BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Well, do they?
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Do Parents Have To Teach Their Children To Be Bad?
leibowde84
Veteran Member
Of course not. There are many influences that can cause children with outstanding parents to behave badly.
Kids do what they want to do. We teach them which of those actions are bad.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Not much left too add after this.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
No, they can also teach them to be thoughtful, empathetic, responsible, and kind. I also focus on other things, such as teaching clear communication. But, not everyone has the same priorities.
See the movie The Good Son (1993).
Both genes and environment probably play rolls in how kids turn out. Moreover, the relative weight of each set of factors most likely varies from trait to trait. For instance, genes might account for, say, 90% of a child's ability to feel compassion, but only 60% of a child's feelings of fairness.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Nope, as children whom are spoiled brats can attest.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
It's not always the case, but kids with behavioral problems often come from bad environments. So it's not a matter of parents teaching them bad, but rather parents not teaching them anything at all, or by being bad examples, or by not being any sort of example by being absent, etc.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Nope. Just as god made sure all women would suffer in childbirth for Eve's mistake, he made sure almost all parents would suffer bad children. Those who happen to spawn good kids, are simply god's favored people, put on earth to better highlight the badness of the bad kids and thus increase the regret of their parents for ever having them.
God ain't done seeking retribution for that mess in Eden by any means.
.
They come out of the uterus built out of Satan and they continue to worship Satan and the beast until they die. Then created men wake up in new bodies on a new earth.
Parents teach their kids things all the time, whether they mean to or not. Modelling is one of the most powerful teaching tools, and kids are always watching.
But it's not just the parents they learn from.
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
They have to teach their children what the society they are a part of considers good and bad.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
All,
Sure sounds like you agree with the scriptures here--that children aren't born morally perfect or even with a propensity to mainly do good deeds.
Thank you.
Sure sounds like you agree with the scriptures here--that children aren't born morally perfect or even with a propensity to mainly do good deeds.
Thank you.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Frankly, we really don't need the scriptures to tell us that as experience is a great teacher. But neither are children born sinning, so it cuts both ways.
Kids will learn from doing good and bad and the repercussions of their decisions like we all do.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
I didn't say "experience is a great teacher". I said, "Do children need experience (to be taught) to be bad?"
They do NOT.
You misquoted the Bible again. The Bible doesn't say, "Children are born sinning," but it says the far more accurate (of course) "Children go astray after birth, speaking lies . . . "
Infants will cry not just for food or a wet nappy but for attention.
I have two children and know better than to say "They just never, ever sin, and need neither experience nor teaching to be little angels."
I call baloney. When will you ever say that ANYTHING in the Bible is right?
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
I didn't quote or even paraphrase any scriptures, so how in the world did you get this from what I wrote?
Now you are again being dishonest as I never made any such claim.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Then perhaps you will once, in hundreds of posts we've shared, affirm anything I've said about the scriptures. ANYTHING. Your claim to be open-minded goes against your desire to constantly harangue where the Bible is wrong or off or immoral.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Ugh. Where I go attend live action role playing games, this kid, his dad owns the LARP group that puts on the games and is a psychiatrist (and seems a nice guy), his mom is a veterinarian (haven't met her), and he is so spoiled he reeks of cockiness and arrogance and I don't think he's yet realized that or that he annoys the hell out of most people there because of it. He also doesn't seem to realize people don't like it when you want some sympathy for every little problem. Other players, their responses tend to range from telling him to shut up, trying to set him up for humiliating failures to knock him off his high horse, and some people have even want to kill his character off.
It may not be an "active" action, but the "passive" action of parents tending not to want to see the bad side of their child can easily fester into its own range of problems, especially when the child comes from a background of getting what they want (and this kid has some really good/pricey gear). Even I'm even to the point I want to tell his dad that his kid acts like a total douche and he needs to set him straight before his kid ends up an adult who has more fake poser friends than actual friends and is scraping dates from the bottom of the barrel because every other potential significant other has self esteem that is too high.
Children don't sin. They are children. They have not yet learned, they have not yet experienced, and they do not yet know. They can, however, be a tiny package of a concentrated natural disaster, and shame on anyone who would call that sin. They will destroy things, they will ruin things, they will say "mean" things, but they are children. Either take and accept that bad with the good, or don't have any.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
If we don't have to teach children to be bad, they must . . . commit sin of their nature. Children and adults sin.