I am going to take a break from my series on child development to tackle a subject I feel is very relevant for the times. It seems to me that we have become a society of victims and as long as we have a good excuse, we can rationalize almost any behavior. I am a big believer in taking responsibility for your own actions, and this should start in childhood. Therefore, indulge me as I rant for a little while.
"I'm trying as hard as I can"
The inspiration for this post started one day not too long ago when I was doing the one-on-one instruction with the five year old that I keep. The lesson was not going well, and he looked at me and said, "I'm trying as hard as I can." Now, the truth of the matter was that he was not even really trying at all. Therefore, his statement made me absolutely bristle. I looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Let's be honest about this situation. If you were trying as hard as you could, you would be conquering this easily. You are not even half trying. Do not tell me you are trying as hard as you can."
It is a sad commentary on our society that by the time children are 3 years old they understand how to use excuses to get out of doing the unpleasant. Unfortunately the adults in our society set the example for this far too well. Husbands and wives use excuses to get out of the household duties they do not like. Parents make excuses for not making the hard choices in dealing with their children. Employees make excuses for why they cannot take on a particular duty at work. Employers make excuses for why they cannot improve a certain problem in the workplace. Excuses, excuses, excuses. They are everywhere.
If you talk to any person that writes or speaks on the subject of success, they will tell you that excuses are the number one reason many people never reach their full potential. Successful people look at circumstances and try to find solutions. The majority of Americans look at circumstances and make excuses for every type of behavior under the sun. We are by far our own worst enemy. Our society will continue to decline until we decide that maybe just maybe we should stop making excuses and start taking care of business.
I am going to touch on a subject that may be controversial but it lies at the very core of the problem in our society. It used to be that when people did stupid things and bad things happened to them it was viewed as normal. People understood natural consequences. If you play on the railroad tracks and get run over by a train, that was just what happened. You should know better than play on the railroad tracks. Now, we sue the train company and try to come up with barriers to keep people off the tracks instead of tackling the real problem. We have removed the concept of consequences from our society. Nothing is ever our fault. We blame everyone and everything else but the people truly responsible for the circumstances. We have become a society of victims.
How does this play out in the early childhood world? We redirect instead of dealing with behaviors. We shield children from natural consequences because it might make their childhood unpleasant. Then we ruin the lives of the adults that take care of children when those children do absolutely foolish things and hurt themselves because they did not understand natural consequences. We are seeing this play out in older children with terrible consequences. I am thinking of the 12 year old boy that was fatally shot by the police officer for acting like he was shooting people in a public place with a toy gun. A 12 year old boy should have known better than to do something like that. On the other hand, we overreact to everything that deals with a gun in our society. The people that called the police about this boy were freaking out just as badly as the answering policeman. Who was at fault in this situation? Everyone including the victim. The boy did something foolish. The parents did not teach the 12 year old how stupid his actions were. The people overreacted to the boy and called the police, and the policeman shot first and asked questions later. However, I am not hearing anybody blame anyone in that situation but the police. There were at least three other parties that helped set up that fatal confrontation, but it is not politically correct to blame the other parties. This is ridiculous. How many times throughout history have people died because they made foolish choices at just the wrong time? We need to start having some extremely serious discussions about foolish choices and personal responsibility. Those types of discussions might have actually helped every single party in the above incident. We as a society have lost the ability to follow a train of events to a logical conclusion before we jump to a decision. Every single party of that situation acted without thinking it through.
What is the answer? Stop making excuses. Most situations have multiple people at fault at varying degrees. Take ownership of your part of the problem and do something about it. Teach children to own up to their mistakes and fix them. If everyone owned up to their part of the issue, many, many issues would cease to be. This is what marriage counselors tell married couples having problems. This should be what our leaders say to each other and everyone else in a society, which is sort of like a huge marriage if you think about it. We are all in this together for thick or thin whether we like it or not. Rant over.
I hope you enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!!
Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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