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Saturday, September 15, 2012

Why Are Kids So Sassy These Days? Bring Back Little House On The Prairie

I can recall a program to teach manners when I was in grade school. Every student in every grade was taught to say "please" when making a request and not to interrupt adults when they were speaking and if walking in front of someone to say "excuse me."

Well, today, there seems to be a declining interest in teaching manners to kids. But more troubling, there also seems to be a growing problem of kids talking back to their teachers and parents. I see this in the school my son attends, and by no means is he isn’t removed from the problem.

I can’t recall kids in grade school ever talking back to teachers. Where did all this sassiness and bossiness come from? God only knows.

I was mentioning this to Mark Joseph, father of five young girls who happens to be in the multi-media business as film producer, talk show host, columnist, author and media strategist. I shared with him the question of whether TV is creating all this talk-back culture we observe with kids these days.

Well, Teletubbies and Barney may not be a bad example, but part of the problem seems to be, in those TV programs, there aren’t any parents or teachers interacting with children. There are no authority figures in most modern TV and film programs for kids.

Maybe that is part of the problem, I wondered.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is the parents not the kids.

Anonymous said...

Spare the rod spoil the child.

Anonymous said...

Spare the TV, spare the child.

Anonymous said...

Because the parents don't know how to take their hands to child's rear end when it needs to be. The "time out chair" started this generation of kids that back talk and don't mind the parents.

Anonymous said...

The school system has become another social experiment the best thing you can do is home school your kid.