Post 911 Parenting

"Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command."
Bob Dylan

Those lines from Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A' Changin referred in the early 1960's to a generation rejecting the 1950's status quo. In today's post 9/11 times, those lines ring true again. Post 9/11 children are beyond their parents' command because, as the attacks of 9/11 so shockingly heralded, the borders of our old world order are rapidly fading.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, American TV journalism has steadily morphed into the propaganda machine of the Soviet Union. Today, an American administration wiretaps your phone, making you reluctant to criticize the government on your cell, for fear that the Patriot Act will be invoked, landing you in a secret prison, tortured, without rights. The previously avoidable consequences of environmental devastation, permitted by the public's lethargy toward an insane corporate and political agenda, has befallen us. Like a character in a Kafka story, you need to be careful about what books you check out at the library because of how the authorities might interpret your choices.

The list goes on: Amercia's fanatical entry into a war without clear motives, the disastrous non-response to Katrina (that proves how people with low or no net-worth are valued by the heads of the U.S. government), the gobbling up of mainstream media information outlets that banned "the news" from talking turkey, the bland death of mainstream music radio, the fact that in "the land of the free" more than 1 out of every 100 Americans is behind bars, the surreal price of gas... we are today inundated by the prophetic signs of a global order's fading.

You can see the order fading in your personal life as the people and circumstances you have known slide into the outrageous. The margins of the status quo are melting, the borders of rational conduct are crumbling, the "levees" upholding our norms are being breached like the banks of the Mississippi and our Mexican borders. If the world is life's coloring book, life's crayon is ignoring the lines. The real is transforming into the surreal. In fact, there is so much happening "beyond your command" that, for the astute, we can call our times The Great Post 9/11 Awakening.

If we look only at the dark side of change, all looks bleak. But there is a bright side. There is always a bright side. With the outrageous comes the extraordinary. Look for phenomenal breakthroughs in your awareness and almost beyond-belief wonderful dreams coming true. As the constraints on the horrendous disintegrate, so does the containment of the miraculous. For instance, via the Internet we have access to more truth than ever before, even as mainstream media and education darken. The calling of our times stretches the vocal chords of the mundane, announcing liberation. We have arrived at the threshold of awe.
To struggle to return your world to its pre 9/11 parameters proves futile. To judge the changes as negative blinds you to the imbalances and injustices that pass with the previous order. The dissolving of the old equals the expansion into the new, grander reality. The chaos of night's destruction admits the dawning of higher order.

In today's stunning context of disintegrating boundaries we cannot reasonably expect children to behave within the confines of traditional standards. This brings us to Post 9/11 Parenting. We have not lost all control of our children. We are responsible for applying control as needed where we can, but to struggle for domination in a nervous, worried, angry mode sends us into the disintegration. Equally tragic, if not more so, we then send our child in the same mad direction, because children become like those they spend time with.

Your children are not wrong, bad or inadequate for defying your command. And you are not wrong, bad or inadequate for your lack of command over them. The times are just a' changin'. Trust the changes, love your children through them, and see such wonders.