Weekly Posting of the Conservative Cow Doctor

 

It’s For the Children
 

Obamacare is no more about care than climate change is about climate; both are euphemisms intended to persuade the unwashed to surrender to the wishes of the ruling class. Similarly, the mantra “it’s for the children,” is not for the children at all. To the contrary, today it is used to cleave the parent / child bond and shift the rearing of children to the collective. Progressives are crafty bastards, but their trickery does not fool me because I learned the truth years ago.


God blessed me with three children and each taught me something, but it was number three, Tyler, who truly schooled me about parenting. It was October of 1991 and I was installing a wood stove in our new house. Earlier that morning, the trophy wife had delivered Meagan and Chelsie to school and Tyler, our three-year-old, to the sitter’s. I finished up about 9:00 a.m. and hopped in my pickup to race to the clinic. As I pulled onto 12th Street, I noticed a small child stomping my direction in the middle of the road. He was wearing green Ninja Turtle pajamas and bedroom slippers and his non-verbal clues indicated he was mad. It was Tyler. I rolled down my window and asked “Where are you going?” He was in no mood for conversation and without glancing up he kept marching home. Here is why.

Our summer house project had been a labor intensive family event and for the previous four months Tyler and his sisters had been driving nails, pulling nails, spilling paint, or packing off tools; excitement he preferred over spending all day at the baby sitter’s, so he sprinted home at his first chance. We lectured, disciplined, and negotiated, but his habit at the sitter’s eventually became blink and he’s gone. It was only a half-mile trek home, and today’s First Lady warns there are fat kids everywhere, so the exercise was good, but his route home crossed the Big Ditch; a body of water with the history of snuffing the life of small children. We faced a parenting dilemma.

For the rest of October, Tyler would start sobbing an hour prior to going to the sitter and we tried everything to fix the problem. Well-meaning friends provided us popular parenting-advice magazines written by experts; mostly adolescent psychologists who do not have children. Finally, one morning I had enough and declared, “This is insane. Life should be simple when you are three and from now on, Tyler will ride with me.” So he did.

My veterinary practice was two years old and I spent many days rattling up and down country roads on farm calls. Tyler immediately took to his new routine, quickly studying each new place we visited for swing-sets or sand boxes suggesting the presence of children. He knew our time was short before we were off to the next call, so he made friends fast. This doctor-son arrangement continued until Tyler started school two and a half years later and they were the best years of my life. Later in grade school, Tyler would occasionally ask, “Dad, can I ride with you on calls this Saturday?” He needed to talk, so he rode with me and we talked. Sadly, those days are gone. Tyler is an engineer, married and has two little escapees of his own. The fields of western Yellowstone County are growing subdivisions, strip malls and casinos rather than corn, so my road time is considerably less than it was in 1991. This brings me to my point.

A parent’s time with their children is incredibly short and for the ruling class to shorten it even more is criminal. Montana’s Governor Steve Bullock is spinning his new Pre-Kindergarten program as being “for the children”. It is not. Costing $37 million every two years, this program empowers the ruling class and teacher union leadership at the expense of three and four-year olds. The children do not belong to the community, they belong to their parents and they reach their greatest potential only when they spend their younger years with their parents. I will not be in the 2015 legislative session to reject this taking of our children, but I trust there are those I left behind who will. Mike, Jerry, Keith, Ryan, Alan, and Kris what say you?


 
 
 
 
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