I shouldn't do that" sense.  Yes, you can do this through fear. No it doesn't work anywhere near as well as just fucking talking to them, exposing them to the realities of life and explaining shit.

However, the first thing you have to do is get the fuck over the puritan "omg can't talk to anyone about.. s-e-x"  because that's where most fuck-ups happen.

[Hindenburg]

If you're worried what they're doing at 13-14 you failed years ago. 

You can be the best parent in the world, and you'll still worry. You will always worry.
You worry because you care.

 

[UnSub]

Parents have more influence on their kids than anyone else, from birth. Blame society if you want to because you failed as a parent, but if your 13 year old knocked someone up, YOU FAILED. If your kids shoot up a school, FAIL.

If my 14 year old kid ends up in the press over something illegal, I'm going to blame myself. You don't control your children, but you do educate them not to become the centerpiece of idiotic criticism across the fucking world.

So you'll let your kid off the hook by accepting the responsibility for their failings?

My kids knock up a girl at whatever age (barring ) I'll be, "That's nice. What are you going to do about it?".

[Abagadro]

I just love people with no kids pontificating from their high horse based on what they do with their dog. Trust me, until you get there and experience it you have no fucking clue.

[HaemishM]

If you're worried what they're doing at 13-14 you failed years ago. 

This. I do not have kids.

But as someone who could have gone one way or the other and yet had great parents, I can tell you that the lessons and discipline they instilled in me before I ever hit puberty are what got me through puberty, college and into adulthood. If your kid doesn't know by the time he's thirteen to wrap the wienerschnitzel, you fucked up. If he doesn't know that killing is wrong, you fucked up.

BUT, and this is most important, if he doesn't know this by 13, the things he CHOOSES TO DO ARE HIS RESPONSIBILITY, you fucked up. Yes, the parents share a large part of the blame for kids like the one in the OP, but the most important one is they have to make sure their kids understand that they own the consequences of their actions. No amount of punishing the parents for the sins of the children will make people better parents without the early life lesson that says your fuckups are your own.

[Jeff Kelly]

Unless you want to lock your kid into the cellar until it's 42 years old you don't have another option than to talk with them about everything teach them what you know and hope for the best. Even that is no guarantee that your kid might not do something stupid or dangerous.

With the amount of shit I did as a kid or teenager it is sheer luck that I am still alive and haven't screwed up and I was a rather normal kid.

People that overprotect their kids keep them from growing up and taking responsibility of their own life. My cousin was raised in that way and she can't live life on her own even at 30 and needs constant help from daddy or boyfriends that are surrogates.

[Bungee]

Do it the Austrian way- keep 'em in the cellar just to make sure the only one screwing with them is you...

[ClydeJr]

My kids knock up a girl at whatever age (barring ) I'll be, "That's nice. What are you going to do about it?".

So if your underage son (lets say 14) gets a girl pregnant, you're not going to do a thing to help them? That seems pretty damn cold.

As a father of a 1 year old daughter, this whole thread scares the hell out of me. I was pretty much a goody-goody growing up. Didn't get into much trouble, good grades, no drugs, little drinking. A lot of that is due to how my parents raised me. I was lucky that my mom stayed at home to raise me and my sister so we always had a good role model around. While I don't agree with everything my parents did raising me, I hope I can do as good as good a job as they did.

[Nevermore]

Looks like they should have spent more time teaching them about birth control methods. 

But if they had done that, it would have encouraged them to have sex. 

[Merusk]

If you're worried what they're doing at 13-14 you failed years ago. 

You can be the best parent in the world, and you'll still worry. You will always worry.
You worry because you care.

 

Well, Duh.  There's 'crap what if they fall and break their head open jumping around like that' worry and then there's, 'oh, maybe I should start paying attention, I haven't seen jane come out of her room in the last 5 days' worry.

My kids knock up a girl at whatever age (barring ) I'll be, "That's nice. What are you going to do about it?".

So if your underage son (lets say 14) gets a girl pregnant, you're not going to do a thing to help them? That seems pretty damn cold.

As a father of a 1 year old daughter, this whole thread scares the hell out of me. I was pretty much a goody-goody growing up. Didn't get into much trouble, good grades, no drugs, little drinking. A lot of that is due to how my parents raised me. I was lucky that my mom stayed at home to raise me and my sister so we always had a good role model around. While I don't agree with everything my parents did raising me, I hope I can do as good as good a job as they did.

Go read 4chan sometime. You'll get even more freaked out as a dad of a girl.  You've got to educate them early because even as bad as you think you were as a teenage boy, they've gotten worse; internet bravado or no.

[NowhereMan]

4Chan makes me glad I'm not a parent. The thought of finding your child browsing it should send shivers down any parent's spine.

[UnSub]

My kids knock up a girl at whatever age (barring ) I'll be, "That's nice. What are you going to do about it?".

So if your underage son (lets say 14) gets a girl pregnant, you're not going to do a thing to help them? That seems pretty damn cold.

I'll support him and his partner in what they do, but I'm not going to take the choice from them about what to do. Part of being a parent is letting your child fall over (hopefully on carpeted floor) so they learn to pick themselves up. It sounds colder than I really am, but I do believe in letting my kids learn (hopefully as safely as possible).

As for sex ed: they'll start hearing the basics when they hit 10.

[Righ]

As for sex ed: they'll start hearing the basics when they hit 10.

You're going to let them hit the first nine in ignorance?

[Oban]

It is impossible to get a girl pregnant until you have had sex together at least nine times.

[UnSub]

As for sex ed: they'll start hearing the basics when they hit 10.

You're going to let them hit the first nine in ignorance?

At least by that point they'll have something to talk to me about. 

[Broughden]

I just love people with no kids pontificating from their high horse based on what they do with their dog. Trust me, until you get there and experience it you have no fucking clue.

I love people who feel guilty because they dont spend enough time with their kid or less time with their kid than I do with my puppy, getting their panties in a wad and trying to justify their actions.
There are lots of things I havent done yet. I can still tell you how NOT to do them. So your point? Is pointless.

[Abagadro]

I love it. Believe me, you'll see.  I used to have the same attitude.

My kid is 4. I don't presume to lecture people who have teenagers about how to be a parent because it's impossible until you've been there. It really is. It's like criticizing someone for how they walk on the moon. Sure you can do it. You just sound like an asshole because you really have no frame of reference and your opinion is basically worthless. 

[Triforcer]

In Broughden's defense, his opinion is worthless on any subject under any circumstances.

[Abagadro]

In Broughden's defense, his opinion is worthless on any subject under any circumstances.

 

[Mrbloodworth]

It is impossible to get a girl pregnant until you have had sex together at least nine times.

If only that were true!

[Broughden]

I love it. Believe me, you'll see.  I used to have the same attitude.

My kid is 4. I don't presume to lecture people who have teenagers about how to be a parent because it's impossible until you've been there. It really is. It's like criticizing someone for how they walk on the moon. Sure you can do it. You just sound like an asshole because you really have no frame of reference and your opinion is basically worthless. 

Once again someone else in the thread with kids shares my views on lack of time spent parenting. I dont see you attacking his position or regaling us all with why that position is wrong.
Yet somehow Im wrong because I dont have kids...even though it the SAME position.

So basically? You are using a retarded version of an Ad Hominem fallacy.

You arent attacking the position that spending 1-2 hours a day with your child is not enough. You are simply attacking me for holding this position while not having children of my own yet, which has no fucking bearing on the argument.

You still havent even bothered to explain why I can spend 3 hours or more with my puppy per day, but once I have a human child I will magically see the light and choose to spend LESS time with the human child. Please do elaborate for us all why I will magically want to give less face time to my own flesh and blood than I do a fucking dog right now. Is this when Khan puts the worm in my ear and takes control?

I will waiting for your wonderful reply.

[Sky]

I haven't walked on the moon, but I'm pretty sure I'm qualified to say you shouldn't unzip and take a leak there.

[Samwise]

I haven't walked on the moon, but I'm pretty sure I'm qualified to say you shouldn't unzip and take a leak there.

You won't know for certain until you've been there and tried it.

[Khaldun]

First off, you've got a category error here when you think that your dog is approximately similar to a kid. It's like saying, "I spend three hours a day on my World of Warcraft character, and he's levelled up pretty durn well. What makes you think I won't do the same with a kid?" I have one kid and two dogs and let's just say that nurturing and shaping and being with a human child is not the same as taking care of the dogs, not even remotely so. The only people who think so are 80-year old celibates who have a cat named Fluffykins and you.

In part, this is because children, being human, turn out to be awfully complex, capable of independent action, and far less malleable to your whims and wishes than your average non-parent with strong opinions about other people's parenting tends to think. Like, not just when they're 13, but from the very beginning. One of the eye-opening things for me was how much personality and distinctive character my daughter had pretty much even in her first six months of life: likes and dislikes, ways of behaving, patterns and expectations that had nothing to do with anything we were trying to do, or anything that the flotilla of self-help books for parents suggest you should be doing. Children mold you as much as you mold them, and that's one fundamental reason why their lives can turn out in some unexpected ways. They have their own personalities, their own talents, their own will. They're not clay, and they don't all respond to a cookie-cutter list of Things To Do Right in the same fashion. And as they mold you, you also become different than you once were, often. So families that end up with teenagers where everyone is different than they expected to be by the time they arrived at that point? That's life, and only people who haven't lived expect things to be easily managed and directed to particular ends. Children humble you, teach you your limits, expose your weaknesses. That's part of what is annoying about the non-parental assumptions that you can make kids do and be the things they're supposed to be is about: you have no idea.

Yes, parents can fail. Or they can do things you wouldn't do. We look at some of our friends and we say, "Jesus, why are they doing *that*?" I'm sure they say that about me sometimes--our house is infamously well-known among my daughter's friends for its generous availability of video games, for the comic book and SF motifs in my home office, etc. which I'm sure freaks out my stereotypically liberal friends and neighbors. In other cases, you can watch things happening and realize that there's really no answer at all. One of our friends has an eight-year old boy who has been friends with my daughter since they were both really little, but he's suddenly taken a turn into really aggressive boyish play--throwing shit, yelling, pushing kids. They're baffled; I know enough of their home life to say I see nothing in their situation that's causing it. He goes to a really nice private school with considerate teachers. They live in a nice urban neighborhood. They're trying to work with him to control it. I don't think it's hyperactivity or anything like that. It just *is*. Maybe it's just a weird little six-month trend, a kind of kid-experiment. Maybe it's some part of his personality. Maybe it's some mysterious interaction between his environment, his friends, his cultural world, and his personality. I dunno. But this is the kind of thing that people who have no experience try to make easy, categorical judgments about.

[squirrel]

  Because *my* parents considered it a good job that I made it through my teens without getting put in prison, and frankly were glad (once they found out) that they didn't know about most of the shit I got up to, because they couldn't have done a damned thing to stop any of it (not being able to afford a military boarding school I couldn't have broken out of in the first week).

Same. Of course even at 14 I was smart enough to wear a toque.

[DraconianOne]

First I read

Please do elaborate for us all why I will magically want to give less face time to my own flesh and blood than I do fucking a dog right now.

and I was all 

Then I read it again and all was right with the world.

[Broughden]

Blah blah blah blah....
In part, this is because children, being human, turn out to be awfully complex, capable of independent action, and far less malleable to your whims and wishes than your average non-parent with strong opinions about other people's parenting tends to think. ....Blah blah blah bla.

I dont know who you are arguing with but it isnt me. NO WHERE have I taken any position any where near to what you are spouting off about. What you are doing is called a Straw Man fallacy. You've simply made up your own position to discuss and assigned it to me as the protagonist. Yes, children are very complex things. Just as all people are. I fully acknowledge that, and havent argued against that anywhere.

Now please do explain to me and everyone else why once I have them I will want to spend LESS TIME with my toddler that I do with my fucking puppy. I'll  be waiting. Thanks.

I haven't walked on the moon, but I'm pretty sure I'm qualified to say you shouldn't unzip and take a leak there.

You won't know for certain until you've been there and tried it.

Exactly. Just ask Abagadro. 

[Oban]

I have two children and would love to comment, but I refuse to get in to an argument with someone that fornicates with a canine for more than three hours per day.

There are just some boundaries that I will not cross.

[Paelos]

One of the parts I consider to be good parenting is engaging in activites with your kids that you both enjoy. Example, my father, mother, and I all played golf together on the weekends since I was 13, and my Dad and I had season tickets to the Dallas Cowboys since I was 8. I look back on those times and really realize that while my father was working hard, he was still making sure his weekend free time was about his kids. He also sat down with us together every single night at dinners, even if he had to continue working later on at home.

That kind of face time shaped my life. Without it, I can honestly say I probably would have been completely different in the wrong direction. While he never made personal decisions for me, he showed me the right way to make decisions. I don't think you can boil down parenting into "Spend X amount of time with your children, and they won't turn out to be shitheads." However, I know that the parents who make an effort with their free time to do activites with their children, and actually stay involved in what goes on with their personal lives, school lives, and extracurriculars are doing their job. The chances of those kids ending up in the news is going to be dramatically lower.

[Abagadro]

I could talk til I'm blue and it won't penetrate.  I'm not talking about a quantitative comparison of time spent. It's a wortless analogy ab initio so I'm just pointing out how stupid it is to equate anything related to a dog to a kid as any means of valid comparison.  You'll understand if you ever get there.  A good attempt was made to explain but you blew it off.  Keep thinking you know everything.  Your eventual rude awakening will just be that much more entertaining.

[Paelos]

I could talk til I'm blue and it won't penetrate.  I'm not talking about a quantitative comparison of time spent. It's a wortless analogy ab initio so I'm just pointing out how stupid it is to equate anything related to a dog to a kid as any means of valid comparison.  You'll understand if you ever get there.  A good attempt was made to explain but you blew it off.  Keep thinking you know everything.  Your eventual rude awakening will just be that much more entertaining.

We got your point a long time ago. It's quite simple and really doesn't say anything. Great, we'll know more when it happens. That's never really been the point, except in your own mind. I also understand that a dog is not a human. Now, do you actually want to talk about people that spend time with their kids or not, and if that has an effect on their lives? That people who spend time with their kids would make them less likely to end up in the news? If they do end up in the news, does that not signify a lack of parental supervision?

If not, you can continue to talk about parenting experience, but I think would help you actually discuss those ideas rather than just pointing out we don't have any.