Beech Tree News Network

Our need to be loved is strong.  Many times it overrides our good sense and responsibility.  In families we see the bad parenting aspect:  It's easier just to let kids grow up.  "go out and play.  Just stay out of my hair."  Then the selfish parent factor:  "If I don't let them do like they want to, they won't love me."

Bett and I know an 80 year old, a very sick lady, raising her grandchildren.  They live with her, and off of her.  They have spent all of her money.  She was once well off and now she borrows money to pay her utilities.  They have wrecked her house and furniture, demolished her once nice car.  Her problem?  She's afraid they won't love her.  NEWS FLASH:  They don't anyway, if she dies before they do, they'll have to dig a big enough hole to put all of them in.  She won't say no.

If you horses, you know if you let them have their way, they will likely become spoiled and hurt you.  Pets become mean, so do kids.  You'll still love them, but other folks won't.  Nothing worse than a mean pet...or kid. 

Even as intelligent as elephants are, they can become mean and spoiled and can really hurt you.  The matriarchs(mothers) of any elephant clan look after, and discipline the kids.  The males go off and hang out around the watering hole, drinking and gossiping.

Once an elephant preserve in Africa became overcrowded.  The people in charge decided to take a group of half-grown juvenile male elephants and turn them loose off by themselves---no supervision, no mother discipline.  They became poison mean....roving and killing.  No one to say NO.

Growing up I knew boy named Bill who had liberal parents.  They refused to correct him and he was mean.  The upheld him when he was wrong and loved him.  He didn't give a flip for them.  He was involved in a stabbing and his parents said there was no proof he did anything wrong.  They knew the truth but lied for him because they "loved" him.

In school, he backed a retarded boy up against the wall and hit him in the mouth with a pair of brass knucks.  It broke out all the boy's front teeth.  The boy had done nothing to Bill, he was a good kid.

Bill went to the Army and when he got out, he had not changed.   By then, his parents were afraid of him.  He killed a man and spent most of the rest of life in the penitentiary.  His parents were sad, they "couldn't understand what they had done wrong."

Train up a child.

Kindest regards....from Father Along