There is a commercial that has been playing for Fred Meyer Jewelers over the past few days when I listen to Spotify that has really bothered me. The commercial, a mother’s day advertisement, has a child fawning over his mother, telling her that she looks beautiful and asking her who she is wearing, as if he had not bought the jewelry for her in the first place. There are at least a few things about the commercial that particularly bugged me. For one, the crassly commercial tone of the commercial was rather off-putting, which would have made the commercial at least mildly annoying if it did not have more reasons to be even more irritating. For another, it is not the job of children to buy jewelry for their mothers, but rather the job of men to buy jewelry for their wives, a job that most of them seem to do at least mildly well, from the looks of it, given the decades of advertising about such products that has been force-fed to men. There was something that bothered me the most, though, and that was the assumption that it is the job of children to build up their parents.

This is not so, but this problem is far from isolated to annoying jewelry advertisements. When one examines the TikTok videos of leftist educators, one is left with the melancholy reflection that these mutant horrors expect the children that they have under their care as instructors expect these children to approve of their corrupt and deviant lifestyles, share in their evil ways, and allow themselves to be molded and groomed by these hideous abominations. That is not so either. It is the job of teachers and instructors to build up their students, not the job of the students to build up the neurodivergent and fragile instructors who cannot bear to be rebuked for their moral corruption, much less demonstrate and impart virtue and wisdom and insight to the children they have the duty to instruct.

There is a lot of criticism that we can make concerning the conduct of young people. The kids are not alright. More and more often, even older elementary school children struggle with basic literacy as well as the ability to sit still, keep their hands and feet to themselves, and not disrupt the learning experience of other people around them for even a few minutes at a time. It is not only that these children are often woefully behind the knowledge level that should be expected at their age, but they do not even have the fundamental behaviors to learn, such as self-discipline, a thirst for knowledge, and a basic recognition of the golden rule that allows for the building of empathy and mutual reciprocity in respect and concern for others. Admittedly, though, these children cannot be expected to learn these things if there is hardly anyone around who can teach them these lessons either formally or informally by example. It is not as if their public school teachers are equipped to teach them about the basic importance of these things when such people seek the approval of young people for their own immaturity and rebelliousness against proper moral restraint.

Children do have the responsibility to honor and respect those in authority, although it must be admitted that this responsibility has become increasingly difficult for all of us to do in the face of the many failures of leadership in our society. It must be remembered, though, that it is not the job of children to build up and support the fragile egos of their parents and teachers and other authority figures. Instead, the opposite is the case. It is the job of adults to be responsible and mature examples for children to follow, and to build them up as best as we are able. It is long past time for parents and educators to do their job, and to stop asking the children to do their job for them.