We wonder what the world is coming to: children stealing cars, dealing drugs and killing other children. And if the child makes it through his teens, he/she is more likely to end up in jail than college. Why? We teach them not to cheat, steal or lie, or do we?
Our society has become litigators. Someone bumps the back of our car and what do we do? We get a lawyer and sue. And not just for repair of our car but for whiplash, headaches, or some other pain plus punitive damages of course. Our little fender-bender has turned into a 4 or 5 digit windfall. And if we really aren’t hurt that bad, well; it’s just the insurance company’s money and they’ve got lots; so what’s a little exaggeration (i.e. lies/false witness ) among friends. And of course, that scotch tape, pens, paper, rubber bands and other supplies we bring home from work, well; they owe us at least that much since they don’t pay us what we’re worth anyhow. And what about that car you’re trying to trade-in or sell? So what if it overheats, or dies after a few minutes, or it’s been wrecked but you can’t tell it by looking at it? If you tell the buyer the truth then he/she might not want to buy it or pay you what you want for it. We tell ourselves it’s just good old fashion haggling; BUT ARE WE BEING TRUTHFUL WITH OURSELVES, OUR CHILDREN AND GOD?
These are just some of the problems we face and I didn’t even mention getting hooked on drugs. It will take many different solutions to correct all these problems but the most important solution we can all do is to act like we want our children to act. You can’t expect our kids to listen to us when we are saying, “Do as I say, not as I do. And In our culture everyone wants everything NOW, and they don’t want to work for it. So what do we teach our children? It’s okay to lie, cheat and steal to get what we want? As they say, “Actions speak louder than words.” What we do speaks much louder than what we say; especially to our children. There is a country song about a kid who says a four letter word when he loses his happy meal when his father has to make a sudden stop. The father asks where he heard that and he says, “I heard it from you dad; I want to be just like you!” Before we can expect our children to behave morally, we have to act morally. Your children will grow up just like you, or worse!
I wring my hands every night trying to figure out what can be done to save our young people. The only thing I can see is we can’t save the children until we save their parents. Unfortunately many of our youth are from broken homes or both parents are working two or three jobs to pay the bills; so no one is home with the kids during the best times to get into trouble. There is no ‘magic bullet’ to fix all the problems. It will take many different ideas and actions to help correct our problems with our youth but one thing is for sure; you can’t ‘fix’ our kids until we ‘fix’ ourselves!
