Wow, I feel so bad for not blogging on my xanga! I've been really busy lately, but I miss putting my ideas out for me to see and read later... I'm making no promises about how often I'll update this thing, but I will try harder! (Is it too early for New Year's Resolutions? Anyway, onto the topic...

1) Parents and the lack of parenting...

Obviously, something's going wrong with the way people "parent" this days. At work it's not uncommon for me to see a mom with 5 kids looking for a movie to rent while her kids run around the store and create a mess. I've seen shelves fall, kids run into glass windows, heard of a kid getting his head stuck under a desk... And of course, the parents act as if they are blind to the whole ordeal. And don't you DARE say something to those kids, or the parents will try to eat you alive!

My mom works at Kaiser and she tells me all the time about the way parents allow their children to act in the pediatrics office. It's awful. Our society has had a paradigm shift. The role of parent and child have reversed. There was a huge argument over the need for those gigantic SUV type strollers on a message board, and it was crazy! The thread initially started out as ways to improve the problem of stroller parking at Disneyland, and almost immediately, parents began throwing venom like mad! When I suggested Disney should only allow use of their own strollers in order to cut down on the problem of stroller parking, I was flamed big time! Someone said something to the affect of "studies have shown that children respond better to their own strollers rather than a rental..."

WTF? It's a stroller! When I was a kid, I walked. But when I did use a stroller, I used a rental. I have fond memories of being pushed around in a Sea World Dolphin stroller. I don't recall throwing any tantrums either..

With all this focus on children, you'd think there would be an improvement in the way young people conduct themselves. That's not the case. Nearly everything is up from sex, to drugs, to the overall lack of respect for other people.

If it's this bad now, I can't imagine what the NEXT generation is going to be like...