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Show THE THUNDERBIRD frpmuui MONDAY NOVEMBER 10, 1986 PAGE 5 ijj?i WASCOMAT Don't squeeze kids too tightly double load Washers get a maternal yearning every six months. Something infantile catches my eye and for a fleeting second I'm a mother, holding, rocking, teasing my bundle of joy. Seconds later am wiping a pea soup substance off that bratty bundle and the fantasy is over. I am frightened of kids. am afraid of producing someone that's a drag to be around. Or a menace to society. Or someone with a huge chip on his shoulder. We are the products of our parents, like it or not. By age five a child's personality is developed. These years are spent primarily with the parents, and their importance cannot be with this Only 25C Each I COUPON I I FULL SERVICE LAUNDROMAT 430 South Main Street, Cedar City, Utah 84720 (801) 586-696- Expires 111686 overemphasized. Through good intentions, a parent may wish to build a wall around a child. To shelter him from the world. To make it easy on him. cannot argue that the world is often an ugly place. But having his head thrust in his sandbox can't be too pleasant an experience either. How tightly must one hold a child before he bucks the system? It's different for every kid. Some will not ever buck. But they will suffer, one way or another. I've often wished my conscious mind had a better memory of those days when everything in the world was new. (Some drugs are known to produce the same effect a possible motive of drug users?) Back in the days when babysat for a living envied the baby who marveled at lint balls on the couch. found renewed interest in lint. When the mother returned we were scolded for being active so late, for laying on the floor examining "dirt." Sometimes wonder how such children turn out. Suppose this child was not allowed to be tossed in the air, a common practice for bored parents. Suppose he was forbidden to get "dirty." Suppose he was discouraged from reading any text containing the word "telepathy." Education consists of subjecting a student to all intrigues of life, to offer another's thought in order to spawn one's own. We are, after all, interested in individualizing our youth, aren't we? When a child is restricted in his individual thought he learns to conform. Take a good look at world history. Has conforming always yielded a positive outcome? One cannot be dedicated to a concept, religion, school of thought, etc., unless he has seen the other side of things. A choice must be made for total dedication. It is obvious why some parents do not wish to give their children a choice, for there certainly is an element of risk. He may choose the undesirable. But he is an individual. He has that right. No one not government, not theologians, not parents has the right to deny an individual that right. And shielding a child from the choice only causes resentment, confusion, rebellion. We can only hope for our children, our future children. The world is a rough place. They may become a drag to be around, or a menace to society, or possess a big chip on their shoulder. That's the chance we take in procreation. When you get right down to it, it is their responsibility. Every person is responsible for his own life, his own happiness. You as a parent must provide a positive, loving, supportive background, but the end result is out of your hands. Pretending that the world exists only as far as the sandbox in the backyard will burden you with a dependent child, and burden him by not providing a clear sense of self. Maybe the culturally disadvantaged child is the one who cannot utilize his potential because he can't breathe, can't think for himself, and doesn't know who he is. Good intentions or otherwise, this kid loses in the long run. Perhaps the overprotective parent smothers and shields his child because he has seen awful things in his lifetime. Maybe he thinks he can somehow spare the kid from unpleasantness by merely painting a bad picture for him. But human curiosity often thrusts a him into the experience anyway. You can't tell anyone anything they have to find out for themselves. Maybe the overprotective parent overprotects for selfish reasons. He might need to feel needed and indirectly encourages his child to be dependent and helpless. Or maybe this parent knows no other way to parenting. What needs to be said, however, is that a terrible injustice occurs each time a child is spared the truth and reality of life. You are not doing your child a favor, my friend, you're giving him a handicap he will struggle to free himself of. I I IkUJH TAKE HOME A DOUBLE FEATURE! 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