Kids these days . . .

I don’t understand kids these days. I’ve got to keep my medications hidden. The kids tried to take my seizure medication. I just don’t understand kids. My grandfather kept a shotgun by his bed. We kids knew not to touch it. He needed that gun for his watermelons. He was a farmer and people would try to steal his watermelons. I just don’t understand kids these days. 

This is what a gentlemen was telling me last night before a parent meeting I was speaking at. I wrote it down word-for-word after he walked away, just so that I would get it right later. It was just too strange. How did he get from kids to guns to watermelons? The meeting was for parents who have kids or grandkids or foster kids going through a drug treatment program. I was actually conducting a survey and getting their input for a non-profit I work with in the area. There are just all kinds of people in the world (and in your own backyard) dealing with things you can never imagine. Here's a conversation one young mom shared with me after the meeting. (I wrote it all down after she walked away as well).

What we really need is for the schools to teach kids not to take drugs. My son is 16 and a friend at school gave him some tablets. Why would he take something when he didn't even know what it was? Kids just don't understand the consequences of taking drugs. Why doesn't the school teach them not to take drugs and what can happen if you do. When I was in school, the teachers would teach us about the dangers of smoking. They would show us a picture of a healthy lung and a diseased lung. It was disgusting. I didn't want something like that inside me. And sex education! Why don't they teach kids sex education anymore? I see 16-year-old girls in my neighborhood with babies. I talked to my son. I don't want my 16-year-old son having a baby. Don't the schools teach kids about sex anymore?

Now maybe, like me, you were confused as to why it was the schools that need to teach a 16-year-old boy not to take some random tablet a friend gives him and why the schools are responsible for warning girls that babies can be the result of teenage sex. Isn't that kinda what parents are for . . .