Hope Floats

I guess I need to write more on the subject of my last posting after having read Dana's blog that responds to my post. Usually my intention with my posts is to be uplifting, maybe entertaining but surely something that young mothers can use as an ah-ha! This one is not so uplifting and does express my frustration with the lack of training of our teens.

So with that in mind I will try to reword my post from yesterday to at least state the point I was trying to make. I often imply my point without actually stating it. And often there is more than one point to my thoughts. So read on. I will be very direct in stating my point this time.So here it is.

Train up a child in the way he should go and he will NOT depart from it.

I think that is a good beginning.
As a high school teacher most of you can only imagine what I see and hear. If you have not taught high school and are not around the worst of the worst of our high school students you are probably thinking only of the sweet child who has been trained by church going people and have not even identified the subjects of my blog.

It IS a generational thing. If my mother had not taught me to love nature I may never had discovered it. I may have resisted as a child and not wanted to do the work of loving nature but eventually I came to love it. Had she not taught me to respect the property of my sister I would have been into her stuff (worse than I was). Not only did she teach me to respect the property of the other members of my family she taught us to respect our neighbors property. She taught us to keep our hands in our pockets when we went in the five and dime stores. She taught us to clean our environment rather than to destroy it.

Why? Because we had a sense morality and a sense of pride in our surrroundings. We were taught that if she could not see us, God still sees us and is disappointed in us when we do wrong.

Now I do not mean for this to become "I had to walk five miles to school....in the snow....uphill.....BOTH WAYS!"

The point is not in the change of times but rather in the lack of training.

Yes, train your children to be respectful.
Make your children be responsible for their actions. Do not make excuses for their misbehaviors. No matter what economic bracket you find yourself in......train up your children.....

When I watch my high school students what I am seeing is that they lack GOD in their lives!
At least they are acting un-Godly!

I realize that our children go through phases and often those trained are led astray by the untrained but the training remains as a backbone to support them and eventually they will get back to it.

Yes, Dana, these kids can be trained and should be trained and it may take some years of hard work. Unfortunately there are many who are not being trained or else the parents wait until they start school or are too far out of control before they realize that they need to begin training thus having lost the most formative years of the child's life, those preschool years. Many parents make excuses for their children's misbehaviors and say, I was like that and I grew out of it so they will, too. Boys will be boys! HA!
That attitude only gives them justification for bad behavior.

So here is my point:

• Stop excusing bad behaviors.
• Train our children to do good.
• Hold them responsible when they are not!

If we do not, we are doing our children an injustice because even if we do not hold them responsible GOD WILL!