The beauty of parenting is perfection is not attainable. The ugly part is that the imperfections can be irreparable. Having mostly grown children with a stay at home wife/mother we have been able to fill the gaps. Our kids are well rounded and goal oriented, some goals are not what we wish for, but goals nonetheless. Our children did not get a free ride while not lacking. Point is; do the best you can to mitigate the damage. Use the tools you have, develop the tools you don’t have, you are a parent. Parenting is about nurturing your relationship, as spouses or otherwise, filling the parental gaps that all of us have. The key to us is knowing our faults and shortcomings, working together to fill the gaps.

We send people to prison who need help. Normal people that have a problem, we throw in prison. We only have 5% of the world’s population while a whopping 25% of the world’s prisoners. We are quick to incarcerate. We jail drug addicts, we sentence 16 year olds as adults. Alcoholics go to prison. Underprivileged turn to crime because they lack the skills to get a job. We are spending between 30K-60K per year per inmate. We are allowing drug companies to inundate our society with medications that our children steal and then get addicted to, turning to criminals and drug dealers to feed the addiction. Mentally disabled? You too can get tossed in the slammer.

Why do we not spend that money up front, educate, drug rehabilitation, counseling and medication for treatable mental disabilities.

When I was 16 I got busted for crimes that could’ve landed me to 40 years of prison time. I had been commiting crime and doing drugs for only a couple of years before that, with prior convictions. The local judge did not want me to go to trial, he knew I would end up in prison. This judge deferred my arraignment based on counseling and community service. The appointed counselor helped me start understand my issues and helped me begin to work on them. He worked with the victims, that I violated, to assign my community service, to them. I was devastated, then lifted once I realized that they were all willing to help me. Through love and understanding, it helped. I still had a hard road to tow, I still used drugs. I stopped criminal activities, worked legitimate jobs and eventually became a productive member of society. All of this and I bet for less than the cost of 1 year in prison.

Why would we save a few thousand dollars on the front end only to spend 10’s of thousands on the tail end. We must find a way to educate and rehabilitate rather than incarcerate. Through education and affordable programs this can be changed. Let’s stop turning petty crimes into hardened criminals.

Emotion is a natural state of mind based on one’s circumstance or mood, often derived from relationships with others. Emotions are personal and not always based on facts, which can cause skewed views of the world. Our leaders and media are using emotions to manipulate us into feeling as though the way we feel is reality. This is currently being used as such.

For instance; Society is safer based on facts, people feel in danger due to emotions. These emotions are controlling our reality, making the facts less real.

Pay attention to the information you are being given, is it emotionally driven or based on facts?