Off The Cuff

Act Your Age! Grow Up!

Posted by: From Arkansas in Are You Kidding Me?, Family stuff, Give Me A Break on Mar 05 2008

Welcome back!

The news today had a story about a study which said that the British believe that childhood ends at age 11 years. Roughly half of the parents believe this. Are you kidding me?? Does YOUR teen act like an adult??They did this study with approximately 1200 parents with children under the age of 18 years old. These people are now “young adults” as of age 12 years. To add to the situation, the parents have a different idea of socialization than Americans do. The “young adults” are allowed to drink prior to age 18 which is their legal drinking limit. Ours is 21. In addition, these people are allowed out beyond 11pm. 2/3rds of the pre-teen girls are allowed to have pierced ears.

Having raised a couple kids in my time, that thinking about age seems to me to be a tad simplistic. I do not think that you can arbitrarily set an age and believe that the child is going to respond to it by “growing up” to suit the requirement. Instead what you get is a teen or pre-teen that will want those things but is not grown up mentally enough to handle the responsibility of it. For instance, we certainly have adults who are not responsible enough to drink. Why would we believe that a child of 12 years old could do this responsibly?

I recently watched a show that addressed teen sex. There was a minister on that firmly advocates abstinence. Another person who teaches this, although sounded almost like a nutcase, also believed in abstinence. The audience was mixed on that. Others thought that teens could handle it like the 14 year old girl who is in a sexual relationship with a 16 year old boy and with the permission of her mother. COME ON!!!

There was another teen, an 18 year old, who told the other girl that it was more important to keep your body to yourself until that special guy comes along. That message was not well received by the 14 year old. Why? Because Mommy says it’s okay. “They are acting like adults in this. He respects her totally.” Um, yeah. Sure he does. That’s why he’s boffing the girl in Mommy’s house. Excuse me, but that sounds to me like he not only does not respect the girl, he also doesn’t respect Mommy. Am I right or wrong here?

The whole idea was to discuss whether limiting sexual contact in younger teens was a good idea. The moderator advocated that if they are going to do it anyway, why not give them a box of condoms instead of risking pregnancy and other possibilities. Can you say “enabling” here?

In all of this, most of the adults in the fray are expecting the young teens and pre-teens to act like adults. The moderator did not expect that but was expecting the teens to act that way so why not prevent the obvious. ARE YOU SERIOUS?????? When the 11 year olds act like they’re 5, how can you do that? When the teen acts like the world owes them a living, how can you expect them to think rationally and as an adult? When you see young teens on the news because they have shot up their school and killed teachers and students, surely you get that they were not acting rationally. Yes, that is only a small percentage but it’s there. My goodness, even the older teens are having problems thinking rationally. Teen pregnancy is always an issue and so are the diseases from that including AIDS which has not gone away, folks. I remember my own growing up years. I no more knew how to think as an adult than the man in the moon. Come on!!!

I have no idea if the reason our teens and pre-teens do not think as adults is because we treat them like children for too long or society is simply not seeing them as such. BUT, since they do not act in a grown up manner, why must we make them grow up faster by handing them condoms and sex speeches in school and then expect them to act reasonably???? If you hand them condoms, doesn’t that say that they are given mixed signals? DON’T HAVE SEX UNTIL YOU’RE 21. Here have condoms in case you mess up!!!

Yeah right. Give me a break here. If you give them mixed signals, all that causes is a mixed up teen. What do we get with mixed up teens? Pregnancy, depression, suicide, teen murders, drug use and abuse, teen marriages doomed to fail. Can we possibly get any stupider than this?????

Where are the parents in all this? Well, one is allowing her teen to have sex at age 14 with her blessing. Her reason? Better at home than anywhere else and, by the way, she’s acting grown up. Uh, no. She’s acting like her Mother who thinks this is great. Parents, the only way we can get the teens to deal rationally is to give them information lovingly. Teach them responsibility. If they cannot handle that yet, do not throw more on them believing they will grow up that way.

Are they going to make mistakes? Of course they are. They haven’t experienced enough to be able to see that some things just are not right for now and to wait. There’s that one word that most teens do not want to see or hear…WAIT. Everything is right now, nothing is next week or tomorrow. It’s always right now. Some people never grow out of that. Some see it right away. If a teen cannot see this, they are already handicapped. We must look to prepare for the future.

As long as the teen is acting childish or selfish, which most do, then they are not yet ready for the bigger challenges like parenthood and drinking. The fastest way to make the kid stressed out and anxious is to give them more than they can handle all at once. I should point out here that most of those kids are not getting this education and information at home. They get it at school from people who could care less about that person. Let them hear these things from you.

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