2014, a year closer to the end of America?







Social Media and todays pre-teens.

             Social Media for an adult is a wonderful thing, Twitter is my social media vice. If you are into politics, sports, religion, photography and whatever else you are interested in, it is right there. My live for politics has grown since joining Twitter. My wife is on Facebook and Instagram quite a bit.

              But for our pre-teen kids it is a little much. If you come from the bullying point of view, there is no escape. You are bullied in school, they find you online and keep up the attack, basically destroying any chance for friendly contact. The people that abuse this are generally not good people. But the kids that do it, are usually quite a bit like their parents. The only way to stop this is to keep your kids away from social media, that in turn will make them a pariah in school.

              The next ill of social media is how it is causing our kids to grow up alarmingly fast. These pre-teen girls know quite a bit more than they should. If you were to look at some of this kids Instagram pages you find some very shocking things there. Sexual innuendo, pictures describing sex and things about sex I know nothing about. How do we keep them away from this? Yes, I understand that they will eventually learn these things, but lets wait until then.

                I know kids today are maturing faster, I have 2. But I honestly believe social media is a tool best left to adults. These kids do not have the common sense or street smarts to use these things. Parents are getting into trouble because their 12 year old is writing that they want to kill themselves. It is nit enough that a parent has to worry about everything else, but also worry about a world that doesn’t make sense to us. It will only get worse, any step we take to change this will be met with heated resistance. Good luck to all parents out there.

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How do we handle our child being bullied?

          It seems at least a few times a month I read about a child committing suicide because they were bullied. I am sure it is more frequent but not all make the news. That does not diminish the fact a life was ended early because another person or people bullied them. I ask myself, what should we as parents do to protect our child?

           We all know, having dealt with other children when we were younger, how brutal kids can be. Kids get picked on for being poor, having pimples, the house you live in, sexual orientation, eyebrows, we could go on all day with this. Kids brutalize one another emotionally. Some kids are picked on by large groups, sometimes it is one kid, sometimes it us physical and sometimes its mental. Either way it affects each kid differently.

                Schools create anti-bullying programs and tell parents and children to talk to teachers and administrators if there is a problem. It does not work. I have seen these programs at work and I assure you that they let kids down. School should be a place they feel safe and a teacher a person they feel they can go to. The unfortunate truth here is that most bullies parents are just as bad as the bully. In turn if a teacher attempts to take care of a problem they are then bullied by the parent.

             How to handle a bully parent? I think a parent that attempts to bully their child should have charges levied against them. I am all for protecting your child, but if several kids are saying your child is picking on them, chances are its true. Parents of the bullied child attempt to let the school take care of the problem. Then when the school can’t the problem in some cases is too far gone.

            If we truly want to stop bullying, which will never happen. But if we want to make it less we need to hold the parent, teachers and administrators all responsible. If a child is being threatened by a parent we need more comprehensive protection for that child. I am not a perfect parent, but I try to keep my kids aware of how they treat others. It would be nice if other parents did so as well.

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Tennessee wants to slash welfare benefits based on kids grades.

                Tennessee Republican State Senator Stacey Campfield introduced legislation recently that would slash welfare benefits for parents whose kids get crummy grades. Critics call it an unfair proposal that will ultimately hurt kids. Campfield days the bill will inspire parents to do a better job.

             Senate Democrat leader Jim Kyle says a graded for welfare plan would stack the deck against at risk children. It would pressure them to study when they have no food on the dinner table. The state already cuts benefits by 20% for parents whose kids don’t have to go to school. Campfields bill would raise that to 30%. Campfield believes his proposal would break the cycle of poverty. A single mom with 2 kids recieves only $185 a month in benefits, does anyone believe this is enough.

               When Campfield introduced the legislation in January, he said parents have gotten away with doing absolutely nothing to help their children in school. He also said that it was child abuse. While Tennessee already ties welfare to education, this change would put the burden of maintaining benefits squarely on children. Can you imagine being 10 and knowing that how you do on this test can take away what helps your family get food. That is an awful lot of pressure for a kid. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ( TANF), meanwhile is failing students and their families. It serves fewer impoverished families and children that its predecessor did before the 1996 welfare reform law was instituted and it especially failed during the Great Recession, when the rates of families served fell in 35 states despite increases in both poverty and unemployment. Tenbessee’s welfare program is hardly robust, the maximum benefit is $185 a month and has remained that way since 1996. Low income students already struggle to keep up in school, further reducing the already modest benefits they receive from TAND. This isn’t likely to improve educational outcomes.

               There was a petition to stop this started by Clergy for Justice, a Tennessee based organization of clergy that has previously advocated for causes including immigration reform, health care and anti-bullying laws. They say the public school system fails our kids time and time again, not reaching out to children that need it, not being available to tutor and leaving behind children that may need just a little more time to catch on to something. Now put the pressure on them that they will get less food if they don’t get good grades.

              This isn’t the answer to our problems. These programs are there for people who need them. Instead if getting more revenue from taxes on the super wealthy they go after those that have nothing. Yes I agree some parents don’t help their children, but should the child be punished for that? No! We need to find a better solution, I probably don’t have the answer but it won’t stop me from trying.

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