What happened to parental responsibility?

[graceofbass]

I'm studying education in college, and I've been taking classes on classroom management, which means how to maintain order in class. Contrary to popular belief, not all teachers are slave-drivers whose only desire is for their students to regurgitate useless facts on even more useless tests that have no meaning or purpose other than a grade. Some of us actually want students to learn, and enjoy it. But I'll save that for another thread What I've seen and studied a lot is parents dumping their children off at school and that's all the interest they take in what their kids are learning. And it goes beyond that. The whole videogame controversy that violence is what made the columbine shooters violent only looked at the surface of the problem: that there is violence in video games that can promote violent tendencies. But what were these kids' parents doing? Were they paying attention to the video games, did they take notice of their children becoming more aggressive or violent? No. And when their children act out, instead of taking responsibility for not taking care of their kids, they need to find something to blame, from bad schools to bad friends to videogames, instead of thinking what they, the parents, were doing while their children were developing bad habits, or worse. It takes courage to take responsibility for your actions, and from what I've seen, this is a nation of cowards.

 

[Gamer4Fire]

This theme has been brought up many times, seeing as how this is a video game forum. The general consensus is that those parents that don't take responsibility for their children are indeed lame.

 

[graceofbass]

I also want to discuss this in regards to drug use, the decline in moral standards, and other things, because I think they directly relate.

 

[Ledger_Damayn]

Speaking from personal experience, after I learned that I could make my own choices and accept personal responsibility for them, I began to systematically extricate myself from my parents' sphere of influence. Over time, I tell them less and less things, and I spend less and less time with them.

I do this not out of dislike (well, in my mother's case anyway, there is definite dislike towards my father), but because I don't want to be known as someone who succeeded or screwed up because of how his parents raised him. I'm capable of making my own decisions, and after your parents have raised you and inserted your innate sense of right and wrong, most additional raising is pretty much extraneous. Sure, you can be reprimanded or punished for doing something wrong, but you're already raised, it won't actually teach you anything, maybe just a temporary reminder.

That being said, before one reaches the point when they can take charge of a sizable amount of their life (I'm not saying I have complete control of my life, that won't happen until I have to pay taxes and such), your parents should definitely take the heat for things like that. Media is a factor, but it's a factor that parents can at least attempt to control. The way a parent raises a child will always affect how that child will be in the future, no matter how much the child hates or loves his/her parents. This includes your other topics of drug use and morality.

The difficult part for parents is determining exactly how your decisions affect your child's development. It may be difficult to accept responsibility because you don't exactly know WHAT exactly you did to lead your children to where they are, good or bad. It's even more difficult because each child will be bound to react differently to each decision parents make, and their personality will inevitably reflect the sum of the parents' decisions.

 

[Scar]

How much can parents really do, though? In my experience, the best parents are simply guides. They let their children learn from mistakes and are more or less hands off when it comes down to it. So what makes certain kids turn out really well and others turn to violence?

There aren't that many Columbine-level acts of violence for a pretty good reason: it's an aggregation of a LOT of individual factors. If video games were to blame then don't we think that a much more sizable percent of gamers would be killers? Same goes for any other individual factor, like music and TV and movies and everything else that the (dare I say) ignorant masses of Americans want to blame violence on nowadays.

Neither are bad parents completely to blame. I will say that a truly bad upbringing is going to be the most reliable barometer for a person's ultimate success or failure, but that has more to do with a parent's socio-economic status than their parenting. Good parents in bad neighborhoods can churn out bad kids.

I think it's really hard to be a parent. There are some times when I think the kids are just to blame and the buck should really stop there.

 

[gringo66]

There are good parents, and there are bad ones. Good ones go ahead and try and teach their kids things that are morally right. To do the right thing. Bad ones probably can care less whether what there child does, or doesnt teach them right from wrong. Regardless of good parents or bad ones, they can only do so much to have control over their childs life.