by James Burns | Oct 13, 2018 | Baby Boomers, Behavior Management, James Burns, Parents, The Bully Proof Classroom
I never wanted to go to college, never thought I was smart enough. My father had different plans for me. He told me I was going. I wanted to take over the family business which was a bar. I mean after all in my senior year in high school
I was taking classes like Chinese Literature and wood shop. I don’t think I took one college level class in high school so how would any college accept me. I made a deal with my father I would apply to three colleges and if any one of them accepted me, I would go. I applied to a junior college, a state school, and to some school in the back woods of Virginia. They all accepted me. I went to the state school.
I think I mentioned this but I’ll say it again my first semester in college I had a 1.0 cumulative average. That’s a D. I got a letter from the college telling me to shape up or I was going to be asked to leave. I showed the letter to my father and said to him “See I told you I couldn’t do it.” He looked at me and said “You better do it because I am selling the bar.” I ended up graduating from college with much help from professors. My cumulative average: 2.9. If you do the math you will find out that is just about all straight A’s.
What motivated me you might ask? FEAR with a capital F. I had to do it. There was no safety net. Yes, I was afraid, scared, and a lot of other things but you know what…I did it. I once worked with a great psychiatrist and he made the most unbelievable statement to me you could ever imagine. He said to me “Jim, before a kid can be really disciplined, you have to have fear.”
Not a fear of physical punishment but a fear of disappointing someone, or even a fear of a strong reaction. I think the word that has gotten lost today is respect. I will usually respect what I fear. Do kids today have a healthy fear of adults? Do they respect adults or better yet one another? Kids today believe they can say and do what they want, when they want. It is time to begin to instill a healthy fear again into our kids and make them shutter at the idea that they might disappoint someone. I am really sick of the “I don’t care attitude.” If it wasn’t for fear, I wouldn’t be writing this essay right now.
by James Burns | Oct 12, 2018 | Baby Boomers, Behavior Management, Bully Proof Classroom, James Burns, Parents, The Bully Proof Classroom, The Ramblings of a Dinosaur
Have you ever wondered why your parents did some of the things that they did. I did lots of times. My dad had so many regimented activities that I thought he had a screw lose or something. I’m only going to talk about two here because there are too many to put into one essay.
I really spent time observing my dad as a kid and listening to him. It wasn’t until I was about forty that I realized some of the benefits of his behavior and, very recently, some of the real benefits of his behavior. My dad had an unbelievable fear of getting a cold. He came home from WWII with malaria and tuberculosis. He was always cautious of sharing food, towels, cups, and silverware. Any watermark on silverware in a restaurant was sent back immediately.
I remember one time in a restaurant in New York a fork went back three times. Some people send food back. He sent the silverware back. It got so bad that one guy sitting close to use told my dad that the he thought that the waitress was on Candid Camera.
If you sneezed you were accused of trying to bring a cold into the house, to try and kill him. He was hospitalized on December 27, 1967 due to a re-occurrence of the TB and was sent to the infirmary at the veteran’s hospital in East Orange NJ for 3 months. When he was released from the hospital anything and everything could give him a cold.
Two things were absolutes, cold feet and white flour. I never saw my father walk around without shoes or slippers on. He wouldn’t walk three feet without putting on a pair of slippers. If you sneezed, he would always ask you what you ate. My sister, my mother, and I thought he was crazy. Bare feet and white flour would make you sick and if you got sick, well as he put it, “If I get a cold I am finished.”
All of these things I observed always stuck with me. When I was about 40 years old I started to battle my weight. Always watching my calories and trying to stay in shape. The Atkins diet started to become very popular along with other diets that restricted carbohydrates, and other foods that contained you guessed it, white flour. Exactly what the old boy was talking about 30 years ago. Suddenly everyone had a carbohydrate allergy, was gaining weight, had type-two diabetes, high blood pressure, and all kinds of health issues because of white flour. I started to watch my white flour intake and I started to lose weight. The stuff I loved as a kid was something that could kill me. The stuff that my father said could make me sick was making me sick.
Recently I was walking around the backyard wearing a pair of three dollar flip flops. I have a tendency to drag my feet when I walk primarily because my feet are kind of flat, something my dad had also. I walked from the shed to the concrete walkway and slammed my right foot into an Adirondack chair. I know I broke the middle toe. At least it looked broken.
The next day passing through the garage I stubbed the same toe on a hand weight in the middle of the floor. I got into the car in agony, looked down at my foot which had the same three dollar flip-flop on it and I could hear my father say to me, “Will you please put your slippers on.”
This isn’t the first time I stubbed that toe but it is the first time it dawned on me that my father knew me because I was just like him. He didn’t want me to go through the same agonies that he had gone through. He didn’t want me to get fat or stub my toes. Unfortunately, he just had a strange way of letting me know. I don’t think he ever gave me the reason why he did what he did. That’s probably why it took me thirty years to figure it out on my own. If I could ask for something I would ask that my two daughters learn the reasons why I do what I do quicker than I learned things from my father. There’s a question that kids ask all the time “Why do we have to do this?” Sometimes by the time that gets figured out, it’s too late. So put your slippers on and have a piece of whole wheat toast, you’ll be glad you did.
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by James Burns | Dec 20, 2015 | Baby Boomers, Bully Proof Classroom, James Burns
Before the 1960’s, most people watched television in black and white. Looking back at what society was like 50 years ago, it seems like people looked at life in terms of black and white also. Things were either right or they were wrong. There wasn’t too much in between. Some of the things we viewed as wrong were disrespectful children, smoking pot, and sex before marriage. Some of the things society viewed as right were children not talking back to their parents or teachers and conservative dress. If you want to look back and see exactly what society viewed as right versus wrong, just watch some retro television and you’ll get the picture.
After WWII a new kind of generation was born in the United States. Because of the after effects of the War the United States experienced an economical boom, which resulted in high income jobs, (relevant to the time in history) with unemployment rates being almost non-existent. Education was also enhanced by the government with universities and colleges prompting people to get a college degree. Education was cheap, and was readily available. In fact, many took college courses to open up higher paying job opportunities and because of this lifestyle many people became financially secure. This financial freedom allowed people have more children and there was a significant increase in birth rates. People who were born during this period are called baby boomers and were born between the years of 1946-1964.
To me it seems like things really changed during this generation. Dr Spock came along, and his book became a child rearing bible for many people. Parents changed their approach to raising their children. It started to become in vogue for parents to be less authoritarian and more liberal in terms of discipline. The result; the baby boomers themselves took this to an extreme when they began to have children of their own. They took this more liberal mentality and kicked it up a huge notch. Baby boomer parents believed that their children had the right to decide everything. This included when they got fed, what they wanted to eat, what they wanted to wear, and what they wanted to say and do and it became the idea that at three years old children were asked to do things rather than being told.
For baby boomer children things were no longer black and white. Nothing was totally wrong anymore, and everything was a combination of colors. Parents couldn’t establish rules in black and white because it might hurt their child’s self esteem and kids began to feel good about who they were becoming for no apparent reason. The idea came into popularity that parents have to “respect” their children. The concept of respect is wonderful, but it was taken to a ridiculous extreme. Respect for children came to mean allowing them to say and do anything they wanted. Baby boomer children no longer learned self control in words and actions. This actually resulted in them not showing respect for anyone else but themselves. Basically, baby boomer children became extremely selfish, self-indulgent, arrogant, and demanding. Everything was about feeling good no matter what the cost. The end result, baby boomers have the highest debt and the poorest health with largest waistlines. The way they deal with relationships is if you don’t agree with me I am not talking to you and that means if we are married or not with the divorce rate being higher than what is reported. The research points to the fact that baby boomers get divorced later in their marriage. Their parents stayed together at all cost while the boomers hung on until their kids were grown.
We are now dealing with the children of baby boomers. They are being referred to as the millennial generation. Only time will tell what their problems will be. One thing that seems for sure, that the days of right and wrong and black and white are gone forever.
