Parents are out of control

The young men and women who gained fame and misfortune while filming themselves during the Riot Act, of Stanley Cup 2011, have become symbolic of a generation of dis-associated youth, with little moral compass. However, many are the product of self-absorbed and narcissistic parents who thought not of what they could teach them, not how they could guide them, but what they could buy them and how much more they could indulge them.

Idiocy and self-serving excuses, the new sub-standard for many morally compromised parents is raising the indignation of earnest parents. There are many responsible parents who stand tall in the face of these ethically compromised parents who aspire to be best friends and confidents but end up pampering collaborators with their teenagers.

Many parents display shallow values, they’re too spineless to draw moral guidelines, and are too weak to enforce healthy boundaries. They subsequently have the audacity to blame everyone and everything but themselves, when their children end up incapacitated, in custody or deceased.

Trudi Snyder, the mother who knowingly condoned her 15-year-old taking booze on Kelowna’s party bus, is a good example of parental idiocy in action. She enabled, accepted and facilitated her minor’s dangerous behavior and later addressed it with some flippant comments, and admitted she had a lapse in parental judgment. This was after she used the media in an attempt to hold others accountable. A lot of responsible parents are asking; where is the Ministry for Children when kids are put at risk by parents who practice irresponsible supervision?

Photo: Contributed

Parents who host parties and buy liquor for minors should be held accountable, by their peers, by the MCF, and by the police. If a low income parent in an apartment building had a party for teens, the MCF would be there in an instant. Why aren’t the authorities up in suburbia charging parents with negligence, supplying liquor to minors and child endangerment?

What parents fail to recognize, is the degradation of societies values in young people, didn’t start with the internet or Facebook. It started with a poor upbringing, vague values, tolerant morals, and inconsistent ethics that parents demonstrated in front of their children.

Driving habits that are illegal are a good example; the law didn’t apply to many parents because it was inconvenient or meaningless in their all-important world, “just a quick cell phone call” “the speed limits to slow anyway”. These selfish, self-serving, rationalization’s seeded impressionable minds with the ideal of that one person, one person’s perception, and one person’s impulse of the moment, is more important than the people, the community and society at large.

Given some parents choose to circumvent the law and introduce alcohol years ahead of the appropriate age, it’s no wonder teens are using this gateway drug, to bigger and better highs.

If the parents demonstrate a compromised value system, one full of greys, not black and white, right or wrong, then the children grow up questioning and painting the world in pastel colors that allow them to do as they please, unaccountable to anyone, teachers, police, authority, and least of all their parents.

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