For the past several weeks, there’s been a subtle invasion going on, that strange cookie invasion of little Girl Scouts everywhere you go.But there’s something odd about it, yes, something very odd and it’s being taking place under our very noses and eyes for the past several years and that is the absence of parents taking their young daughters around, door-to-door.
Seems that some parents don’t have time to spend with children anymore, so many take the lazy way out and just bring them to the office to sell. They make little signs, they hit up on their co-workers to buy their daughters’ edible wares once a year and most people take the bait and bite!
The Girl Scouts aren’t the only group that sells wares, there are other groups that sell candies, candles and other worthless junk to which parents feel obligated to bring their children’s items and sell to offices across the United States too.
They tell us they are raising funds for their troops or schools in the fine print on the order form or if you ask them directly.
I always wondered whatever happened to parents who wanted their children to learn valuable skills on their own and not with this parent’s help. What could a kid possibly learn from Mommy and Daddy helping them all the time, especially in light of selling cookies or other junk food?
Would it show a child that if Mommy and Daddy help them out all of the time, that it would mean independence would be harder to achieve over time? I think so.
How is it that if parents raise children while teaching their children right from wrong, that some parents tend to forget that they must stay out of their children’s lives to a certain degree, in order to let them gain valuable life experience by letting them figure out situations such as selling on their own?
Some parents claim they don’t have time for their children because of other obligations like work, yet when one thinks about it, what’s the purpose of having children to begin with in the first place, other than a tax write-off?
When I was younger and delivered newspapers for the Park Ridge News Agency (Park Ridge, Illinois), I sold newspaper subscriptions to other neighbors along the two newspaper routes. I had, my morning route (Chicago Tribune & Chicago Sun-Times) and my afternoon route (Chicago Daily News). We earned money and points for prizes such as transistor radios, baseball mitts and small television sets.
It gave kids like me a chance to develop ideas and sales pitches on our own. I only went to my parents The Arizona Babe & Rex Pater Homo when I was stuck or ran into dead-ends. They never helped me out with that sort of stuff and I believe I am now better off for that.
Sure they were around for other important factors in my growing up, but I believe if parents really want to help their children achieve their personal life goals, they should let their children sell their own stuff and let them alone to understand the differences between superficial sales with their parents help and reality sales without their parents help.
Parents of America now hear this: Take those cookies and other junk foods that you pressure others to buy to help your kids out and figure out a better plan. If you’ve gotten this far, then I’m sure you’re capable of it!
As for the parents who say they want to be involved with every aspect of their children’s life, more power to you! Just let them live as you so did and the rewards will be plentiful!
