Remember this: Children left alone with no mentor, may or may not, get into trouble.
The current state of young adult finds social skills being replaced by electronic interactions with little or no human face time. Children wake up before the sun comes up only to spend roughly eight hours a day for five days in a row at what is pretty much a job: inside of a building being herded from one classroom to the next under artificial light. This being the only exercise that they find to alleviate unburnt energy and the problems of not being able to focus. Once children get home the parents are away at work or to tired to spend quality time with them.
What are kids to do?
Some hang out with their friends, depending on the quality of friend, what passing time they pursue is up to debate.
Recently, I spoke to a teen that took a new friend on from school that had just moved in. After several interactions, the transplanted student was only being accepted into the bully fold even though he seemed to make an effort to not be a bully. The teen had informed me that the new kid had invited him to partake in the use of drugs and alcohol. These teens being barely able to drive were definitely at the point of making some very bad life decisions.
This is how it happens.
Children are left to their own devises where boredom takes hold and to alleviate that feeling on their own decide to get mixed up in activities that don't necessarily help their future. You then have the problem of wayward kids with parents that may nor may not parent from the couch. There is also the possibility that the parenting system is perfectly fine, but things that influence the home cause this neglect or lack of parenting presence re-enforced by communications and trust.
Of course we all want our children to become productive independent functioning adults. I don't know of one parent that wants a child that becomes addicted to drugs or alcohol by their eighteenth birthday. Being inclined to better the youth of my community, especially when I see and hear such stories, decided to extend a moment of solitude and focus to these three youths. I picked them up and planned to do some work in a pine stand but then decided that I would take them down to the woods. I drove down the dirt roads and through the woods bouncing them around like a good country bumkin would do. Laughing the whole way as I looked out of my rear view in case one of them actually did go aflyin'. I put the three boys off at their prospective stands. The last one was the transplanted kid.
I decided to ask him some questions. He was interested in making money. I told him I didn't know what his interest were. He didn't seem to have a confirmed interest in any field be it science, math, arts, or other. I found this strange as my understanding was that he failed to pass to the eleventh grade by a couple of points. He tells me that he has never been in the woods. I was a little floored. I know it happens but I had never met such a strange beast before today. He says to me, "I can learn a lot out here." I put him in the stand then drove off to leave them.
Let me note that none of them had a gun due to the lack of a hunter safety course. It was just a sit and observe objective. I drove out to the main house then walked back of the tree line to drive the deer in the woods back to them. It worked. I walked back out and parked down the road from where I had deposited them in the woods. After about an hour and a half, the trio broke the woods at the bend then came walking out. I laughed. They did make it for about an hour and a half. The ring leader saw a snake trying to crawl to the stand from a tree and crawled down. He went to find the second who was asleep in a box stand that was made for handicapped hunters. These two walked to the other side of the woods to pick up their wayward friend, then walk out. I was sitting in my truck by the road waiting to see if a deer would come out or if they would.
I took the transplant home after riding through the country while looking at this amazing sunset. I asked the two other teens: Who had broke first with boredom and moved? The guilty party was pointed out. I wasn't surprised. I told them they needed to learn patience and how to be still. This was an old habit of tribal people. Take a child and make him sit. Learning patience, silence, and living with your own existence in a moment of being was a life lesson. Besides survival can deepen on stillness or movement.
One of the problems of children and teens is boredom. That can get them into all kind of trouble.
I have observed most kids lack a mentor. They do not know what path in life they are thinking about taking. Time passes and there is a lack of preparation for adult activities. Learning how to handle life by slowing building your arsenal with life skills is imperative. It boils down to survival. It could be survival in the concrete jungle, the actual wilderness or transversing life itself, no matter the landscape.
The best solution is mentoring. I have always had the personal ideal based on this one precept.
If you see a person struggling don't just stand there. Ask them if they need help or just help them. Most people are way to proud to ask. You don't have anything to lose but self-respect for yourself. Depends on what you can live with or not. With kids, you shouldn't even mentally argue this.
If I take my time out to spend directing a child or teenager, or asking them indirect or direct questions on life choices to let them find their way to a better life, then I have not wasted my time.
The activity of hunting opens a dialogue with a teenager on what their life goals are, where they want to go, what they might be lacking in the quality of their life, or what they have to do to make it a reality.
Kids do have an ideal of the quality of life they want, but sometimes the environment is not supportive enough for them to open up.
It's a note to take to God, but there are countries even in this civilized and industrious world where people have to literally fight between living and dying. Kids go out into that. Lets not send them out ill-prepared.
Written by W Harley Bloodworth
~ Courtesy of the AOFH~
