Friday, July 8, 2011

Kizzy and Trophies

Interesting title?  I'd like to think so.  Kizzy, my friends, is my new-found heroine.  This is a Milwaukee mother - a black lady with a 13-year old daughter and 15-year old son.  It seems that after Summerfest, which I believe to be a 4th of July festival held along the lake, there was looting and a few robberies in the Riverwest neighborhood in Milwaukee on Sunday evening.  As Kizzy sat watching the news, the surveillance video played and, lo and behold, who should she see but her lovely children taking part in the looting.  Upon arriving home, mom decided to have a little chat with them and told them what she had seen.  She decided to sleep on it that evening and the next day - BAM!  Yes, she placed her kids in the car and took them to the police station.  Mom ratted out the kids.  For that, I say mom gets recognized.  She told the local news that she provides a stable loving environment and how sorely disappointed she was when she saw how her kids acted when she was not around.  Kizzy acknowledges that this is wrong and is telling other parents to do the same.  Is she doing anything out of the ordinary?  Well, not if this was 1975, but this is 2011!  How many times do kids get to publicly show their sense of entitlement until we say, "Enough!"?  This is one parent taking a stand and I, for one, think she deserves a lot of credit.  Way to go, Kizzy - You, my dear, are a rock star!



How did Kizzy go so wrong?  She didn't...and that'why I put 'trophies' in here, too.  Once again, one of my pet peeves made the Today Show.  Glaring and bold, they asked if giving trophies to every kid, merely for participating, is the wrong thing to do.  The question posed to a psychologist this morning was, "Are we helping or hurting our kids by doing this?"  I think the example above is a fine one that points, as they mentioned, to the sense of entitlement kids have nowadays.  Giving kids a trophy, as I have said (loudly) in the past, sends the wrong message.  We are telling our kids if they show up they get rewarded.  It isn't that way in sports, nor in life.  Life is not fair, though many of today's youth seem to think it should be.  Again, I'm really, really sorry that Timmy came home crying because he didn't get a trophy.  Tell Timmy to work harder.  Hey, Dad - go throw the ball with Timmy so he doesn't get smacked in the face with it and expect a trophy.  For what?  "Kid whose face stopped the ball fastest"?  We are hurting our children when we do not discipline or let them get hurt, either emotionally or physically.  Hate to break it to you, Mom and Dad, but you will not be there when your kid experiences some of life's most bitter disappointments.  Stop trying to shield them and stop thinking that they are all going to excel at everything.  Maybe Timmy can save his face if you take him to piano lessons rather than baseball.  Maybe, too, Jack, the ballet dancer, ought to be fielding punts instead of doing a pirouette.  Think about it.  Let's do right by our children and find what they do best...instead of what we WANT them to do best.

Until next time..........

2 comments:

  1. This ...THIS right here is the most important subject you preach on. Parents are ruining their children by not requiring anything of them in the guise that they
    feel to much was required of them and they are longing for the absence of their childhood. However what they forget to consider is that all that tough love and requirements is what made them what they are today, forced them to strive. So they give the world to their kids, let them have a vote most the time with higher priority than the adults in the house and create these self indulgent and self intitled brats that no one can stand who can't possibly live in the real world as they are so use to the world catering to them. What I find interesting as these parents have zero tolerance for other children that behave the way theirs do, as if to say the behavior is cuter when it's coming from someone that resembles you.Remember folks you are ultimatly raising an adult and it's your duty to teach them to function in the world, not fight the world to cater to them leaving them with zero life skills as they turn 18 and you move them out of your house so they can start making a life of their own going into their world expecting a fully furnished home, a high paying job with set daytime hours and vacation time......the sense of working for something and having patience is something they never had to do so they stuggle and whine and end up back on your door step....hope your proud because that is 100% your doing bet your glad now you didn't have to hear Timmy cry one night because he didn't get a trophy.

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