What's Wrong With Grown-Ups

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What's Wrong With Grown-Ups

When the 10-year-olds in Mrs. Imogene Frost's class at the Brookside, N.J.
Community Sunday School expressed their views of "What's wrong with
Grown-ups?" they came up with these complaints:

1. Grown-ups make promises, then they forget all about them, or else they
say it wasn't really a promise, just a maybe.

2. Grown-ups don't do the things they're always telling the children to
do--like pick up their things, or be neat, or always tell the truth.

3. Grown-ups never really listen to what children have to say. They always
decide ahead of time what they're going to answer.

4. Grown-ups make mistakes, but they won't admit them.
They always pretend that they weren't mistakes at all--or that somebody
else made them.

5. Grown-ups interrupt children all the time and think nothing of it. If a
child interrupts a grownup, he gets a scolding or something worse.

6. Grown-ups never understand how much children want a certain thing--a
certain color or shape or size. If it's something they don't admire--even if
the children have spent their own money for it--they always say, "I can't
imagine what you want with that old thing!"

7. Sometimes Grown-ups punish children unfairly. It isn't right if you've
done just some little thing wrong and Grown- ups take away something that
means an awful lot to you.
Other times you can do something really bad and they say they're going to
punish you, but they don't. You never know, and you ought to know.

8. Grown-ups are always talking about what they did and what they knew when
they were 10 years old--but they never try to think what it's like to be 10
years old right now.

J.A. Petersen, ed., For Families Only, Tyndale, 1977, p. 253

Source: Weekend Encounter, by Dick Innes