Unlawful parents put kids at risk

You’re a typical busy parent - a role model and leader, soccer and ballet on your mind. You’re driving down Main Street, with the kids in the back watching your every move, consciously and sub-consciously. Would you knowingly do something illegal in front of your kids?

Would you throw your coffee cup out the window, break the speed limit, change lanes without signaling, or unbelievably, with all the current public disapproval, reach for your cell phone and in full view of your children, make a phone call? These are all shameful, offensive and unlawful. Does it matter to you, that your kids are watching, learning, and could also be endangered by your actions?

For many unfortunate kids, these can be their parents' daily examples. Some arrogant suburbanites don’t think the small laws apply in their all busy, self-important suburban world. For most of us, these laws matter and we are beginning to take exception to the selfish drivers who endanger us all.

First they’re law breakers, second they are really, really dangerous, and third they just told their kids, the law is less important than their minivan reality. They just made an important law grey and worse, breakable, because they feel it isn’t relevant in their circumstance, and they are more important than an inconvenient rule.

There are three problems happening at once: they’re disgusting the drivers around them, who have chosen to follow the law, but since they’re selfish, they don’t notice, and second, their kids and my kids see them, and think that only some people have to follow the rules. Thirdly, they then justify to their kids that “it’s just a quick call” and that is the start of an even greater problem - rationalization.

Kids view most rules in black and white and only when authority figures begin to make laws and rules grey, do they begin to question the validity of such laws and rules. If your spouse smokes pot to unwind, because “pot should be legal anyway”, is he/she not attempting to revise the criminal code to suit themselves? Then these parents expect their kids to listen, when they tell them underage drinking, drugs and sex are prohibited or discouraged.

Some parents think day to day values are just learned in school, perhaps they should be taught by others such as teachers and coaches. This would absolve parents from taking responsibility for their children’s future indiscretions, regardless if they’re learning from their parents' bad examples every day.

If you are a parent who is too self-centered to follow some of the simple laws of society, (speeding, cell phone use) perhaps you could do your children a service, and give them a verbal disclaimer, “We, your parents, think we are above the law, we are selfish, and we are to self-absorbed in our own world to give you children our proper guidance. We are not interested in teaching you the basics of right and wrong, so don’t look to us for moral law abiding examples, because we are practicing unprincipled behaviors in front of you every day.”

In conclusion, if we use self-serving rationalization to suit our circumstances, then children and teens could apply the same rationalization in their own world, with potentially life changing consequences and possibly life ending results.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.