This'll Take A While, But It'll Get Your Brain Going

The higher-order life-liver sister Jilly, in response to the possibility that I might do a series on parenting here at The Diner, sent me Mark Morford's article from the February 28 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. I'd encourage you to read the entire article as it's certainly insightful.

And sometimes, the prophets we need to hear from in Christian circles often come from places we'd least expect or want. I enjoy reading about parenting from circles I don't normally hear from...and this certainly gave me food for thought.

So, to whet your appetite a bit, here's a few quotes:

"But the truth is, my folks have a point. Parents today really are faced with a largely new, high-speed, fire-breathing battery of issues and potential problems that kids of previous generations never had to face, ominous issues of drugs and sex and sinister marketing agendas, global warming and body image and entitlement, huge gobs of frothy in-your-face adult information to which kids have unprecedented access and it requires some very nimble parenting indeed to help kids navigate the storm. Right?

Well, sort of. This is what we seem to misunderstand, to entirely underestimate: the power of the young human brain to assimilate, to shift and adapt and modify its wiring to survive and thrive and live to procreate again. This seems to be the rule: The older we get, the more we tend to be victims of our own fixed worldviews, unable to see how the younger creatures of our species are at once us and also not us in the slightest."

Not good enough to get you chatting? How 'bout this one:

"Maybe it's all the media's fault. Easy argument to make, I know. I told my folks of the beautiful-yet-infuriating duality of this here modern media: how it at once distorts and exaggerates and blows issues all out of proportion like never before, and yet also informs and delights and provides unprecedented insights and global perspectives we'd otherwise never see and which provide an entirely new sense of human unity and hope. What a thing.

But hell, if you believe the media skew, if you see it all through a lens of fear or lack of nimble perspective, suddenly it's all drooling MySpace sexual predators and binge-drinking frat-boy idiots and millions of lost brain-rotted teens snorting ketamine off each other's stolen iPods and then shooting each other in the face after playing 6 million hours of Grand Theft Auto, one giant violent sexed-up gum-snapping body-pierced eating-disorder STD-ready freak show ready to implode at the drop of a hat or the shave of a Britney.

And it's also one big dumb, overblown lie. Well, most of it."

I've got some thoughts...I mean, I work with teenagers every day and have for two decades now. (Well, that's not entirely true, but it will be on May 25, 2007). But I thought it'd be more fun to get us rockin' and rollin' early this morning.

I'd encourage you to read the entire article to get the context, and, then...

...Have at it, kids!