More Proof That Most Baby Boomers are Shitty Parents

Apparently, some parents actually encouraged their children to skip school to see the new Harry Potter movie!
What's wrong?
Is the movie closing on the same day?
Your kid can't wait until the weekend?

Great values you're teaching your kid, Boomer.
Your child's entertainment is more important than their schooling.

That's the problem with what I've started calling "New Age Parenting".
Don't let your children experience any failures.
Fix everything for them.
If they do something terrible at school, run down there and yell your head off at his/her teachers and blame them or some other child in your child's class.
Make sure you do it in front of your child so that your child also feels that he/she doesn't need to take responsibility for his/her own actions, or listen to his teachers, or treat others with respect.

If they want to stay up until midnight, let them.
If they want to be on the Internet until all hours, let them and don't bother checking to see what they're up to (it's an invasion of their personal privacy).
Let them visit chat rooms with no monitoring by you and then blame the Internet Provider for not having better ways of "protecting" children.

Don't require them to earn anything.
Buy them every thing they want.
If they hurt themselves in a public place because you're not monitoring them, sue the venue.

Let them speak to people rudely and don't reprimand them for anything.
Let them do what ever they want in public and at others homes and never say anything to them that might affect their fragile self-esteem.

In my opinion, this all boils down to bad parenting

If you ask me, I think that the rise in childhood depression and the medicating of our children comes down to permissive parenting.
Children function better with stable and consistent limits.
Parents are allowing children to make too many adult decisions.
One of the things I remember about my childhood was that I didn't have to make day to day grownup decisions.
This was my mother's job to do.
She didn't ask my opinion on anything and I trusted her to make the right decision for me.
Ok, she didn't always make the right one but I was relieved of the burden of having to worry about adult problems before I was mature enough to understand the situation.
Boomers are confusing their children by allowing them to make adult decisions before they are developmentally able to understand what they are deciding.

That's part of the beauty of being a kid.
You can just live for a while without worrying about being an adult...you can actually look forward to it, instead of being one before you're ready.

Way to go, Boomers....

Uja's Proverbs: Episode 3

"You whip the ox that pulls the wagon".

This particular proverb hits home for me.
Wherever I have worked in my life, it has always been the case.
Bosses and Teachers have always pushed me to my "potential".
The fact that they didn't push the lazy asses that I thought needed pushing pisses me off.

That's why now that I'm a Boss, I push the lazy asses because the motivated propel themselves.

That's why the Chihuahua hates me.
I like it like that

Uja's Proverbs: Episode 2

"Life is a barrel full of shit and honey.
Sometimes you have to eat a lot of shit before you hit any honey."

This the phrase I hear from my Uncle whenever I even begin to complain about anything.

Uja's Proverbs: Episode 1

"Go ahead and cry.
You'll pee less."

This is the phrase I have written on my keychain.
This phrase was said to me at least a thousand times when I was a kid.
Don't look for sympathy from any of my older family members.
Most of them where children right after the Second World War in Eastern Europe and are hard pressed to feel sorry for our overindulged asses.

Red Lobster or Bust

Today is my Mother's birthday.
It's become somewhat of a tradition for my Uncle (Ma's brother) to take us to Red Lobster to celebrate.

It recently occurred to me that it's always just me, him and my mother.
The rest of the family is never there.
Then, again it occurred to me that it just seems right this way.
My mother, uncle and me are kind of a separate family on our own.

For the following reasons:
My mother brought my uncle to Canada.
My Uncle helped raise me when my father left us.
Whenever my mother needed help, if I got out of hand, he was there.
He cut his parenting teeth on me (and take it from me, he was tough).
I was surprised at how soft he became with his own daughters.
It was his car I had to look for in the neighbourhood if I was doing something that my mother had told me not to do
(Believe me, he drove around the neighbourhood a lot I couldn't get away with shit).

Yes, in a certain way, we are a separate little family.
A sidebar family, if you will.

I enjoy these dinners because they talk about things that I have never heard about before.
It's like a little trip back in time.
They talk about their childhoods.
The people they remember and have no one but each other here in this country to share those memories with.
It's kind of like what I had previously said about my friend Karla.
She's my witness.
They are a witness to each other's lives.

Sometimes, I think that your life changes so drastically over the years, that it's hard to imagine that you once had a completely different life. Maybe a simpler one, a happier one or just the fact that back then, you would never have imagined yourself where you are today.

Life sure is funny that way.

Well, I'm off shortly for my yearly trip down memory lane with them...
I'm sure there will be another episode of "My Mother Says" when I get back.

Hmmm, I should start "My Uncle's Proverbs" because he's a plethora of them.