Uh-oh... Politics

Please bear with me as I talk about something that I know very little to nothing about. Politics.

Yeah, I know, sorry...

This has been bothering me since I first heard what was going on. The President of the United States of America is going to address our children. That's not the part that bothers me.

My son didn't hear his speech. You know why? Because his school, like most others, opted to NOT let our children hear his speech. The schools that opted to air it gave parents an "opt out" for their kids to not hear it. All this talk about how people don't want the President to "poison" our kids by pushing his agenda on them. What in the H-E-double hockeysticks??????

I was raised with the belief that the President was a person in a position to be respected. You respect the President, even if you don't agree with his views or how he is running the country. But you listened with respect.

I think it's sad that we don't want the President "poisoning" our kids minds, but it's OK for us to give our kids the impression that the President is trying to tell them bad things. I mean, hey, if the teachers, the schools, and the parents don't want us to hear what he has to say, then it must mean that they don't like him and he is not doing a good job. Right? That's the way I see it. If former President Bush, or Clinton wanted to address the kids directly, would the country be acting like this? I don't think so, I think they would just let the day go by like any other "first day of school", and there would be no further thought. Now, as I said, bear with me - some of the former Presidents may have done this in the past and I just don't know about it, because like I said, I don't follow politics. But if any of them have done it, I certainly don't remember any uproar like this.

I think it is very disrespectful to the President, for him to take time out of his busy schedule to speak to our kids, and then we make a decision to not even let them hear what he had to say???

Monday night, my 13 year old son informed me that I needed to take him to his father's house to get his agenda that he needed for school yesterday. Because he forgot and left it in his dad's van Friday. And he didn't say anything about it until Monday at 5pm. Now, that's what I call responsibility. Yeah right. I read the President's address to the kids online, and I agree with EVERYTHING that man said. There was not a stitch of politics in his speech, no even a hint of any agenda. Basically, he told them they needed to suck it up and grow some responsibility. He also said that even if you are in the worst of situations, YOU make your own future. You don't HAVE to go the wrong way, there are options for you, and you can make the right decisions. Basically, even if you grew up in the ghetto with a drug addict mom, you can still apply yourself in school and do great things with your own life. He said that you gotta take responsibility, because nobody else is going to do it for you. And I agree. I tell my son that all the time. All I can think of about these parents (and I'm sorry if any of you are one of them, really, I do) is that they are the kind who are going to hold their kids hands all the way through life and shelter them and coddle them and never make them take responsibility for themselves. That is not in their best interest. Our job as parents is to teach our children how to make it in real life. That means responsibility.

I will get off my soap box now. I kinda went off on a tangent there, sorry!! But it really made me mad and sad at the same time.

What do you think?