Family Values

Dear parents, grandparents, and other extended family members. Are you paying attention to how your dressing or allowing your young daughter’s to dress? Shorts are getting shorter and butt cheeks are hanging out. T-shirts are tighter and smaller exposing young breast. Dresses are shorter exposing innocent private areas. Leggings are becoming thinner featuring panty lines. Parents your thinking these are my children and no one has the right to tell you how to raise them. Reminder, this is a different world morals, values, and respect are not important to child molesters. I am thankful that back in the day I was raised and protected by a village.

Thank you for stopping by dragthepen.

The Joys of Parenthood

Dear Readers,                                          my son and my two granddaughters

 

This is just a matter of opinion and not intended to advise parents how to raise their children. Have you noticed that modern thinking parents no longer believe that it takes “ A village to raise a child”.  I am a baby boomer raised in the South by two parents who were very much disciplinarians. My father was a soldier and he believed in “ spoil the child, but use the rod” when necessary. My mother used a different approach when disciplining her children, she took away privileges, withheld allowance, and removed you from participating in important family events like birthday parties and BBQ’s. Above all my parents communicated with me and my siblings in a loving manner and only displayed displeasure by the frown on their face or the tone of disappointment in their voice. I have recently taken to observing the manner that modern parents verbalize displeasure towards their children and it is shocking. I have heard parents threatening their children how they would cause them physical harm for misbehaving. No, I am not talking about a minor spanking on the bottom, I have heard parents threatening to slap, kick, and punch their children.  And they do so by using the utmost foul language to describe their disapproval because their child is “ acting out”. Children will be l children, and what I see is parents who are getting younger and younger, and lack the patience, compassion, and the understanding that their world as an adult changed the moment they chose to bring a life into the world, and parenthood is a 100 percent 24 hour, 7 days a week, 356 days a year responsibility. Most young people become parents without a solid foundation, in other words, they are not emotionally, mentally, or financially prepared. They stumble through parenthood not grasping that true parenting means sacrifices, being opened to learning, and the understanding that being a parent means that life revolves around the needs of their children

Most young parents still feel the need to “ have a life” . Here’s some new information: your children are your life. Once you made the adult choice to bring forth life you do not get to choose which days you feel like being a parent. Your first allegiance as a parent is for the safety and welfare of your children. If nobody has told these young modern parents, let me have the pleasure to be the first to inform them that being a parent is a true gift, and children are the best part of our society, they remind us what’s important and they show adults that we are never to old to nurture the child that will always be in our spirit. Children encourage us to laugh, be silly, playful, and they give the best and sincere hugs. I don’t profess to be the world’s greatest parent. My one and only son ( who I called my one true love) was born into a world to a young unlearned and naive mother, and a father who misled me to believe that I was the love of his life, and that we were going to be married and live happily ever after. Well, he abandoned us when my son was 10 months old. I failed as a young parent because I lacked adult guidance and a support system. My mother was disgusted with me for getting “ knocked up”, my father did the best he could, but he was aging and illness took over his life. Every other adult in my life was dealing with their own chaos. I had to work to support me and my son,  and I never truly understood how to bond with him. He paid the price for being born to young parents. Today, he is a proud father of three, and he often tells me that he will never leave his children, and I know this is because of the manner that he was raised, by a strict grandmother, and absentee parents. 

 

my son

I am grateful today that my son, my one true love, has taught me a sincere lesson of unconditional forgiveness,  and at the age of 39, he allows me to be the mother that I always wanted to be, but didn’t know how. It’s like I said, children can teach us lessons, my son taught me that it’s not what happened, but what we will do now. I hope that many people will read this and tuck their children in tonight and let them know that they are loved. 

 

Thank you for stopping by dragthepen

Broken Family

Dear readers,

I saw something posted by my son on his Instagram page. No need to worry , my son is 36 years old, married 14 years to a fabulously talented and beautiful wife, who gave birth to my three amazing grandchildren ( two girls and a boy), Yes, I know I said no need to fret, but a mothers never ceases worrying no matter how advanced in age their children. My son is a family man. He is among the thousands maybe millions of young black men, who have  stood before man and God and said ” I do” and meant it. Nonetheless  it pained me to read this post:

Family isn’t what it used to be. It use to be time when you could go to grandma house, eat hang out with family, and just have a good time. Now everybody choose who they wanna deal with. Aunts and Uncles choose which kids to be proud of. Brother’s and Sister’s treat friends more like family. Cousins talk about each other like they aren’t flawed. Grandparents spend time with certain grand kids. And the only time you see everyone together is a funeral.

While your reading this post and discovery that your family has fallen on hard times. Pick up the phone and reach out. Plan a dinner, send a card, aplogized to the family memebers you haven’t spoken to becuase of a foolish grudge. the foundation of the next generation depends on strong family tides,

Whats say you?

Family or not

Dear readers,

We are living in a different time where the structure of  what it means to be a family  continues to break down, and this situation seems to get worse with each generation. Once upon a time, being a family meant that children were raised in a two parent home with the presence of extended family members. Nowadays, a family can mean a single parent home that is not limited to mothers only. Furthermore, Grandparents and other family members  such as: Aunts and Uncles, are taking in nieces and nephews to keep them from going into the foster care system. I may not have been the best example of a parent, but when I gave birth to my only child it wasn’t my choice to become a single parent, his father took flight, and that was the end of my hopes of raising  my child in a two parent home. He never had the chance to experience the joy of coming home to a mother and a father. Because of this I decided not to give birth to  anymore children. When I observe the damage children suffer due to the break down  in the way family was intended to be, I wonder, how will it be for my grandchildren generation.

What Say You?