The Words that Destroy.

Post Reply New Topic

As we become adults and start to think of mortgages, marriage and children, we often, and generally subconsciously, tell ourselves that we will not do it the same way our parents did it. We take from them the good stuff and spend much our lives fixing the stuff that sent us to a therapists office or spend hundreds of dollars on self-help books about healing the “inner child”. I know a few in my generation (X) who have routinely gone down this path in adulthood, but few can say that they “disrespected” their parents no matter how angry they might have made us at times.

I still call my mother “Mummy” and my father “Daddy” or “Pa”. I still find it hard to use foul language in front of my father but occasionally, over a cool beer with my mother, we will swear like troopers. But there is always the thing in the back of my mind to never swear AT my parents. And, quite frankly, I have never wanted to. There is a small but significant part of me that believes that I will simply be wiped out of existence should I ever disrespect my parents to that degree. I am not saying that healthy and heated debate is not allowed, it is. In fact it is encouraged, but if I were to start using words that do not exist in the English language or abbreviate my response to a joke with “LOL” they would grow exponentially in size and start throwing lightning bolts from heaven to smite me off the earth. The English language is sacrosanct, not available for modification, or even worse, bastardisation.

I come from a generation that had the cane in schools as a form of corporeal punishment, child protection services barely existed and “political correctness” was not part of the vocabulary. Children were generally “seen and not heard” and you were considered to be “anti-establishment” if you did not go to church. Although, the mid-seventies were seen as a progressive time. It was a good time to be an anarchist or rebel against the establishment, but not in my home or at the Catholic Girls school I attended. In general, if you were a little eccentric, you were an artist or a musician, or that is how the landscape seemed to me growing up in those strange and conflicting times. The rules however, never changed. You never spoke back to your parents, you ALWAYS shook the hand of someone introduced to you and called them Sir and you NEVER called your mates’ parents by their first name. strangely, it was my parents who introduced me to rap and hip-hop music, namely Public Enemy, NWA and the Beastie Boys. Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and numerous blues favourites mixed up the backdrop of my childhood. I gained a deep respect for the plight of African-Americans through the music I listened to and the resilience, fortitude and perseverance they showed through experiencing racism, discrimination and slavery. Music is one of the ways I developed a political and social conscience.

Now I listen to my son playing the likes of 50 Cent and other “hip-hop” artists of this generation and I lament the loss of authenticity. They rap with the soul of a dead fish and speak only of “b*****s” and “ho’s” and how much money they have got and what they are going to get. They speak with this gross sense of entitlement. I am speaking purely of mainstream troglodytes whose political and social education is in the bin. One thing you can say about most stridently about rap artists of the past is that they had respect for themselves generally, and if that was lacking, at least they had the humility to admit it. That in itself was enough to warrant a listen to their word, even if the music made your skin crawl.

This gross sense of entitlement has now morphed itself into this culture of Gen Y’ers (broadly speaking). I look at my son, who is 15, and try to educate him to be tolerant, to be practice wisdom, even if he is not wise, and in doing this I am accused of being strict, of not being hip and cool. I am not allowed to PARENT anymore. I am not allowed to be a disciplinarian, more, I am expected to be his friend and confidant, so that I can open the “lines of communication” and encourage him to speak about his feelings. What 15-year-old understands feelings, especially their own? They don’t. The best way, in my experience, is to watch with eagle eyes and relay on my instincts. It is what he DOESN”T say, that actually means something. Having Aspergers Syndrome myself, words really mean nothing to me. It is action, a change in the predictability of someone, that has my antennae going. As I have learnt the hard way, often times people very rarely ever speak their truth, but their body doesn’t lie.

This is not perfect, any process of elimination has its flaws, and I am occasionally wrong. Most of the time though I will make predictions that has my sons’ head reeling and wondering if I have his room and school bugged and wired for sound. I am often correct in my observations of his turbulent and bittersweet teenage angst.

Respect has always been a big deal in our house. I have been known to walk away from my son in the middle of a disagreement if he starts to get nasty and filled with self-importance. I do not believe that just because I am his mother, my intelligence should be insulted. I am a human being with feelings, even if I can’t really describe them. The thing that astounds me and often fills me with a certain dark dread is the stories I hear about other families and how his friends speak to their parents. I have heard with disgust and sadness of father and son calling each other “fa***ts” as a joke, and the more morbid side of me agrees with them. They behave like a bundle of sticks held together for the purposes of fuel, or the other description, “a bundle of iron rods bound together for re-heating, welding, and hammering into bars”. That is about as much intelligence that goes into this type of offensive name calling. Yep, bunch of mindless sticks or iron bars. And if one is poked by one of these implements, the wounds can run deep.

If I had ever called my parents a name or used a term of deep discrimination or intolerance to offend, I would have been strung up like a pig and fed to the “social conscience police” that have sharp pointy teeth and a disgust with all things rude and obnoxious. I think the look on their faces at my horrendous and mindless transgression would have turned me to stone, so why is it tolerated today, in ones’ home for goodness sake? What kind of children are we bringing up if they are allowed with complete abandon to call homosexuals “poofters” or people with learning disabilities “ret*ds”? Strangely, the “N” word which one would not even say in private anymore, comes with a certain reverence and the words “Oh no-one says that anymore, It’s very RUDE!”. Well, I say to my son, so are all the words you say to define and somehow denigrate a whole population of people. How is the “N” word any different to using the word “ret*d” in a purely derogatory and hurtful way? He does not have an argument for that other than “The “N” word is WORSE”. HHmmm okay. That makes no sense at all, other than in a historical sense, where the word developed to break the spirit of a whole culture of people in slavery and to make them feel powerless. However, the argument that one word is worse than another is false. They are both used to alienate and hurt.

I am saddened and more than a little afraid at the careless and fluid way that these words are used to describe all the negative things that people seem to come across. I do not mean to isolate teenagers in this growing problem. I have heard more than a few adults, even ones my age, using these terms of reference to insult and degrade and I wonder, how far as a species have we really come? We just bully and humiliate via Facebook and YouTube now. We don’t even have to face up to the consequences because on the internet we are nameless and faceless. We get exposed to little turds beating up some poor young person (or old person, whichever flavour of violence tempts them that day). Are they so weak in mind and body that they need a “pack” to fight their mindless fight with them? What happened to the “one against one”, bare knuckled blue and a hand shake at the end of it? What happened to honour? There is only honour in weapons now. Look at me! Look at me! I am a hard-arse gangsta with my kitchen knife to stab you with!!

It makes me furious and deeply melancholic all at the same time. I worry for these kids that end up on the wrong end of the violence and I worry for the kids exacting the violence.

What happened to the saying “So help me if you disrespect me that way! Do you want to feel my wrath? If you cannot speak to me properly don’t speak to me at all, and when you are ready to have a conversation and are behaving like the adult you SO desperately want to become, I am here”.

From a disturbed parent.

Mics

Just wanted to add that I wrote this under the influence of multiple pain killers due to a fall that I had down the stairs 3 days ago . I mean everything I say, however my sentence structure may leave a lot to be desired.

Just a disclaimer.

Mics

The world certainly has changed, since the 70s. Not for the better, either.

Parenting these days is definitely complicated, but I look back at when I was young and think "Parents then were full of s**t. Children disrespected, talked back, argued, and went against the grain then too."

I agree that there's a growing sense of entitlement in the youth today, though. There's also the whole self esteem BS movement.