Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site sdcrdcf.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!barryg From: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP Newsgroups: net.kids Subject: Re: On raising children Message-ID: <1269@sdcrdcf.UUCP> Date: Sun, 26-Aug-84 14:34:53 EDT Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.1269 Posted: Sun Aug 26 14:34:53 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 30-Aug-84 19:29:20 EDT References: Reply-To: barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Barry Gold) Organization: System Development Corporation, Santa Monica Lines: 42 Summary: (I'm a house-guest of this "user", and new to (i) networks as they aren't extant in England for this purpose and (ii) UNIX editors as I'm a Multics hacker. Apologies for faux-pas and typos are thus in order...) I'm 19 and over in the USA for a two month holiday - discuss and don't reply, I go back next week (sob!) - and I'm amazed by the attitudes exhibited in this group. You're not alone; they are the self-same attitudes that I see in magazines over here. There seems to be an attitude that parents "own" their children. I've recently (last year) left home and started university. As a result I'm for the first time being exposed to people whose up-bringing is far from my own, and spending time at the homes (during the vac) of both my current and former girlfriends has rammed this home. When Sue's mother can on the one hand know of and condone us sleeping together and forbid us to share a bed in her house on the other, and where another person can have been on the pill since 16 and her mother still wants her to leave her bed-room door open, we're in a situation where whatever values you *think* you are putting in your offspring they are totally ignoring them. My guess (and remember that my child-hood is probably a lot more recent than many people here discussing it!) is that the only thing that will acheive anything once children are past, say, twelve is honesty. The reason I think this is that parents who are either judgemental or perceived to be so will cause their children to project unreality to them - if your sixteen-year-old daugther wants to sleep with her boyfriend, nothing you can do will stop her. It's far better that you *know* and can keep it in control than producing a confrontation. My main experience of total parent-child breakdown (a friend who left home to effectivly live in a meanage a trois with one of his teachers and her husband) could have been either prevented or attenuated had the parents been prepared to *talk*, rather than exhibiting a total disbelief that the relationship could, at first, exist and later be anything other than "dirty". If you want to children to be honest with you, attempting to set standards by coercion will be counter-productive. Up to, say, 8 or 10 then maybe, but after this sort of stage unless you can lock your child up 24 hours a day you have to accept that they will do what they want, and a supportive and honest atmnosphere is going to produce better-adjusted kids than a guilt-and-sin ridden one. Test yourself: your daugther (19 -> 20) comes home with male and requests to share bed. What do you do? -- Barry Gold/Lee Gold usenet: {decvax!allegra|ihnp4}!sdcrdcf!ucla-s!lcc!barry Arpanet: barry@BNL