Excerpt: Parents, your kids aren't that special

[Javaman]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/03/03/cafferty.excerpt.2/

There are no perfect parents, perfect kids, perfect families -- only degrees of dysfunction.

You get up in the morning and do the best you can. At the end of the day you say, "Okay, that wasn't so bad, let's try it again tomorrow." Some of my instincts were pretty good and some of them were awful.

I did stay engaged and didn't say to hell with being a father when my first marriage ended. With the younger girls, I eventually made the choice to clean up my alcoholism before I pushed things to the point of no return. But most of the credit does to my second wife Carol; to the girls; and to God Almighty. Ultimately, I've just been very fortunate.

snip

Plus, we have a whole generation of Baby Boomers who are too busy feeling entitled to prolong their own self-indulgent, self-absorbed adolescences to rein in their own kids.

[MADem]

1. I find lectures from Cafferty on this subject a bit...amusing.

It's rather like Oprah telling people how to raise their children.

FWIW, I wouldn't take driving lessons from Cafferty either. I find him to be closer to "insufferable blowhard" than "truthful curmudgeon" most days.

[Fuzz]

3. Or priests lecturing about sex.

[MADem]

4. Bingo! nt

[seabeyond]

2. who would want perfect anyway. and perfection is its own imperfection. n/t

[Tyler Generation]

5. Yeah, I'm the child of boomers and I find this "you're so specail"

Stuff a bunch of bullshit. A lot of this going on in the 90's about how important and special you're feelings are. I really think it backfired and made people so concerned about how they feel they turn into a bunch of self centered asshole whimps who can't take criticism.

Along with the entitlement, etc... I probably sound judgmental, but I don't care. People need to get over themselves and take care of each other better.

[sinkingfeeling]

6. I understand that you have a real problem with Baby Boomers, but my kid is 39 years old and has been

out of my house for a couple of decades.

[demmiblue]

7. All children are special... it is society's idea of what is special that sometimes concerns me.

Special and perfect are not synonymous.

Honestly, I think that the children who don't have parents that find that special something about their child, and cultivating it, to be the ones that become lost.

Lack of manners and discipline does seem to be a problem. However, if our society truly valued the family (in every form), we would not be in this situation. Inadequate childcare, elder care, family leave, health care, job security, wages, etc... these stressors affect how a family functions. It is easy for someone, like Cafferty, to pontificate when they are beyond these types of stressors.