From my heart...

I watch our world headed for destruction if things do not change. We are racing toward the edge of the cliff and either the human race is not aware or enough of us simply do not care. We pollute the air with appromiately 23,000 pounds of carbon annually used to run our homes. We pollute our water making about 43% of rivers and lakes are polluted. We pollute the very ground we grow our food from and pollute the minds of our children. We cut trees at a rate of 77,381 square miles per year, burn fossil fuels like they are a never ending resource and humans are overpopulating our earth as we losing species of plants and animals due to extinction. Our home is out of balance.

You say it is the survival of the fittest, I say we are like a stampede heading for the cliff. We are on the brink of causing our own exticntion.

But on to my major concern which is our children! They are our future and yet we are robbing them of theirs. Parents have forgotten that children need rules and guidance. They have forgotten that they need protected from the ugliness and hate in our world. They forget to teach the children to love, to be kind and to treat others with respect. They barely teach them the basics in life and they rarely have conversations with them. So many parents stick their child in front of a TV or video game. Over half of five year olds are not ready for kindergarten. They lack simple language skills because their parent does not interact with them.

Children are like sponges! Their inquisitive little brains are soaking up everything going on around them. They learn what they see and hear. If they see love, respect and are taught manners then that is how they behave. If they see hate, disrespect and lack of self control then that is what they do.

What happened to protecting our children from the obscene? From the perverse? From hate? Have we forgotten what is good? What love is? What kindness is? Have we forgotten we need to be moral and to give our children structure and guidance?

The National Education Goals Panel established its first National Education Goal: “By the year 2000, all children in America will start school ready to learn.”*

This has not happened and cannot happen without parents doing their part! Teachers are expected to bring children who begin kindergarten two years behind to readiness for first grade. While they are doing that they are also expected to teach some of them to dress themselves, tie their shoes, wipe their noses, sometimes potty train them, teach them how to say, "please" and "thank you", how to use scissors and glue, share and take turns, talk, love books, walk in a line, keep their hands and feet to themselves and follow simple one step directions. Teachers then spend years still trying to catch these same students up in other grades.

Sometimes I feel that women who are pregnant should be given a manual on how to be a good parent. Then upon the birth of their child they should be given an manual that tells them the curriculum that they are expected to use and teach their child to prepare the child for school.  This is the only way I can see that we coud possibly insure that ALL five year olds will be ready to start school.

As for fathers, they should be excited and willing to participate in the life of their child and work side by side with the mother to help raise the child. (There are far too many men that are simply sperm donors!)

*http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/?q=node/291