Warning: I’m very frustrated in this one, and I curse a lot. The filter has come off this morning, as I trade eloquence for anger. If this bothers you, I suggest finding another website to visit right now. Maybe this one.
You know the worst part of parenthood? Other parents.
The Bear’s 3rd grade teacher sent a memo home this week about what constitutes appropriate language in the classroom, and how she’d like to hear more of it and, in turn, less of the opposite. The words deemed inappropriate that are apparently being bandied about by some of the 8-year-olds: Hot and Sexy. Hot and sexy as in, “you’re sexy” and “you look hot.”
To which I say, fuck you, other parents. No really, fuck you.
I’m pretty sure I know where kids are learning about such words and the context in which they are regularly used in 2012, and I hate each and every one of you responsible for this knowledge, for allowing it/endorsing it/being ignorant of it, and not actively caring about the short and long term impact of it. I know of the ways those words and the behind-the-scenes connotations of those words seep into our young children’s lives. I reject the music, the tv, the videos, the internet, and the culture that breeds it and, especially, the parents who think it all unavoidable, harmless fun. You are fools. And I hate you. I hate you for conspiring to make my daughters’ childhoods less magical, less innocent, and less beautiful, and for making my job as an active, aware, and caring parent considerably harder. I hate you with everything I’ve got.
Lest you think there is no option but to travel down this particular road with your kids. That is nothing more than an excuse made by lazy parents who aren’t willing to try harder (or at all) to preserve and extend childhood for their sons and daughters. One of the things I try to point out here, and have over the past 6+ years, is that there is a bevy of great media available to discerning modern families — music/movies/websites/videos/books/apps — that will not arm your kids with such a objectifying vocabulary, but will spark their imaginations, make them happy, and possibly, do the same for you too. Your 8-year-olds DO NOT need to, by nature of the time in which we are living, sound like a fucking pimp, in school or out. Make no mistake about it, you will regret not doing more to prevent this, and I sincerely hope your children grow to resent you for not working more diligently on their behalf, for not allowing them to revel longer in the blissfulness of their youth.
I curse. A lot. And often around the girls. Too often, really, but never ever in an objectifying way. Never to label them or to saddle them with tricky adult adjectives like Hot or Sexy, two non-curse words that have the potential to cause way more damage (especially when being thrown around by 8-year-old boys and girls to describe each other) than a frustrated “shit!” or a heartfelt “fuck you”, like the one I offer you today.
Keep your stupidity, and your lack of vision and thought, far away from my family. I’m in no rush to hurry my kids through their one and only shot at childhood. You are mind-numbingly stupid for doing so to your own children.
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