kids need direction. and discipline.

but most importantly consequences. im coming late to the discussion,but i believe that giving kids a choice and a consequence for that choice (and living with it, not havnig parents interfering after they make a bad decision) is one of the best ways to teach them to think through their actions.

it certainly worked for me.
i remember my dad saying to my brother and i (twins) that he was not going to pay damages (african custom; restitution to the family of the pregnant girl who is no longer "pure and virginial") or raise/ support our children if we were to get any girls pregnant. he said we would have to drop out of school, get a job and do it ourselves. we must have been thirteen or thereabouts at the time.

at another juncture in about the same time period, vis a vis drugs and alcohol (or its aftereffects), he said "i am not going to bail anybody out of jail and when and if you do get out dont bother coming back to my house, because if you are old enough to be getting arrested and charged for those things, then perhaps you have grown up quicker than i thought. you can go out and be a man and do all the things you want to do"

he has a way of speaking cryptically like that, but making his thoughts clearly known.
what gave gravity to those words was his history of following through on what he said.

__________________
'O=00=O'
bmw 2002.
long live the legend