I have a son who attends first grade in a public school system. As any parent knows, when you make the choice to put your child in the care of others they become influenced by the decisions of whatever establishment they are a part of and who ever is teaching them. In this case, the government system.
It’s hard to see these change in a negative way as the year pass, and even harder to see your children’s lives continually effected by it. As a 28 year old, I attending school from 1990-2003. They were good years to attend school in my opinion, but maybe my own parents saw change they didn’t approve of as well. Things were still innocent at least. We were allowed to have candy on valentines day, wear costumes on Halloween, bring in cookies on our birthday, and buy our own school supplies and have multiple recesses a day. All things my son goes without at his school. But I guess if it’s the norm in their day, then do they really miss out on it?
But what really broke my heart is a conversation we had over the holidays. My son was supposed to fill out a worksheet about how we celebrate Christmas as a family. As Christians I mentioned, why don’t you write about how we all sit down and read the story of Jesus’ birth before we open presents? He replied with, No mom, I can’t write about that. I go to a school that’s public. The way he emphasized the word public, like it was covered in dirt or something made me laugh, but it also made me sad. He explained that they weren’t allowed to talk about God at school.
I explained to him that he is allowed to talk about how he reads the bible and how he believes in Jesus at school any time he wants and that maybe there are other kids that also read the bible on Christmas morning in his class. He seemed nervous when I said this, and I told him that God would be very happy if he talked about Him in class, and I said if your teacher has a problem with it, you have her give me a call.
He ended up writing the story, but never shared the Word. I’ll take the baby steps.
We have lost our values as parents, as teachers, as the education system. As the people who are raising up the next rulers of our nation. We have completely lost all sense of our morals. I love an article written by Ben Stein about this very subject (read about it here > http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-891899) I highly recommend you give it a read.
So basically we have chosen, as those care givers, to impress that freedom is the most important quality a person should grow up with. As long as you have freedom, you can make your own choices from there. Freedom to believe in whatever higher power you choose. The freedom to say whatever you want and be protected by the 1st amendment, regardless of consequence and lacking those moral guidelines we are preaching AGAINST and resulting in hatred and bullying and death. Freedom to bear arms protected by the second amendment, which combined with that lack or a moral compass, has resulted in shooting after shooting and death after death. We have the FREEDOM to sleep with whoever we want, not think about our actions, and when we are faced with impending consequence of an unplanned pregnancy we have the FREEDOM to kill the baby. Thank goodness for that one.
We have chosen to have the freedom of letting our children ‘make their own choices’. ‘To believe in whatever god they want to believe in’. ‘To choose to dress how they want and live how they want and sleep and eat and be friends with whoever they want because we don’t want to impress our standards as their PARENTS onto them and possibly stunting who they could grow up to be’. We are letting our children make their choices to ‘help them’ but all we are doing is hurting them. Children are not supposed to be the ones to make the choices, they are not mentally equip to make the decisions of what they should eat for dinner and what they can look at on the internet and when they should go to bed. Much less if they should believe in GOD or not.
You better believe I want my children to have the same moral standards as me. Despite all of the freedoms that I have available to me, I choose not to utilize them because my parents found it extremely important to express their morals values on me growing up, and now I have the FREEDOM to do the same for my children. Did I always like it as a rebellious teenager? Of course not. But my parents, like all good parents, didn’t give up on me when I said no, and sure as heck didn’t let me make my own choices.
My poor little boy does not live a sugar coated life. He does not get to do things his way. Every morning when I pack his lunch, which he hates that I don’t let him buy, he says ‘ok mom, (so matter-of-factly) I don’t need any vegetables in my lunch today.’ I just give him a little laugh and I slice up peppers and radishes to go in his lunch. If it was up to him he would never eat vegetables. But he does, and weird ones too, and he rarely complains about it because it is standard in our house hold. When he does something good, a good grade, cleans up his room, eats all his food without a lengthy discussion, he says ‘What do I get!’ I say, ‘you get the satisfaction of doing a good thing’, and I thank him and give him a kiss and walk away.
My child also loves God very much. You can tell by the way he lives. You can tell that he makes choices and says things and does things based on his endearing beliefs in Jesus. The way he acts towards his brother, the way he participates in Sunday school, the way he prays, one his own, every time we sit down for a meal. And it melts my heart every time he does, although I don’t show it too much because I want him to know that it is standard in our household.
What are we for our children if we are not their moral, ethical, emotions, spiritual, physical compass. We give life to kids so that we can produce honest hardworking kind members of society when they get older and are sent out in the world. If we let them run free making their own choices regardless of consequence… well we see how rampant bullying and sex and killings are these days.
I choose, and will continue to choose, to shape my child’s mind until the day that he walks out of my house. I hope you choose to do that too.
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