So my wife and I were talking last night about a ton of stuff, such as incestuous couples having biblical precedence in their actions since Adam and Eve's family tree didn't exactly fork in the beginning, and who the inventor of doors was, and my idea for an invention for celebrities, and then I told her that I was quite weird. I consider myself quite a liberal, but at the same time, I am tremendously conservative. My wife said I was more conservative than I was, and I probably have to agree with her.
I told her this, and I will get some flak about this, but I told my wife that I didn't think it was a great idea for our kids to go to friends' houses to play, or to spend the night. I know, boo, hiss. And I'm not even talking about now, I'm talking well into their teenage years even. Yeah, I know. Am I a Nazi? Well, no, that'll be an oxymoron.
The logical comeback would be that hey, idiot, kids do have parents, you know. Parents ensure that their kids have a safe home, and for the most part, they make sure that any visiting kids will be safe as well.
Well, yeah, and no.
I personally haven't had a bad experience per se, and even with JL there's only been one instance whereby the parent was lame as hell. It was just as bad as not having a parent around. But okay, let's say that the parent doesn't own a gun that he doesn't lock up, or that he doesn't buy drinks or cigarettes for his children. Let's say this parent makes sure that nobody swears, no trash is talked, and is basically a saint on the side. But you know, the kids go to the room, and there's either a TV in there, or a computer. Is that bad? Yes. And No. Yes, they'll likely watch MTV and surf the internet, or look at photos they've taken on the camera. Or they can turn up the music, the videocamera, and do stripteases for youtube. I'm not kidding, it's not that rare to find kids on youtube in their underwear. Sometimes you don't have to even look that hard. They could get on a webcam and flirt with someone online, and not have any knowledge of how their webcam can be captured. One of JL's friends, Kaylee, swear to god was like 4 years younger than JL at the time, so she was 11 or 12, and she was over at our place wanting to watch BET. BET is fine for some people, but not for me.
Yeah, I'm paranoid, I can't shield them forever. The world has a lot of vices, and goddamn if I don't partake in a few of them. However, I'd like to be there when it happens, so that I can educate them. Porn? Yeah, it's around. Don't click on it. Go enjoy your childhood and your cartoons. Guns? Yeah, they're fun but you won't touch one until you know how to handle one, and the enormous burden that it comes with.
Well, I'm off on a tangent, but yeah, I don't mean to shelter my kids. Not at all. But I think sometimes there are a lot of things that parents can do to protect their children. I don't want my kids to turn out one way because I was too lazy to say, "Perhaps that's something you don't need to see right now." or "You don't need to be doing that now." I will get a lot of crap, from other parents, from my own children, why my kids aren't given the same rights, privileges, and access as the other kids at school, and the only thing I'll have to say is that I'm their father. And I'm not trying to hide the truth, but hold it off a little longer.
When I was in kindergarten, or around that age, I remember getting ready in the morning with my mom in the kitchen. We lived on the 12th story, and I remember hearing a loud crack, the sound of a tree or something. We looked out the window, and we knew something was up. Across the street, people were starting to gather. We had to go by the building somewhat to walk to my kindergarten, and I don't know if I knew, or if my mom told me, but someone had jumped off the building. There was a crowd and I think I told her I wanted to go see, but my mom said no. And I cannot tell you how glad I was she didn't just indulge me.
It's an extreme example, or is it really? The internet's blessing and curse is that it is pretty much a free internet. I want it to stay free and uncensored. When I hear of China censoring websites, even Livejournal, it annoys me. Actually, when I surf youtube for things like Hello Kitty, and a banner with a woman in a bikini comes on, it annoys me. But I like the internet to be free. And damn straight when my kids need the internet, it'll be in the family room, within my sight. We did that with JL, and we'll do that with Alex and Zoe.
I'm probably overcautious, overprotective, overbearing to a certain extent. MY struggle stems from my cultural upbringing, versus the typical American upbringing.
I don't know, feels like our society entitles children to have an excessive dose of freedom, privilege, and rights. Don't get me wrong, children have basic human rights, that's a given. But own phone, TV and computer in the room? Nah. Allowance? Maybe, if they work for it, but my teens will never have expendable income, because we will either monitor their spending or all of it will go into savings. Car because they're old enough to drive? No damn way. They can drive when they're 18, and have a job to drive to. It is not a coincidence that teen-related automobile deaths are higher than other age groups.
I dunno, a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that I'm diving into old mini-dv tapes right now and archiving them on DVD. I've done it before, but there's been no organization, so I can't usually find what I'm looking for. So now I'm labeling everything, and naming the disc and tapes. And to see them just a year ago and how much they've grown makes me worry that they're already growing up too quickly.
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