There is so much wrong with the youth of our country today. In the past week there has been two brutal, senseless murders by teenagers, because “they were bored”. Something has seriously gone wrong in the way we, as Americans, have adapted to parenting. Instead of disciplining our children, we have let them walk all over us. Instead of being a good role model we are doing whatwe want, instead of putting our kids first and their well-being. As a parent, we are called to raise our children better than how we were raised, not worse. We are supposed to teach them how to love, how to succeed, how to be a good steward of what we are given, how to respect our elders. But instead, the children of today are rude, obnoxious brats who think they own the world and don’t need to respect those around them.
Well, as a parent of the children of tomorrow, your world will be different. Here is my vow, to my son, to my future children, to our future, to stand up and raise my children to be respectful, to love others, to be empathetic, to succeed in life, to love themselves, to feel accomplished and proud of who they are, to lend a hand when someone needs it, even without being asked.
If you are “bored”, I will teach you to go read a book, go play a game (not video games), go play a sport or an instrument, go invent and create something beautiful. I promise to teach you that taking innocent life is NOT okay. It is not your duty to decide who lives and who dies. Are you God? No. You are not. Only God gets to decide who lives and who dies.
I want your world to be different than my world. I want your world to be a safe place like it used to be. I don’t want you to be afraid to go jogging, afraid to go to the store, afraid to be home alone without a gun by your side. This is not how we should be living now. By changing the way we, as parents of tomorrow’s children, raise you, we can provide you with the abilities and skills to create a world that is a safe haven like it should have always been.
Hearing about the murder of the Australian baseball player in Texas and the 88 year old WWII veteran in Washington, it got me thinking back to four years ago, when someone that used to be close to my family was beaten to death by some teenagers in her home at the age of 81. Though no details of the Washington case has come out yet, all the teenagers involved in the other two cases were young black kids. While my son is biracial, he is still half black and can still, like any teenager, succumb to the defiant lifestyle of many kids today. I do not want my children to fall into the trap that so many young black kids fall into. And even if the kids we plan to adopt in the future are black, I want them to step out of that stigma and not contribute to that stereotype. My kids, along with everyone else, can be better than “the hood” if they truly believe it. My kids will make great things for their lives. They will not live in a world where they are considered criminals, just because they are black. I want to help them get out of the very unfair stereotype that is pushed on young black men. Granted, I was never a young black man, or woman, but I still have to power to teach my children that they are better than what the world thinks of them based on the color of their skin.
So my child, today I make my vow. I make it to you. To be the best parent I possibly can be so you can see by example how a truly good life should be lived.
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