Remembering....

How times have changed....i just contacted one of my old classmates for a social gathering at the end of November.....and the answer is ' i'm sorry , i can't'. The reason...i have to take care of my grandchild. When i first retired from teaching, i thought i could visit my old school friends and have occasional meetings together. Well, that's not the case. The grandparents of today love their grandchildren too much to leave them to the whims of maids...or babysitters. In this so called modern society, we hear or read in the papers how children are being abused by maids and sometimes even babysitters, we just can't leave our next generation to these hands.
The other day, i asked my sister the real reason for her to take care of her grandchildren. For starters, she gave me a very direct answer....for money. Obviously, my niece gives her a very good allowance for taking care of her children. The second reason being she loves the grandchildren too much to leave them in the hands of others. Everywhere she goes, the grandchildren have to follow her and obviously they have picked up some bad habits.
For me personally, i feel children have to be disciplined....or they will turn into spoil brats. As i observe around me, i can see that most children today are totally spoilt. They do not know what moral values are. They just do things the way they want...without any regards to other people. I remembered while i was still teaching in school, this parent parked his car right in front of the school gate to wait for his child. As i was in a hurry to go out, i asked the guard at the gate to tell him to move his car so that i could go out. This parent refused and i just had to sit there until his child came out. I remembered the next day i went to the class and gave the pupils a lesson on what it meant to be considerate. From that day onwards, i noticed that that parent parked his car right in front of the gate. Some adults need children to tell them of their faults. The parents of today forget that they need to be good examples for their children to follow. They can't seem to know they will reap what they sow.
Anyway, this classmate of mine cannot come to the social gathering because she has to take care of her grandchild. She will be missing all our jokes and talks and most of all the stories when we were young. Well, we will miss her at the party and hope she will be able to come for the next one.......