Yesterday as I sat in Southern California traffic, like always I scanned talk radio stations to listen to a discussion interesting enough to keep me awake. I came across the Laura Ingraham show (a show I normally do not listen to) and heard something that caused me to take my hand off the dial. She was talking about some new dance that has been a big hit with the kids. The dance is called Freaking.
(concordmonitor.com) The grainy high school dance video is striking.
A teenage boy dances behind his winter-formal date, hands on her hips, thrusting his pelvis against her while she hitches up her satiny gown and bends at the waist. Another couple dance facing each other, their bodies enmeshed and their hips gyrating in a frenzy. A boy approaches a third couple, nearly sandwiching the girl between himself and her partner.
Teenagers call it “freaking,” a style of dance made popular on MTV. Educators call it “simulated sex” that has no place at school dances. This clash between outraged adults and sexualized teens is being played out at homecoming dances, winter formals and proms across the nation, including Concord High School. Principal Gene Connolly said the school will cancel all remaining dances, including the upcoming homecoming dance, unless students step forward to help halt the freaking.
After a jungle-themed dance last month at Aliso Niguel High School in Orange County, Calif., Principal Charles Salter canceled all dances until students, parents and administrators craft a plan to stop freak dancing.
For months he had implored parents to get their children to stop freaking, even showing a video of the school dance to hundreds of parents at back-to-school night. (more…)
Anyway, Laura Ingraham had a guest on her show who was a dance teacher at a college. She asked the teacher what she thought of this dance and of course the teacher (not wanting to squash “creativity”) began to “dance” (pardon the pun) around this direct question.
“Well, if you really look at it, its not hurting anybody…”
“Well, they are just trying to express themselves…”
“blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…”
In the meantime, still not answering this very simple question.
Finally, Ingraham asked her point blank, “If you had a daughter and she was doing this, how would you feel about it?” Unfortunately, my AM signal became real fuzzzy for a minute (arrrrrrrrrgh!), so I did not hear her response. Once the static cleared, Ingraham asked this dance teacher what should be done. Her response was “Well, the first thing we need to do is to sit these kids down and have a discussion to try to U-N-D-E-R-S-T-A-N-D why they are doing this type of dancing.” Thankfully, Ingraham went off on this woman citing the fact that these are 14-15 year olds and when it comes to sex, talking alone is not going to do squat.
“Understand”, ehh? Well let me take you down my little memory lane when my mom used “understanding”:
It was a crisp Spring day and my Mom and I were driving in a car going somewhere. I was in my mid teens at the time and had just entered the embarrassment phase of having to have your mother drive you somewhere. On this particular morning my Mom was lecturing me about something I didn’t do. Being the lil’ rebellious teen that I was, I started mimicking her with my hand outside the window. Little did I know that she could see my ashy hand from the side-view mirror. Well the next thing I knew, I saw stars (thanks to her quick backhand). After the stars cleared, then I saw Betsy Ross sewing stars in the American flag. After that, I saw fireworks and heard lots of bicentennial music. The last thing I saw was George Washington sitting at a table along with Benjamin Franklin, and Al Sharpton. George Washington stopped what he was doing and said to me “Your Momma slapped you too, right?” Frighteningly I said “yes”. He then told me to go sit at a corner in the room where I saw other young Black boys who were (like me) rubbing the sides of their face. As I looked closer at their faces, I noticed that they all had a imprint of some sorts on either their right cheek or left cheek. Some of the imprints had the word “Nike”, others had “Addidas”, “Buster Brown” and other shoe companies. Suddenly I realized that like me, these young boys had been slapped to by one of their parents for being “fresh” (like the ol’ folks used to say) with our mouths.
I then awoke from this vision a changed man.
Okay, okay, so I took some creative liberty here 
. But the point here is that in the home of my parents, disrespect was not tolerated at all. While I could voice my opinion about things, voicing them in a tone that was disrespectful in any manner was not tolerated. Generally speaking, my parents had rules in the house that I had to abide by, PERIOD. If I wasn’t home when the street lights came on, there was a consequence. Lying brought the ultimate punishment: The belt. In other words, there was only but so far my parents would go with their “understanding”. At some point they had to draw the line. This is what I see lacking today.
Young kids humping on the dance floor is non-negotiable in my book. As parents, we cannot take the attitude “Well, our parents did not like the dances we used to do when we were young, so we can’t be too hard on them.”
Ooookay, and how many young boys and girls in your school lost their virginity again?
For the sensitive out there, no I am not suggesting that parents begin to slap their kids around with shoes. What I am suggesting here is that our in-house discipline for things we deem as “over the top” has to become more than taking away T.V. time. Here I am , a man in my mid-30′s and I still remember the times when my parents had to jack me up for the downright dumb things I would do as a child. To be honest with you, they hated using the belt. I can say that because for the few times I had to use the belt for my kids, I hated every moment of it. The one thing that always get me is after I finish “disciplining” my kids (again, something that has become a rarity for now), all they want me to do is stay near me. Somehow, they understand that despite the punishment, I still love them very much. It usually then that I take them out for some ice cream.
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