CHILDREN'S BAD BEHAVIOR SHOULD EMBARASS PARENTS

CHILD’S BAD BEHAVIOR SHOULD EMBARRASS PARENTS

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

Modern parent’s desire to protect their children from the consequences of their own rotten behavior is more important than teaching their children major life lessons. This immature thinking leaves children unaccountable for destructive behavior that hurts themselves and others and leads them down a path to hell. This needs to be reversed for everyone’s benefit.

Two boys, 8 and 10 years old were vandalizing a man's home when he caught them in the act. He put them in a closet until the police arrived. Instead of the parents apologizing and ensuring that they would pay restitution to restore his property, the parents are suing him for child abuse.

It has become too commonplace in our upside-down society that the victim who stands up to protect himself and his property is the one punished. Unfortunately the perpetrator has been allowed to get away with horrendous behavior since early childhood. These out-of-control youngsters have developed a self-serving anti-social mindset. They creatively use excuses and/or verbal or physical attacks on anyone who attempts to stop their destructive behavior.

Modern parents have lost their way. Rather than being responsible and embarrassed by their child's outrageous behavior, they attempt to play down the child's actions. They attempt to shift the blame from their children to anyone else. It is harmful to their child’s development.

Embarrassment would be a much better emotional response than "I will cover for my child, even when I know he has done wrong." The parents’ embarrassment would compel them to reprimand the child's nasty behavior. Family, friends and neighbors have to highlight the truth that the children are a reflection of them. Parents whose children are good kids should be given credit for their sacrifice and hard work. Parents with youngsters who look for and find trouble should receive the stares of disapproval from others.

With the parents taking responsibility for the children’s behavior, the family unit is a stabilizing influence in the local community. When children in the neighborhood are viewed as good kids it elevates the family's status. The parents of these well-trained, responsible children are proud of their achievements and accomplishments.

Our society should encourage strong, law-abiding family units. We can partially accomplish this by acknowledging the many ways parents are being effective. The more ways people reinforce solid parenting, the stronger the family and the community will become.

Children acting destructively in the community should not be let off the hook.  Parents who attempt to justify their children's inappropriate behavior are harming them. Authority figures should confront parents for not giving strong appropriate consequences. We should no longer be silent when we see a child behaving badly.

This parental attempt to shelter their child from reasonable consequences is foolhardy.  The child’s misdeeds should not only earn a lecture but also follow-up consequences by the parents. The elders should explain to the parents they are hurting their children's future, not helping them in their attempt to bail them out of their negative actions.

Responsible parents should shun these neglectful parental accomplices to their children’s crimes. As these shortsighted parents are themselves embarrassed by others they may see the light. When this blatant anti social behavior occurs, hopefully the parents will be more conscious of their parental duties.

These less than responsible parents need to begin to experience embarrassment to motivate them into giving consequences for a child’s inappropriate behavior. Parents who do their job in training their child to be civilized are the backbone of our society. Anyone who does this will receive their just reward and be thankful of having raised good children.

Dr. Maglio is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.blogspot.com.

BEING A FRIEND TO YOUR CHILD IS DELUSIONAL AND DESTRUCTIVE

BEING A FRIEND TO YOUR CHILD IS DELUSIONAL AND DESTRUCTIVE

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

In the past in our culture there was no doubt your parent was your parent. Parents told their children what to do and never asked them what they wanted to do. Children were to be obedient. No excuses were allowed to be uttered.

Today’s parents are restrained from being in charge of their children’s morals, values and behavior. Modern parents’ ultimate mission with their children is to be their friends. This presents major difficulties for a parent doing her duty to protect and train her children to be successful. When a parent’s number one priority is to be a friend to one’s child the word “no” becomes taboo.

Miley Cyrus’s obscene appearance on the Video Music Awards program became the rage of social networking sites and the media world. Her new image of a raunchy 20-year-old celebrity in the mode of Madonna, Lindsay Lohan or Lady Gaga is mind blowing to her young fans who idolized her as all American, Hanna Montana.

Billie Ray Cyrus of “Achy, Breaky Heart” fame may be ecstatic over his daughter’s incredible star status and even said he supports her new image makeover. Although, as her father he has to know her career is on a track to be a train wreck. His allowing her to have her own living quarters at age 16 and his inability to stand firm as a father to protect her has led her to the path of self-destructive infamous stardom.

Parents should learn a lesson from these star’s lifestyles to beware that being BFF (Best Friends Forever) with one’s child is a mission impossible. A parent can attempt to reprogram instinctual urges but at a high probability that they will lose sight of how to protect their child. The father and mother can make all of their decisions to appease their child but the child will suffer. The child will be disrespectful to her parents as the parents did not have the respect for their role of establishing limits and parameters.

Parents can imitate their child’s speech from infant to teenager using the child’s fad vocabulary instead of speaking to them as an adult. They can even go so far as attending the latest concerts while dressing like their teenager to blend into the younger crowd.  In other words do everything possible to be a friend to their child to please her.

A youngster interacts with many peers. Most will be acquaintances although a few will become friends. Some will take on idol status for the pre or full-fledged teen. These few will become the child’s best friends that will have a powerful influence on the behavior. This peer role modeling often is not what the parent wanted or expected.

The “friend parent” is shocked when her youngster goes behind her back engaging in partying, drinking and drugging behavior. The parents thinks that since they shared their most inner thoughts and feelings, their child would never do such a thing. This is delusional.

From an outsider’s perspective, it is understandable that the youngster was pretending to be a BFF to her parent. Initially the intimate relationship might have appeared to resemble a friendship but the child knew before everyone else that this adult was a parent.  The child would have many good reasons to go along with the game of being a friend from simply having the parent’s undivided attention to all the special privileges granted to the child to go along with this charade.

Finally, when the pre/teenager rebels to continue the covert self-destructive behavior regardless of the pleas and demands of the parent she realizes the child is out-of-control. The parent eventually comprehends that the friendship was a one sided farce.

The youngster makes it clear in tantrum after tantrum that he/she is not going to go back into the bottle after the genie has been let out. This young person has announced to the parents and the world that she will no longer be coaxed and bribed into again pretending to be a friend to the parent. The youngster has her own social world of friends and no longer needs or wants to pretend to be BFF.

Dr. Maglio is an author and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.blogspot.com.

COMMON CORE WILL PRODUCE SCHOOLS OF INDOCTRINATIONS

COMMON CORE WILL PRODUCE SCHOOLS OF INDOCTRINATION

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist

As the saga of the Affordable Care Act continues another mammoth program being pushed by the Department of Education for approval by all state legislatures is a national curriculum, which is called Common Core State Standards, CCSS. This is purposely misleading as they are national standards. This program would nationalize education against the constitutional provisions that prescribe this responsibility to the states.  The founders realized that giving the function of educating citizens to the federal government would eventually be used politically, to mold the minds of children by defining moral values and beliefs of the populace while enlarging their power.

By delegating the responsibility to the states the founders empowered the people and local neighborhood officials to create and execute their own school curriculum. They understood that decentralizing power of educating children would promote quality of education through local pride of their neighborhood schools, innovation, competition, continuity of instruction and the fostering of the moral values of the community. These neighborhood schools were grass root facilities scrutinized by the locals that kept our education nonpolitical and on a high level compared to other nations.

This local control of education has been transferred unconstitutionally to the federal government through greed, shrewd grants and regulation.  Already there are signs that government schools are pushing their progressive ideology down the throats of our children. In Skoke, Illinois 4^th grade classes were taught on work sheet lessons that government is equal to the family according to the lesson. It sets the rules and takes care of people’s needs such as food, education and health.  There have been other schools using students to sing the praise of our current president, preaching acceptance of previously perverted behavior and reciting collectivist slogans to convince students that government exists to take care of them.

CCSS expedites the process of making government schools a vehicle for propagandizing students. The centralized government would be able to “teach” moral relativism, fairness, political correctness, multiculturalism, tolerance for the progressive agenda and bigotry for the traditional moral values, male suppression, blurring the definition of “bullying”, hate crimes and revising history with impunity.  These Marxist/progressive concepts are changing the culture to welfare dependency.

Even though CCSS is not supposed to be a curriculum, teacher-training programs have already been developed with specific educational methodology within detailed curriculum guides to teach these standards. Teachers, state representatives and Jeb Bush were used as window dressing to make it appear that this was a bottom-up process. The Gates Foundation has funded almost every aspect of this training although it was a creation of Department of Education bureaucrats.  It has not addressed the incredible increase in non-teaching staff and union’s powerful adverse impact on U.S. education.

This top-down, one-size-fits-all approach just like No Child Left Behind will leave many children behind with no way to catch up. Teachers will have to teach to the test, be at the same page at the same time to cover the same material and agenda messages throughout the country. This is supposed to be a selling point for transferring students to other states who will be able to slide into the same deficient learning.

Academic vigor will be sacrificed for supposed “critical thinking.”  Notions such as, moral relativism, multiculturalism, tolerance and so on, which are progressive ideals passed off as undeniable truths, are arrived at by a supposedly superior level of thinking. These socialist concepts will be reinforced by the instructor’s exploiting their authority in subjective process activities such as open-ended questioning, brainstorming, sensitivity training and literary interpretations. These processes attempt to convince the students that non-traditional behaving and thinking is better. Since facts are irrelevant and ignored there can be no critical thinking. The concentration on emotion rather than facts increases the vulnerability of students to indoctrination because they will not have reliable data to draw contrary decisions.

Even 3 times 4 will not necessarily equal 12 because a student can be correct depending on fuzzy reasoning. There will no longer be cursive writing taught, which limits student’s ability to read historical documents, personal journals and letters. Revisionist history will paint the United States as an exploitive evil force.

Common Core students will not be measured according to ability. The CCSS will insidiously divide the students who are willing and able to comply from those who refuse to accept the worldview that is alien to their beliefs. It will not individualize instruction for advancing lifetime learners but indoctrinate for the common good of a centralized controlled government. Data collection on each child’s academic performance, interests, health care, family configuration, attitudes and values and probably that of their family members will follow them for life. Common Core is an unconstitutional fraud trying to be passed off as a quality reform in education.

Research CCSS for yourself and see it is another overreach of the ruling class to solidify a non-socially mobile totalitarian state.

Dr. Maglio is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.blogspot.com.

UNFAIRNESS LENS FOSTERS VICTIMIZATION

UNFAIRNESS LENS FOSTERS VICTIMIZATION

By Domenick Maglio Ph.D. Traditional Realist

Humans are imperfect beings. Most of us have awakened on the wrong side of the bed being less than pleasant for a period of time. There are people that are habitually nasty, even evil and others who are saint like.  One thing for sure, no one is perfect.

Any person regardless of religion, social class, ethnicity, gender or race will experience unfairness in their lives. Life is unfair even for the most seemingly fortunate. The local newspapers are full of prominent role models having personal set backs that precipitated their taking their own lives instead of resolving the issue that they considered unfair. It is the way each of us handles unfairness that determines how it affects our outlook on life. Becoming upset by every idiotic thing a person hears from others about a group they belong to places them on a path to be a perennial victim.

The majority of our higher education institutions are promoting a victimization agenda. They have adopted a model of psychological and sociological studies to attract and retain students. Women, Black, LGTB and Ethnic Studies were nonexistent in classical liberal arts programs. The introduction of these “studies” has indoctrinated students to perceive our institutions as systematically unjust to certain groups.

The phony studies and exploitive community leaders have encouraged students to use the rearview mirror. They believe all sorts of real and imaginary past abuses of their identified group are harming them and others. Supposedly these past injustices are preventing the members from living the “good life.”.

Being a member of a self-identified group does not give them the right to be discriminatory and hostile to those not belonging to the group.  Being intolerant and vindictive to members of another group perceived to be an adversary does not increase understanding but further divides the group. Developing a lens in students that emphasizes distorted unfairness fans the flames producing alienation and personal hatred and destroys national harmony. 

Progressive professor’s selective victimization propaganda has not assisted students searching for the truth but has hindered them.  It only establishes a warped perception of the members of the other group. There is no attempt to strengthen the intellect of the student to solve his own problems in the future. Rather it reinforces the internalizing of the blaming other groups or of the entire system for the individual’s difficulties in life. Instead of taking actions in one’s life to create a positive outlook and one’s own peaceful sanctuary they continue to direct anger at others.

A person who experiences an obviously ridiculous statement about his group should just ignore it.  Consider the source. Usually the person is being baited to react inappropriately. The individual’s calm, non-reaction of the ignorant person’s attempt to insult leaves him in control repelling future attempts by the perpetrator.

A mature person also learns not to look back to excuse himself from his own mistakes and failures. Blaming his behavior on the inadequacies of his parent’s raising of him or those of society in general does nothing to improve his situation. Taking responsibility for his own decisions and learning from them is a formula for being successful.  Picking oneself up by one’s own bootstraps is the American way.

A person who knows his own character and understands his actions is shielded from getting sucked into negative group think scripts that paint everyone outside the group as the insensitive oppressor. Nor should a person in a group accept negative stereotypes as valid, instead they should be motivated to try harder to prove these perceptions wrong for him and other members of the group.

This strategy of holding oneself and other members accountable for their own actions improves the overall group’s standards and status. This approach begins the process of being more acceptable and respectable to others allowing them to merge with the rest of society.

Concentrating on one’s freedom to do better rather than fantasizing on a utopian fairness, produces effective and independent citizens. It empowers individuals to change the course of their lives. No one can be a victim when the unfairness of living is overcome by intense striving to be the best one can become. 

Dr. Maglio is an author and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. You can visit Dr. Maglio at www.drmaglio.blogspot.com.