Seriously? Part 2

Ok, the other day I posted about the newspaper telling people how to clean their houses...now its how to take care of their kids.

We have several schools in the area that have closed due to the swine flu scare. This presents a bit of a problem for working parents who weren't expecting this. Finding childcare for those kids is a legitimate problem if you can't get off of work. However, the local news last night was reporting that now parents must try to find ways to occupy their kids at home. The news so helpfully suggested occupying them with play-doh, paints, or board games. They even had a live shot of a stack of board games, you know, in case you've never seen one before!

They also stated that if you were planning on taking them to any activity centers in Fort Worth that you couldn't do it because they were all closed too.

Ok, I have a couple of problems with this. First of all, if you have children you should know how to take care of them without any help from the local news. Unfortunatly, not everyone does, I guess, because the news keeps finding plenty of them to interview. I don't think children need to be occupied or entertained every minute of the day. Hello, let's just let them be kids. Maybe if we let them occupy themselves every once in a while they'd develop creativity. Can't they just play with their toys or with each other?

Second, I think the media assumes all Americans are completely ignorant and helpless without the heroic media telling them what to do at every moment. Unfortunatly, I think there are plenty of Americans that believe that is true as well.

I wish that people would just raise their kids. Whether they go to public or private school or they are homeschooled, we should all be raising our kids. So many kids today are put into daycare at such an early age that I think they are really missing out on being raised by their parents. Instead, they are being monitored by various institutions for most of their lives. They have to constantly be doing a structured activity all day, every day. When do they just get to be kids?

I worked in one of those big, chain daycares. There were some kids that would be taken there before school. The daycare took them to school and picked them back up again. Then, their parents came around closing time, wisked them out to go to baseball practice or ballet or some other extracurricular activity. So, this was their day: daycare, school, daycare, practice, home to go to bed and do it all over again the next day. How can you raise a child if you are never with that child?

I think it is this institutional attitude that makes everyone think that kids must be engaged in a structured activity all day long. And well, the news thinks they should be so it must be truth? If children are at home for a week, can't parents figure out what to do with them? Most parents I know could, but apparently, there are those who cannot. (I see them interviewed on the news almost every night now.)

It is one of my greatest wishes that American parents will take back their kids from the government and the media and raise them up to have morals, ethics, and common sense the way it was meant to be done.

I think so many Americans have just gotten so used to the media sticking their noses into our lives that we don't even notice anymore. So many people seem to just believe everything the media says without realizing the media has its own agenda. Wake up, America! We don't need the media to tell us how to live!

Seriously?

I read an article in our local paper today. It was about how to clean your house. It's in their series of do it yourself things that can help save money in this economy. That's right...How to clean your house. When did this happen? When did we become a society of people who don't know how to clean up after themselves?

I understand if you have kids, a job, a house, etc. that you may hire someone to clean your house. That's understandable. Also, it's always nice to read tips on how to clean stubborn stains or such. However, the tone in this article was how to do the basic things like vaccuuming and putting stuff away in the bathroom. It had a "really, you can do it" tone. Seriously? You plug the vaccuum into the wall, turn it on and push it! Do people really not know how to do that? Put the toothpaste in the drawer when you are finished. Hmmm...that's easy enough.

At first I thought, Boo for the paper. They are assuming that their readers are helpless adults who don't know how to clean up after themselves. Then, I got to thinking....I've heard people say things like that! There really are those people out there.

Here are some quotes from the article:
"Declutter the bathroom counter by putting things away in drawers and under vanities."

"Do your own windows"

"Keep a spray bottle of all purpose cleaner handy under sinks for quick wipedown jobs."


Being a stay at home mom, I am here to clean my own home. Even when I worked full time, though, I still knew how to clean my home and did it efficiently. If people really don't know how to clean up their own house, then they have a bigger problem than the economy! I think many are not passing basic "take care of yourself" skills onto their children these days. That is sad. That is what I came away from the article thinking...how sad.

Now, my house may not be the cleanest all the time, but I clean it and I know how to clean it. And most importantly, I'm teaching my kids how as well.