Curse at them, instead.
My friend Tara introduced me to a book I hadn’t been aware of before today. Go the F—k to Sleep, a parody bedtime story, is apparently what our generation considers parenting humor. In the interest of research, I listened to two minutes and eight seconds of this drivel in audiobook form before I gave it up for a waste of time. I don’t need to hear the whole thing to know the score.
Here’s my thirty-second review: It’s not funny. It’s not even clever. It’s just an entirely inappropriate expression of an entirely inappropriate frustration that today’s parents feel toward their children. I spend a good deal of my limited entertainment time weeding out unfunny “comedy” from my Netflix queue, so I’m not surprised that people find this humorous. People find a lot of things funny that are really just vulgar and stupid. This book is a symptom of cultural decay. It is utterly lacking in value, except as a diagnostic clue.
Not ten minutes after I commented on Tara’s post about this idiot book, I saw this article about a Texas mother who earned herself five years of probation and parenting classes for the horrific offense of leaving red marks on her child’s bottom. The woman’s children are living with their paternal grandmother until such time that the woman proves herself to be a “fit” mother again.
(Slightly off-topic: Something tells me that that mother/mother-in-law relationship was never very good, and the mother-in-law was delighted to find a way to use the family court system to show her (ex?)daughter-in-law who’s boss. Family courts operate outside the law, so unscrupulous family members frequently find ways to use them to settle personal vendettas, as some of my own relatives and thousands of fathers have sadly learned first-hand. Anyway…)
The money quote from the “justice” in the case:
“You don’t spank children today. In the old days, maybe we got spanked, but there was a different quarrel. You don’t spank children. You understand?”
So now, even though spanking is not illegal in the state of Texas, tyrants in black robes get to steal your children because they prefer their own culture (the holy culture of liberalism) to yours. And we wonder why children think they don’t have to listen to their parents! Parents today are shamed and even punished for disciplining their children in ways that have been known for centuries to be both humane and effective.
And so we’ve come to this sad state of affairs. Powerless parents all over the country, every night, are silently (or perhaps loudly) cursing their children because they can’t get them to behave the way every child in a decent home used to behave. A generation of parents that feels it doesn’t have either right or duty to apply percussive force to the bottoms of their children is a generation of helpless parents. No wonder they’re cursing! I’d be upset too!
I have absolutely no sympathy for parents who refuse to discipline their children, and then curse and despise their hapless brats for being what they’ve been trained to be.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Cindy,
Wow, this hit home with me! Just yesterday I was chatting with someone @ work about spanking children, and the lack of childrens RESPECT for elders, parents, teachers, law enforcement, etc..
There are so many things that have gone wrong in the past 40 years with the proper “way” to discipline children.
I honestly believe that IF things went back to washing mouths out with soap, spanking on the buttocks, taking away toys/privileages/cell phones, and a parent being able to stay home and care for their children, we would see a HUGE difference in society.
It is sad that (a huge percentage of) children in todays world can not go out doors and play.
It is too hot, parents afraid that someone wil kidnap their child, children think they have to have a computer or cell phone to amuse themselves, or children have zero social skills to play an out door game.
This “book” is proof that America has/is going to H*ll in a handbasket for sure.
The erosion of parental rights in America makes me sick, but what really sends me hurling are the American parents who sit quietly and let it happen. This is a democracy. What ever happened to we the people? I find it outrageous that social workers don’t care that children are verbally abused by their parents in the name of anger and frustration and then as soon as you lovingly and patiently spank the very soft padded bottoms of your children to correct and train, they are carted off to court. I am on a quest to get the word out about the Parental Rights Amendment and stop this nonsense.
It’s a good quest, to be sure! I haven’t checked out the Parental Rights Amendment yet, but I’ll do so.
Twitter: honeyandchz
June 20, 2011 at 5:27 pm
http://www.parentalrights.org
Recently, while shopping at a well-known retailer, my children had the shocking experience of listening to a trash-mouth cursing her children in tones loud enough for the whole department to hear. Bleeding inside for the victims, I looked at my own children to see tears streaming down their cheeks. And I had to wonder: How can a loving rebuke, coupled with a stinging reminder, be worse than the words that these children will have to remember for the rest of their lives? Spanking, done correctly, restores a child’s relationship with their parents. But verbal abuse sadly separates and annihilates them.
I think the bigger issue is parents not reinforcing what you are going to say. If you give your kids a 5 or 10 minute warning about leaving a place and then not leaving because they whine about it, who wins? The kid does! They quickly learn that they are in charge and it does not matter what mom or dad says or does.
Twitter: Homeschool_zoo
June 20, 2011 at 2:21 pm
You hit the nail on the head!
I recently had to alert store security, to a parent, in the parking lot, SCREECHING obscenities at a toddler. The blast from that verbal assault made ME want to cringe…and I was across the lot. (the security person was WAY cool…and high tailed it for the parking lot)
Why is that parents seem to think that screeching curse words at their kids is somehow better than a swat to the bottom? LONG before the parent is so frustrated, they cannot see straight…
I don’t find that book in any way amusing…I find it sad.
Twitter: TaraZiegmont
June 20, 2011 at 8:29 pm
I’m a non-spanking liberal, but otherwise agree with what you’ve said. There is nothing that excuses a parent’s speaking so badly of or to their child. When Allie was in the hospital in February, I heard so many awful things in the middle of the night from the other side of the curtain. I wanted to cry for those poor kids.
I think the problem is more a lack of consistency and follow through than a lack of spanking. As I said, we don’t spank (and obviously don’t resort to verbal abuse or meanness), but you’d better believe that my daughter knows Momma means business. She’s a kid. She doesn’t always do what I request the first time, but then there are consequences. Every time. It works for us and that is perhaps more than most parents can say.
I don’t think that every parent needs to spank, or that every child needs to be spanked. I do, however, think that each parent needs to decide that for him or herself, based on the personality and motivations of the child they’ve been given to raise. (I suspect you’d come closer to agreeing with me if you had a 5 year-old boy around the house. LOL) It is outrageous that a government official, acting with no legal grounds, would kidnap a child because of mere spanking. Regardless, it’s a fact that parents are too scared of legal and social repercussions to use their authority, and the result is unruly kids.
Twitter: donettadalman
June 20, 2011 at 9:17 pm
“I have absolutely no sympathy for parents who refuse to discipline their children, and then curse and despise their hapless brats for being what they’ve been trained to be.” AMEN!!!
I spanked my kids when they were little and they have turned out to be very respectful, well-behaved, non-violent (even though the “experts” say spanking makes them violent), productive human beings. If these “experts” would take a look at how so many productive members of society were raised they would realize that a lot of us grew up being spanked and we turned out great!
All these comments are great too! I 100% agree with what Linda Armstrong said in her comment. Our country would be a different place if discipline were the norm and parents actually raised their children.
The study that “proved” spanking causes people to be violent when they’re adults was deeply flawed, if I’m thinking of the same one you are. It didn’t distinguish between judicious spanking and hitting in anger. These two things are very, very different.
Twitter: donettadalman
June 20, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Yes, they always manage to make their statistics fit what they’re trying to accomplish with their agendas don’t they!! You’re very right – spanking and hitting in anger are two very different things.
I think that most people know better than to spank nowadays. Yes, it is true that some parents who spanked back when everyone spanked did so lovingly and fairly and their children did indeed grow up to be productive and even admirable members of society. Some loving parents still do this today. And hitting in anger is not discipline and should not be considered part of discipline. But unfortunately, a lot of parents do confuse hitting their child with discipline and end up abusing their children and then claiming that the courts are unfairly preventing them from “disciplining” their child. Yes, the Family Court system is truly, deeply flawed. But, that does not mean that you cannot discipline your child without spanking, and I think we really don’t know enough about the case to make a judgement about it either way. In my admittedly limited experience, the Courts are very biased towards letting parents do what they wish and so I am inclined to believe that there is something to this case that you are not seeing, like that the mother was hitting her child out of frustration and not as a gentle correction.
I am a productive member of society at this point, but I was spanked (not abused, by the way) and it did teach me that violence is an acceptable way of dealing with interpersonal problems, that it is OK sometimes for a large, powerful person to hit a smaller, powerless person, and that it’s OK for people you love to hurt you sometimes. I grew up to be involved in multiple violent relationships before I discovered that violence is, in fact, always wrong. It took years to learn new ways of handling frustrations and relationships and so on. I am not claiming that the violent relationships were a result of nothing other than spanking, as that is not the case. But I think we need to think about what we are teaching our children when we strike them for any reason.
And verbal abuse is another form of violence which needs to be rooted out from our society and from parenting practices as well. Please note: I am not accusing you or anyone else who spanks of abusing your children. I believe it is a bad practice but done lovingly and consistently and not harshly it is not abuse.
I know you and I are not going to agree about this subject, but I think that the whole nation needs to have a collective conversation about this very subject so that we can all have clarity about what is and is not abuse and we can start trusting each other more.
Oh, I totally forgot to say anything about the other half of your post, about that book. I’m with you, how is this entertainment? I was avoiding reading anything about it, but I did click over to the blog post you mentioned. I think the problem is the mainstream media picking up and championing it. My mother and her friends actually thought this was funny and said it made them think of me. My child has health problems that cause sleep problems and no, I do not think this is funny, either the cursing part or the implication that children behaving childishly is an unbearable problem. The thing is, if the story had been presented differently, I believe my mother’s reaction to it would have been more similar to Tara’s. Boo mainstream media!
Twitter: reallifesarah
June 21, 2011 at 11:55 am
We see it in the schools, too. I’ve had more than one child say to me “You can’t do anything to me, anyway.” and they were right. (Of course, I don’t advocate spanking in schools, but we were powerless to do any kind of real discipline.)
Oh, I totally advocate spanking in schools…as long as a parent is called to come do the spanking. I wouldn’t trust today’s crop of teachers to know how to properly apply a paddle to a bottom. ;0)
Twitter: beckyjwebb
June 21, 2011 at 9:11 pm
Jonathan and I were just talking about how parents no longer demand respect from their children. It is a tragedy for the children, the parents, and our society that parents are trying to be kids friends. How sad. Plus, children don’t understand what it means to submit to authority. And, what does that do when it comes to having a relationship with God? Unfortunately, it can only cause them to be led further and further from the truth. Discipline teaches children that they must obey authority. Without obedience we are completely lost.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!!!!!!!
“I have absolutely no sympathy for parents who refuse to discipline their children, and then curse and despise their hapless brats for being what they’ve been trained to be.”
You hit the nail on the head!
One that gets me is while at the store the kids yells and the mom yells and the kid STILL gets what they want! And yet parents wonder why their kids do not have respect.
I could go on and on, but you said most of what I would say!
Thank you again! :
You know sometimes I get frustrated when my little ones won’t sleep, but doesn’t that go with the territory? I think my kids are pretty well behaved in general but there are still times when their sin-nature creeps out, but I’ve always considered that to be a normal part of their maturing process. Goodness I don’t even know where to begin about a book like this, I’m glad you tackled a post on it.