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Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights
Perhaps you are right. But, I do not live in a 3rd world country, and I enjoy the luxury of allowing my children to be children for as long as they are children.
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Agree wholeheartedly. Once we're adults, that's it for childhood, there's no going back, no matter how immature some of us are. We can allow them to keep their childhood ways without treating them like babies or the direct opposite-treating them like adults.
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Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights
I'm not sure how to address this. I mean, I'm 44 years old, but I'm always going to be my mother's "baby". Molly-coddling. Hmmm...let's see...well, let's look at it this way. Mistakes have to be made. It's how we learn. While we have to allow our chilren to fall down and scrape their knees, it is a parents instinct to protect thier child. There is a vast spectrum between never allowing the training wheels to come off, and allowing a child to ride his bike off of the roof. The best that we can do is to be there to help pick the child up when they take a particularly nasty tumble.
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And protecting them from that nasty tumble if it's 100% certain that would be the result.
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Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights
Again...I do have the luxury of not living in a jungle, and will make the best of it. What is deviant, or wrong, is predicated by the needs and values of society as a whole. While it may be perfectly acceptable to follow certain practices in my allegorical jungle, following those same practices in Pleasantville, USA will justifiably land you in prison.
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I don't see how anyone could compare the practices to a third world country to one that is not. Someone had brought up the point of people 100-200 years ago living in 1-room log cabins and having sex. There were also gunfights and disease...life expectancy was low; women had babies at 16, 17 years of age and kept having them until they no longer could or died.
Society has changed, mostly for the better.
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Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights
Don't read so much into it. There is nothing wrong with letting children "know" about sex. They are, in my own opinion, ready to know as soon as they start to ask questions about it. That is not the same as allowing them to participate. And I do believe that allowing a 9 year old to "watch" is tantamount to participation.
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Agreed again. This, to me, was tanatamount to forcing that participation. Anyone with half a brain would have either left the room to get it on or told the child to do so. This kid is probably going to start having sex by age 13, because 'it's no big deal, mommy liked it'. Or go the other extreme and be traumatized into thinking it's 'disgusting'. Either way, I don't see one thing 'healthy' about this situation.
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Originally Posted by Bill O'Rights
I see what you're saying...I really do And, to some degree, I agree wholeheartedly. I see far too many young adults, and...oh, what the hell...even older adults, that were never allowed to mature.
On the other hand. We have the luxury (and that's not a bad thing) to let children be children when they should be children.
Look at it this way. I grew up in Pennsylvania coal country. A hundred years ago it would've been very common for a 9 year old to go work in the mines. Somewhere along the line, we saw that that wasn't right. We let them be children. As a result, I didn't have to go work in the mines. I got to play. I got to grow and mature and develop at a healthy pace. Am I making any sense?
Look, I'm not going to take the tired old "You don't have children, so you could never possibly understand." route. That's a cop out, at best. What I will say is that you (a collective you) have to understand that children are not miniature adults. They need to grow. And they need to grow at an appropriate pace.
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My spouse's grandmother was married at 16, had her first child at 17, became a grandmother at 37. This was over 80 years ago. Now, when that happens, we immediately think, that poor deprived kid. My kids are almost 15, and they are still 'kids', albeit smart ones that I can converse with on a more adult level.
But, like I said earlier, and I say it to them, they need to keep that kiddom, enjoy their lives as kids. Once they're adults, they can't go back. Forcing them to 'accept' or 'view' what is, foremost, an intimate part of that adulthood is, to me, a form of abuse.
Had I known this woman, a hard smack to the back of her head with a 'wtf is WRONG with you??' would probably have been required.