The Blessing of a Skinned Knee (and two broken arms and temporary blindness)

"I see dead people."  I know, out of nowhere, but that is what I feel like is ringing in my head.  I feel like I did after I saw the movie "Sixth Sense" and what I felt like for days after watching the incredible "Black Swan."  What is real?  What is not?

This cyber culture that our kids are growing up in...are incubating in...is a world of really not knowing who is real and who is not real.  As an almost...choke, cough, spit, chew...40 year old, navigating in my own little social network is difficult enough.  The need to let someone know my thoughts or ideas and then my obsession of wanting their immediate response can be extreme.  Trying to analyze the tone of the message in an email is mental gymnastics.

Our kids DO NOT have the developmental coping skills or mental capability to navigate their cyber world they are living in!  Now, my son is no social butterfly, and I really don't think he cares to be...not now.  He has around 8 friends in his contacts for google buzz compared to the few hundred of that of his friends.  I check out his buzz, texts, etc. every now and then because those are the conditions with which we allowed him to make an account.  OH MY GOOD GRIEF!  Kids are cruel, they are immature, have no concept of respect, their brains have not caught up with the strange happenings of their bodies, and have I mentioned that they are cruel?

The Blessing of a Skinned Knee by Wendy Mogel is by far one of the best books I've ever read.  It's a beautifully written book using Jewish teachings to raise kids who are self-reliant.  The tendency is to protect them from getting hurt, or from failing, or being disappointed, and heaven-forbid  from being unhappy!  As parents, that's what we do, right?  But the reality is, that's life.  We fail, we're disappointed, we get unhappy, life goes on.  We must allow our children that great opportunity to mature and learn coping skills so that they can go on with their own life.  As elusive as it can seem, that's what our job is.  We guide our children through life, sometimes with dictator-like control, sometimes haphazardly, but at the end of the day we raise them to leave us.  That is a hard pill to swallow.  At this point, our kids...I need...much more than scraped skinned and blood!

I'm thinking about how The Blessing of Two Broken Arms and Temporary Blindness would go over. My kids' time on the computer is limited, but if both of their arms were broken, it would just be a relief AND funny!  Sorry...mothers can be cruel, too!  Also, the fact that a box in our family room tells my boys what elderly gentleman need to do if they can't get it up, is obnoxious!  (Can I say that?  I tend to be blunt) The billboards the size of my house we pass going downtown is ridiculous!  We pass one that is advertising shoes.  I THINK it's advertising shoes because that is the only accessory on the chick's body!  Imagine what this little screen shakes at them?  I'm just over it!

The Blessing of Two Broken Arms and Temporary Blindness...that's what we need to wish upon our children until we parents stop seeing dead people!