I don’t know if we all have young people in our lives, but I was just curious. Even though I know we have our share of political discussions on this site, this question was also inspired by the current political environment.
When our president was elected my 8 year old would come home saying how everyone was upset about it. Mind you, this is my kid and his 7 and 8 year old classmates who couldn’t even fathom the duties of a president. They even made up songs to mock him and was saying how he was a bad person and that everyone hated him.
I would speak to my son about this and explain to him that he’s not a bad person. He has made some bad choices but that doesn’t make him all bad. Everyone makes bad choices sometimes. He has some different ideas and not everyone agrees with those ideas – but on the other hand, a lot of people do agree with him and that was okay too. I explained to him that wishing our president to fail would affect our country negatively, we need to be supportive and hope that he will do the job he was elected for. He couldn’t understand how I was saying this when “everyone” else was saying something else. I told him to just trust me. Being a troublemaker over something that you have no effect over is just being a troublemaker.
A few weeks later while at a school function we overheard some kids singing the “Trump” song. My kid told them it wasn’t funny and that it wasn’t nice to tease people that you don’t know…..GOAL!! Some of them said he was a “bad man”, some of them shrugged, some of them ignored him. But they stopped singing the song and went on with their recess like little kids should be doing – not singing shitty songs about people, much less our president.
I guess at his young 8 year old age I’m trying to teach him not to be an asshole. I’m trying to teach him acceptance and integrity. I’m teaching him to be a “good sport” even if our team lost and to keep optimism in your back pocket at all times.
Our young people are our future. So as much as people want to mock millennials who are largely “liberal” thinking…guess what, that’s the future. We should be trying to instill forward thinking ideas and provide them with the tools they need to be strong and intelligent leaders for the generations to come.
My goodness, I’m rambling here. But I think we’re just fucking up and we are not being the forward thinking nation that we like to believe we are.
© 2026 – SoulSequel
26 responses to “What are you teaching the young people in your life?”
My kids are homeschooled. My daughter is 8 and my son is 10. My son is currently doing a lot of Java develpment, and he is currently reading “Band of Brothers”. He’s doing highschool math and science.
My daughter is doing good in her education as well. We’re teaching her how to be a good house wife. She does a lot of cooking and cleaning, taking care of things around the house.
Both of the kids are asked a lot of logic and philosophical questions, and reprimanded when they’re illogical or shallow. We watch a lot of CNN and ask where and how the stories are slanted. Same with when we listen to NPR. We talk about human nature, and how this has influence historical events.
As soon as we’re completely done moving in to our new home, I have about 7 AKs to build, and I’m going to teach both of my kids how to build AKs.
How do you hope that your children will contribute to their communities and the world? Do your children have any input on what you expose them to and why aren’t their education and domestic expectations interchangeable?
[edit]Trigger warning[/edit]
I hope they contribute to their communities in being good citizens and Christians. In terms of world contribution, I don’t really know what that looks like, how to measure it, how to plan for it, and why I would urge them to “contribute to the world.”
My children have very little input in what they’re exposed to. They might lean one way or another, within a controlled sphere. They’re children. Immature and ignorant. As parents we’re to teach them what they should learn. This new hippy bullcrap of letting the kids pick their own path, etc. has been quite detrimental to our civilization. This website’s majority of the members are proof that what we’ve done is broken. Most of the millennials on this site are losers that don’t know what to do with their lives. The non-millennials are for the most part mindless twats. Gina is a good example.
Basically, I’m teaching my kids in a way that avoids most of soulsequel’s users, at all costs.
It’s basically a classical education, with a lot of useful real world skills, trades, and STEM.
Now, in terms of domestic expectations being interchangeable, their training is not interchangeable. Men and women have different roles and responsibilities. The roles and responsibilities of a man is different than that of a woman. This is another thing we’ve been getting wrong in the last 40-80 years. None of this genderfluid bullcrap is taught on my home. And when we see some nutter walking around in public denying their gender, I make a point mention to the kids that what they suffer from is a mental illness caused by sin. They’re depraved in their mind, they hate God, and they’ve turned away from god to worship mankind.
In your opinion, what does being a good citizen and being a good Christian mean? Do you consider yourself to be a good citizen and a good Christian?
If you don’t believe in genderfluidity then your are willingly limiting your children based on your position on the matter. Why would you do that? What if your son or daughter chooses to embark upon a career in an industry that is predominant of the opposite sex? What if they want to become an artist of some sort instead of a computer wiz or a homemaker? Then what of all your years for preparation into adulthood?
And speaking of the hippy bullcrap that allows people to explore their interests…how do you support your wife who wants to do art? The very basis of artistic expression is emotional, something that you dismiss regularly without regard. Also if something were to happen to you, do you think that your wife would willingly be able to sustain the lifestyle and expectations that you’ve created together? I actually have a lot of questions on your lifestyle come to think of it…
And lastly, I think it’s great that your children are exposed to so much advanced subjects. I know we’ve discussed your decision to home school them in the past. But, I don’t think it’s any secret that you seem to fall short with social communication and relationships(at least judging by the person your portray yourself to be here), how are you preparing your children for that aspect of life? I know that you arrive at most of your perspectives based on logic, but being that people are made up of both logic and emotion I’m sure that you can agree that all logic and little to no skill in empathy, compassion, and flexibility pretty much places you between a rock and hard place consistently. We do not live in a black and white world.
Following the words of Christ. In following the words of Christ one will be a good citizen.
Well of course I’m going to limit their exposure to what people deem as “truth” regarding a topic which should solely be classified as a mental illness. They will be taught about what a minority of the world currently believes in, this “genderfluidity”, but they’re not going to be taught that it’s true. They will be taught it’s a mental illness caused by depravity and sin.
Btw, I do the same thing with bestiality, don’t you with your kids?
My son, at this time, would have no interest in being an artist. We continually make fun of millennial artists in our family. My pursue art as a hobby and for creating pieces that reflect life. My daughter is very artistic, as we encourage it because it’s something she enjoys doing, and is good at. But everyone in the family knows that to be an “artist” as a primary source of income is quite loser’ish, like being in a band.
No one makes money going to college for an Minor in Art History and a major in Women’s and Gender Studies. And for the most part, the fact that these studies exist and so many people are taking them gives testimony to our failed universities.
My wife doesn’t really “want to do art”, she does art. As a hobby. We don’t do it to generate any income. It’s for fun. The same way firearms are with me. It’s a hobby. We do celebrate art in our home. The art we don’t celebrate is modernist/modernism. Most modern art doesn’t reflect reality, most modern art reflects “randomness” or lack of constructs. Modern art is a philosophical revolution against logic, order, and reality. So in our home, we don’t celebrate these things.
Yes. Things have been pretty well taken care of in that regard. My family would not have to worry about a thing for the rest of their lives. Lord willing.
Hit me with whatever questions you have. Either here or in private.
I’m not so sure. I’m pretty socially active and aware. Both in work and my personal life. I have a few consistent and close friends, and then a whole lot of acquaintances that might not know me REALLY well. I’m close to my family, immediate and extended.
I’m pretty confident your judgement in this might be in err.
They spend a lot of time with adults, and time with children that we pick for them to spend time with. Because they’re homeschooled, it’s easy to control the environment of children they are with. School is a zoo. A bunch of undisciplined stupid children that promote bad behavior. My kids don’t need that. I did have my son in a robotics club run by a public high school a year or two ago. He was doing awesome in it. In one of the meetings my son asked why all the kids use bad language. I answered his question in such a way that everyone heard. I explained to my son that many of the people in the class didn’t have an appropriate grasp of the English language that they have to resort to foul language, and that it actually made them sound mentally retarded instead of cool. Believe me when i tell you, every one of the highschoolers in that room was a terror. It grieved me to see what we were producing as a society.
An emotion that violates logic is a lie, and should be put from your heart and mind. If an emotion is a logical fallacy, it should be fought against. Empathy, compassion, and flexibility are not incompatible with logic. I have these traits. I exhibit them with my family, friends, and coworkers. Do I have them willy nilly like many in our society expect? No. The fact that I believe criminals should be punished isn’t a lack of empathy and compassion at all. In fact it’s motivated by empathy and compassion. I have great amounts of empathy and compassion for the victim!
That’s a very binary statement.
I know something is screwy with the “quote” feature, but I’m working on a project and haven’t had time to troubleshoot yet. So sorry for the humbug with the spaces there(if you tried to use the button).
You say this, but many of your responses do not exhibit the teachings of Christ so I’m a little confused as to how you see yourself as being a “good” Christian. Many times you are mean-spirited and use your beliefs to degrade others who do not share your position. I do not ever see you encouraging others to the path of God but rather condemning them instead. Where did you learn this and why to you behave this way? You seem to enjoy partaking as some sort of stand in God rather than a God fearing Christian.
How do you conclude that women and men with interchangeable skills and abilities to be classified as a mental illness or a sin? And how is bestiality at all related to preparing young people with genderfluid skills?
So if your daughter decides one day that she does want to pursue a career at being an artist…she’s a loser? Okay, and how would you deal with that reality? There are many Christian bands that share the word of Christ who greatly impact many individuals. All losers too, right?
After reading this I realized that I did base this on the person that you portray online – so I really don’t know you well enough to say how you REALLY are. But I’m guessing that you don’t walk around in the real world verbally and emotionally abusing strangers, if you behaved in the real world as you do online, you’d probably have been shot by now. Unless…you claim to behave the same way in the real world? Which I highly doubt.
Do you expect to be able to play God with your children for the rest of their lives? How will they be prepared to handle conflicts if everyone that they come into contact with are hive minded individuals? How will the be able to utilize their ability to use critical thinking and problem solving in a real life setting? Unless you plan to live within a cult or an Amish town, how do you expect your children to excel in all areas an young adults? I agree with some of what you are doing but I think that you are seriously hindering them more than you realize. You only get one chance at this, once their grown, the paths that you’ve created for them will either carry them or crumble.
You just said that you and your son regularly find amusement in making fun of your family members. So….
And the binary statement seems to correlate with the kind of world you live in.
If we use the same logic you use for letting refugees in this country, we wouldn’t allow homeschooling in this country. Off the top of my head: The Sandy Hook shooter, The Seattle Pacific University shooter, and a shooter in Canada was home-schooled. With your logic, we should ban homeschooling because it creates mass shooters.
Actually, that’s not logic at all.
Correlation is not causation.
Even my 10 year old son knows this…
And what’s my logic for letting refugees in this country? I don’t believe I’ve shared it.
tell me then.
I’ll focus on one thing because I just got to see the teaching come back at me.
I have difficulty with meaningful friendships. I have this habit of keeping my circle small which puts a lot of pressure on friends to maintain expectations. I’m pretty stubborn and when anyone does three stupid things; I’m outta there. Permanently. CYA bye bye!!
This was explained to me by my son during one of our more meaningful discussions and it was a direct take from something I adamantly taught all my kids as they were growing up and they would be the first to accept that as a truth.
That was, try to have a broad assortment of friends versus a tight circle. Interestingly, at least to me, as I focused on them, I didn’t take the advice myself. Fortunately for me, I married my best friend and after 36 years she still has 2 strikes left. Thank God she doesn’t count any of my swings or I woulda been sent to the minors a long time ago.
It’s always said that we should try to give our children something we didn’t have. We should always want better for them. This lesson is a great example of that. Did you realize the difficulty you had with meaningful friendships in the past or was this overlooked until later in your life?
I think a lot of lessons that young people learn are based on the examples set for them, both good and bad. For me, my grandmother can be very judgmental. I believe that’s why I went the opposite way in that aspect. I am very careful in judging others.
You’re probably right about your observation associated with trying to give your kids something you didn’t have. I was always a tight circle kid which was complicated by frequent moving.
Reading your judgemental thing, I can relate to a degree. Almost eVeryone around me growing up was judgemental. The best I have been able to do is recognise it in myself and TRY not to be but failure is also recognised more often than not.
Further to that, I have read what I might consider the scariest shit I have ever read on this thread. It helps me understand how terrorists are actually bred.
I still judge others, but I try not to without reason. But being a human being and all that kind of complicates things.
This discussion did bring about some eye-brow raising responses.
It depends on where you live, what your kids think on such matters. I think that is a disturbing trend that you are talking about. Because I do not recall any political discussions at school until we were around the age of twelve or so. Saturday Live and some other comedy oriented shows would get very strongly anti-Reagan.
I am not for either left or right, though I have heard from the right on here some pretty nasty barbs. That is not just something I say, either. I have a few very left beliefs, a few very right beliefs, and then a whole lot of beliefs that are not of this world… at all.
(I think the statement I made was condemning North Korea, because Trump is in office, this made me left wing, bizarrely. Which goes to show that my strong anti-Communist beliefs are seen by some on the right as being a left wing thing. Maybe that is one of my beliefs I have to chalk up as being left and not right. It would seem confusing to me, but I find it all largely a bunch of hogwash anyway.)
I do currently live in an immigrant community. It is certainly middle class, leaning to upper middle class, but largely immigrant. I strongly do not believe in making immigrants feel bad. This does not mean I accept extreme Islam, I find it sickening and bigoted. It is exactly as I find myself prejudiced against Neo-Nazis and Christian fundamentalists. I am prejudiced solely against the prejudiced.
But, ignorance is ignorance, and primarily my belief brings about deep pity and understanding of ignorance. Just that sort is kind of like a really big spider which is sick. You can feel sorry for it, but must approach it very carefully if you want to try and treat it.
I could see how someone on the right might think that because I am pointing out their fellow brothers and sisters who are neo-nazi, fundamentalist Christian, or extreme Islamist is unfair, what about extremists on the left? After all, they are the left, at that level, not true liberals by any shape or form of the word.
Regardless, I kind of sort of approach it as you do, when it comes up. Such as, sometimes my eighteen year old spouts off some things which are patently untrue. Though, more often, I have to side with her against a number of her peers who are crazy far right.
There is a crazy far right today that has expanded severely. I do believe this is in no small part to the far left who certainly do have strong influence on the media.
When Bush Jr was President, you saw the left go crazy, and when Obama was President, you saw the right go crazy. Now, they are both collectively going crazy.
Most of the political debacle stuff I do find abhorrent. My opinion on this matter really only strongly formed during Clinton’s years. I was non-partisan then, too, but the behavior of the right was patently despicable. That it all ultimately boiled down to Bill Clinton having a consensual affair with Monica Lewinsky, just made it all worse for me.
I have similar feelings and thoughts about the Comey debacle. Conversely, on Russian hacking, I called that first, early, and right. I work in that field and have worked in counterintelligence capacity there. I read and understood the research reports. It all stunk, and now, even those who claimed it was not Russia have been eating crow.
Anyway, as for kids, though, primarily I try and be as my dad was, laidback, easy going. Cool is a major virtue for me. If I talk about such matters, I only want to make them think and realize it is all local nonsense by a lot of biased people.
Such things are far from what I am interested in them thinking about.
But, in all things, I want them to think for their own selves, and be extremely wary of just accepting input and mistaking that for independent thought.
I am working at a petstore and have made it a point to tell the young people who are the kids of the employees that they need to follow the same rules as we adults when dealing with the animals. Also to understand the experience they are getting to be able to use it on their resume later
I recall you sharing your job at the pet store recently and I forgot to congratulate you on your employment. I’m glad that things are still working out for you.
I am learning Constant contact to help with the store’s newsletter
Good for you. Maybe you could even incorporate your writing into your job to help out with the content of the newsletter one day. Two birds with one stone.
I probably can charge a few hours for it once I learn it better. But I would feel awkward doing so until I can do it a bit more effortlessly. Right now it’s more for me than the store.
I have no kids of my own; but have always had young people around me. From working at various summer camps and outdoor education centres to various people who made me quasi godfather to their children and left them in my care.
And I would relate to them in a way most adults could/would not. I would listen to them; not treat them as if they were silly; and delighted in having long conversations with them where I probably learned as much about the Human condition as they did.
Trucking has totally reversed this and put me in a world almost devoid of young people. But just the other day while waiting in line for Subway (near a high school), a throng of young people were in front of me. And one of them asked his friend a mathematics question. I’m no whiz at math, but I solved the problem in my head just out of boredom. And just a few seconds later, the lad in front of me solved it in his head while others were still fumbling with their phone calculators.
I commented on how rare and precious this was; and then paid for his sub and left. But not before he looked me in the eyes, shook my hand, and thanked me. What a gift this was!
I learned that there are still very intelligent and engaged young people out there, looking to interact in meaningful ways, with things other than just technology. He learned that standing out from the crowd can get you noticed in good and unexpected ways. I learned there are still parents out there doing stellar jobs of raising their children in “old-fashioned” values and standards.
It’s hard to say which of us got the most out of that interaction!
Thank you for sharing. You are a good story-teller.
I think it’s very interesting to see the behaviors of children who mimic the behaviors and or lessons taught from their parents. That would have been a proud moment for that young mans parents.
It working with so many young people one develops a kind of sixth sense when it comes to detecting good parenting, even if the parents have never been met. It’s surrounds the child like a pleasing aroma; and it is evident that someone has invested heavily in that child.
And I was very blessed in the camping industry to actually meet some of these parents on visitors day; and let them know that their efforts had produced noticeable positive effect in their child.
That’s a triple win of positive affirmation for everyone involved.
Emotional intelligence, self awareness. As I become aware, I demonstrate it for my children. We also talk about ways they can raise their own consciousness.
The other week I reinforced the importances of not drinking and driving and not getting caught drinking underage. I’m mostly kidding as to this being genuinely useful, since the recipient already had this kind of common sense and I think a better lesson would’ve been “be safer in drinking than doing it underage typically involves.” I’m rarely around people much younger than myself, but since when I am it’s usually in mental health support communities, I find myself emphasizing healthy communication, medication compliance, self care, responsibility, and generally not letting your struggles enable you to be a dick. I’m usually teaching my peers (is ~27-28 young?) science tidbits and brainstorming improvements to healthy decision making.
Got any advice for the “entry level job but experience required” paradox?
ive been having some good convos with my son about celebrating canadas 150th birthday, how we should be grateful that we live in a country such as this at a time such as now, how lucky we are… but it is also important to remember that we live on land that was not ours. 150 years is not that many generations ago. that canada’s birthday signifies a time in history when a lot of people had their homes taken from them. homes we now share. but also, we were born here, most of our families were too. we are home here now too. so we can celebrate this country. but we should remember this home was not ours in the first place.
i think this is a good conversation to have… i think empathy is important. i think awareness is important, even if its all we do, its a beginning? we live in a city where so many families are new comers and we can all be grateful and neighbourly. but we can also understand how this all must feel to others.
you know?
i have more answers :D i might have never ending answers :D
through example and life necessity, i think i have been teaching my son that we have the right to want better and to always be working towards something, but that we will only/mostly get what we want if we work towards it ourselves! that dreams and hope are important but we wont get there with out work! and also that after all the work we should have fun!
i also expect him to help out more as he gets older, pull his weight. dont worry he only weighs 75 pounds, so its not like i expect That much of him :D but this year he made most of his own school lunches, and he makes his own breakfast. we do all of this together, its important to share that time together, but sometimes we eat different things, and this is his home too, so i think its fair if he helps out with the working of it. like he can toast his own bagel while i cut up some fruit, right? or he can put his own laundry away since i washed it… sharing chores gives him ability and independence, and he can share the load, because gender specific chores are bull in my opinion lol and it gives him a boost to do these things ‘for himself’. besides im not his slave yo :D good lessons of work ethic and that way he isnt just doing a chore to earn an allowance, he is accomplishing something for himself and helping run this household of ours. and that is a skill he can carry forward… ya know?