Living the Sweetlife: Try not to succumb to “The Middletons”
The Middletons are a part of your life. Do you know them? I sure hope so since they are helping you raise yourself and your children. They have infected every part of our society and have quietly snuck into our cultural norm. The ads where grown men blatantly lie and bash each other in order to win elections, indirectly are teaching that bullying is an acceptable way of winning friends. Yep, those are the one’s! The producers who place shows on during “family time TV” that showcase one man and umpteen women willing to kiss and sit in bathtubs in order to (drumroll please…) be the “lucky” guy or gal to be selected as a mate. The very idea that having babies out of wedlock is normal?!! This is what is being taught to our children.:( The absurdity of it all is quite alarming.
I was jolted out of my stupor when watching television and recognized that the politicians were at it again swinging remarks that looked all too familiar to the bullying texts that we have seen drive teens to take their own lives. Remarks, lies really, to get a group of people to be ones friends. The similarity to grade school is alarming. I am disgusted by it and you should be as well. With all bad behavior and bullying rhetoric that plagues my t.v.; I am left wondering how in the world we are supposed to parent teens and shelter children from what I call “The Middletons” (Definition: A group of middle aged people unabashedly abandoning all moral codes and ethics to benefit their own designs while disappointing the old and tainting the young). The reality shows, directed and written by “The Middletons” give all of us a daily dose of sex, lies, bullying and bad moral code. They portray all these things as glamorous when in fact nothing could be further from it. My teen is glued to “The Bachelor” and as I walk past her watching I am left asking myself; What pray-tell is so fascinating for a bachelor to kiss multiple women as if he is some great lion planning strategies to conquer the den of females just waiting to be selected? It is in poor taste and I am frankly sick of it.
My husband, has observed that things are not the way they were when we were children but he has no remedy as to how to go about fixing the situation. It is easy for us to sit and observe, difficult to actually intervene. Parenting requires it though and without training; the children will surely become ever more destined to no longer be able to recognize what is right from what is clearly wrong. When I was young there weren’t any reality shows and although my generation had boys dressing like girls and girls dressing like boys we were not exposed to counter culture and bad morals were not given attention. It was something we used to call “Taboo.” That word has gone missing from our social moray. There really is nothing left to say or do. What’s worse is this is our new norm.
Desperate times calls for desperate measures… we now must defer to my Nana…to whom all decisions concerning morals and ethics are filtered and from which everything should and does pass. She has been dead now for 10 years but she is an ever present go to in my mind if no where else. If asked about the bullying politicians she would surely have already taken sides with her favorite candidate. She would say the other teammate “deserved what was coming to him.” (he he) On the shows like The Bachelor and The Kardashians she would be sitting glued like her great granddaughter to whatever was happening next. “That’s just TV she would say… it’s not real.” And I suspect after realizing that TV now reflects and is the real deal she might be sitting and rocking in her chair about now, and with lips pressed together in displeasure and hands clasped and writhing; she would then be saying “To hell in a hand-basket… yes that is what this world is coming to!”
Take Care of YOU!
