I wonder what is happening to our generation, and often wonder what happened to the one before it. Some of the women I know who are older than me (that would be 26 years of age) and I do mean a very few, must have slipped through the cracks. My mother being one of them, when I was coming up, I found that a lot of girls and boys my age didn't fear their parents like I feared her. I don't mean fear as in for my life (but at times that would be the case), but more the consequences of getting caught at doing something wrong. Some of you may know what I mean. Looking at us now, as adults, with children, it is scary! Scary because some of us who had that fear of the discipline from our parents aren't instilling that into their own. Scary because I see some of these children running the adults. Scary because it seems like only a handful of the children have a choice of the right path from a paved path that they can and will create with no guidance.

If I was a gambling woman, I would say that every girl child said at sometime that they were not going to be like their mother. I know I did, and of course I am most like her than I could even imagine. With some fine tuning here and there. I often see with a lot of the 'I'm never going to treat my child like that' young women of today have children with attitudes, or are mean, arrogant, spoiled, and down right BAD!!

For example, there is this one child whom I see everyday for she goes to the same Day Care Provider. This child is rude, sassy, and is way too grown for her age. At first I thought that she was like that just away from her mother, but then she quickly had me realize that she is like that ALL of the time. Two days before my son's birthday, he asked her to come to his party in front of her mother. I had no way of telling that child no she couldn't come because of her bad attitude, so I agreed, knowing that when she is in my house that my rules RULE. But fortunately, it snowed and nobody came. There is no way that a child should stir up that type of reaction in an adult. Nor should a child be allowed to talk or act in such an adult manner. So I ask who is the adult? This grown little girl or her mother?

These children will not understand real life when the time comes. They will not know how to handle it when they say yes and the Real World says no. With out the teachings, the good teachings that our parents may have tried to get us to live by, these children will be defenseless and clueless. It starts at birth, and not at 16. It starts with no, that's it, and not with no, well, okay. It has to stop when the child talks back, and not when it's YOU that fear them.

When we take back our roll in their lives we are taking back our chance to do right by our parents, by them and then by our future.