I Want to Be a Thief...

And I can tell you after working my last 8 years as an RN in home health services, (with Medicaid families) that this picture plays out more than any of us want to think about. The things little kids learn, by example, from their families is enough to make the toughest of us cry. We all tend to think of all families being pretty much like our own; where children are taught about Jesus Christ, right and wrong, personal responsibility and respect for others and their property. In far too many homes these values are totally foreign to the family's thinking. So very sad for the little boy you speak of and all the others in similar circumstances in our country.

Thank you for this touching post. I appreciate it even though it makes my heart hurt.

is no doubt a result of the harsh treatment of the poor by the Bush administration.

We need a “Morality Czar” and creation and funding a new bureaucratic entity to solve the problem. Praise be to Allah that we finally have a caring administration.

Amazing what some people teach their kids. If they knew their history, they should think about the families during the depression and how bad they had it. From what I've heard from those who survived it, they weren't taught to steal.

tongue-in-cheek comment, if there weren't a ring of "audacity" in it. It actually sounds like the "government run media" or the Obama admin! And yet so ridiculous as to defy common sense.

of Proverbs carries what an awful lot of the youth today are missing.
Absolute right and wrong - and why.

And with a degree of guilt. I am guilty of not having transferred my mother's faith in God and in Jesus Christ down to my children on a timely basis. I stuggled with the ideas of religion for sometime as a youth finally settling on sort of a compromise position. That position did not include insisting the children attend church, or say grace at every meal or to have meaningful discussions of religion and about God and about his Son.

Thinking I would lead by example, I slid into that slough dragging my children along with me. By the time I awakened, it may have been too late.

I struggle today to bring my children, now all grown with children of their own, back to lives guided by moral principles without regard for man-man laws, but answering sternly to the laws of God, without which our republic is sinking into the muddy bottom of that slough.

May God forgive me.

Sorry for the typo (without regard to man-man laws) I meant to type man made laws.

However, the humor doesn't escape me when I think about Odama's party for homos at the White House - man-man laws?

I fully believe that many of today's problems with the morals of our young date back to the start of the war on poverty. LBJ created a whole new classification of slavery and completed FDR's socialist idea of this country.

For over 35 years, a large percentage of this country has been raised to believe that the "WORLD OWES THEM A LIVING". Personal responsibility and respect for others went out the window and an "entitlement" mentality replaced them.

What ever it takes to stop the results of "The Great Society" must be done, even if it means Civil War.

Thanks for your sincere thoughts. I believe, and remind/encourage my clients regularly, that you always have an opportunity to keep making a difference in the lives of your kids, grandkids, and beyond; your opportunities to expand or change your influence on "those who come behind us" are not over until you breathe your last. So take heart, and renew your consciousness to the possibilities. Have some "priceless conversations" with them. Make time to be with the grandkids. Tie heart-strings to them. You're not done yet!

is right. So many parents today are raising co-dependance rather than indaviduals that can honestly succeed.

Wow - that is sad. It is very sad to hear that. I mean it. I remember watching a show a few years ago with elderly people who were shop lifting so they would get arrested, so they would have food and medical.

Everyday we learn of sad and tragic stories about children. Their poisonous home environments often lead them to lifes of crime, drug addiction and worse. One middle school in Chicago flunked over 60 percent of the eighth graders because they FAILED every test! Parents must take responsibility but if they are also ignorant, it is a no win situation. Take away the video games is a start. A very sad and thoughtful post, Curt!

What if we would step up and take more drastic measures concerning people bearing children who should not, and people raising children who should not. As I understand it, our courts are pretty clogged already with custody disputes and juvenile/protective cases, and yet we are missing a large block of very, very "abused" children like this little boy.
I am not proposing the solution, but the question: should we consider neutering people who refuse to take responsibility for their children? Locking them up? A medical professional I know told me that one destitute woman has given birth to 20-some children in a nearby hospital, and he knows of fathers who are listed on more birth certificates than that. Perhaps bearing children with absolutely no sense of responsibility for them should be a crime, not a "right of privacy."

Oh, if it were only so easy to protect the most innocent among us, Curt! A mandatory IQ/stress test given to each loving couple before granting them permission to conceive! Would I love to sit on that deciding board! So many families are suffering because of the economy and the children are bearing the brunt of their frustrations or even worse horrors. All products of their environment.