On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 21:29:34 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:


"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:
"JohnH" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 13:22:32 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:


"Dave Hall" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 18:44:54 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:


And your son was in his late 20's?

If he was an adolescent, and he wasn't interested in the boobs,
then
he was either too embarrassed to let you know, or he's just not
very
interested in females (IMHO).

He wasn't raised by a television like so many other kids.

AH! Now you know the point of this whole issue.

He prefers reality.

And that's good for you as a parent, and him as a person who will
likely become a responsible adult. Some people mature early on, and
can handle the reality of the adult world, and make decisions based
on
the big picture. Many other kids, though, are empty of guiding
principles, and will lock on to whatever is handy, and too often
that
is the TV. You say that the chaperoning the TV is the parent's job.
But the parents are often not responsible themselves, or cannot be
there at every point, or when they are at their friend's homes.

Isn't this interesting? I have a kid with "guiding principles", and it
somehow happened without religion. Remarkable.


Could it be that your son received his "guiding principles" from
parents who had received "guiding principles" from their parents?

Or has your entire life been devoid of anything religious?

Pretty much. My parents waited till I was 7 or 8 to start attending
synagogue. You can't wait that long to start brainwashing kids. You have
to
start when they're small so they have no choice. Otherwise, they have to
find it themselves later in life if they choose to do so. So, by the
time
they got me there, I was skilled at shutting it off. They gave up by the
time I was 12.




What? No fountain pens at age 13?

I made a typo. It was 13. To complete the story, I steadfastly refused to
focus on bar mitzvah preparation. A week beforehand, the rabbi said "Look.
This is out of your control. Your parents want this, and they've already
paid for the party and the restaurant". So, in a week, I did the whole
thing. The party was actually pretty good. My friend Gary began flicking
lobster eyeballs at the girls. The whole thing turned into a circus.

I think my parents' mistake was that after Sunday school, they always took
my sister and I antique shopping. That's ridiculous. If you want to get a
kid to do something they don't like, you don't reward them with something
worse, especially on the weekend. My ex-wife has figured this out. She gets
my son to attend the Unitarian church because afterwards, she offers to
stick around downtown for a hour so he can take advantage of a park that has
lots of cement structures that are as attractive to skateboarders as a
shipwreck is to a fisherman looking for bottom structure. :-)


Is all this to imply that your parents had no part in the
determination of your guiding principles, and therefore the guiding
principles you pass to your son?

John H

On the 'PocoLoco' out of Deale, MD,
on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!