What is worse? Why?

[iizbeastie]

As long as you can tell the difference between spoiling them and depriving them you are fine. Doesn't seem to make sense does it? By that I mean spoiling them enough that they lose out in the important lessons in life. One example of this that I've already implied, is fully funding secondary education. The large majority of those who have their path through school paved for them get much less value out of it. It goes right along with, you get out what you put in..... well if they aren't the ones who put some in, they won't get it all back out.

I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy spoiling my kids, and I do have the means (now), so to say that I won't is not a cop out. I simply think it's more appropriate to spoil them with lessons and wisdom, to know when things are unacceptable and the value of a gift. I will gladly make everything they want available to them, but lesson one in life is that nothing is free, so I won't be handing them much or especially throwing things at them.
The same goes for religion. If they ask about it I'll gladly talk about it with them and if they chose to follow a faith I will support them, but unlike most parents, I refuse to raise them into a religion or telling them what to believe. I feel quite strongly that if you raise a child teaching them religion, then you are making their decision for them. Why shouldn't you, you are after all supposed to do that as a parent, right? No. Not in this case...... but I could go on for hours why I disagree with religious parenting and why I also disagree with organized religion in general..... that would require a whole new thread.

How would I feel if I became the 40 year old 'new' parent? Well, this brings up my mother-in-laws story. Through my story, I failed to mention that my heading on 5 year old son, has a 1 year old uncle. My wifes mother had a fourth child at 44, setting her current children at 22, 20, 18 and 1. And lets see how she feels. Well lets just say when we go shopping she constantly attempts to put the kids off as brothers, as if her son was ours. She's ashamed to admit to people that she has a grandson older than her son. This is not the only example of how she shows her feelings, just the most obvious one as far as how she feels she is seen by others. How would you feel in her situation? Is it absurd to act like that, absolutely, but it's also common. She had just made it over the line of 'teen pregnancy' and no one said anything. She was on the 'home stretch' as far as kids in the house and she went back to the starting line, and still, no one downtalks her. This is actually adding to my confusion. She had children at a younger and older age and the same people telling 'us young parents' that we threw away our life, have said nothing to a person who will now have teen or younger children from 20 to 62.


I have a daughter now, yeah she's only heading on a year old, but in 16 years I'm quite certain that I would prefer to hear "daddy, I'm pregnant" as opposed to "your daughter is going to need rehab" or "the defendant has been found guilty and will not have a chance of parole for 4-8 years".

As far as statistics are concerned, I feel they are part of the problem. Part of the attitude directed at teen pregnancy, is in fact treating them like a statistic. Okay, I will agree that statistically yadda friggin daa, but I will defend that if these people ignored the statistics and simply talked with them they would be giving them a much better chance of doing well. Just like the number of sayings along the lines of "if you think you can, or think you can't, you're right", "if you don't think you can, you wont", or even the good old favorite "I think I can, I think I can"..... knowing these sayings are all entirely true, why do people insist on starting them off feeling like failures, and worse telling them they have somehow failed something, especially in a case where they haven't even begun their attempt. All people hate being treated like numbers, and albeit it is inevitable but rarely produces a positive outlook.