Today at supper the tv was on and a few local political comercials came on. I said to my 17 year old with excitement "Hey, you get to vote next year!"
He said "I don't think I will, it's too hard, I can't tell who's lying or not."
My heart kind of sank, but he did have a point.
When I was his age, I looked forward to it. I grew up in a small town and my Mom took me to political potluck dinners once in a while when I was younger. I even heard Senator Paul Simon speak when I was in grade school.

I imagine this has been discussed here before, but I'm new.
Is it this way because his generation is exposed to more commercials? and more negative commercials?

I know youth of today look at Presidential elections like most, better of two evils. It's sad that is has to be this way. But they see it as it won't affect them immedietly, short of a draft so who cares who's President. I have signed up approximately 11 friends to vote, from work or elsewhere. They wern't registered to vote and I encouraged them and did my best to give them the facts as I saw them. Which many know is Cheney/Bush gotta go! But they make their own decisons. But I can see how most would think it's a deduction of utter bullshit to come to a conclusion on who to vote for...fuck it I'm drunk...bad day at work....

You have plenty of time to help him understand why he should vote. A year is a long time to a 17 year old. Leave literature lying around that might interest him. If it was my child I'd tell them its a cop out to just say you won't vote because whatever. Its up to us to do the best we can to inform ourselves.

Yeah, he has a little while before he can vote. Because I'm assuming he won't be 18 this election. But as for your point, I do agree to an extent. It's really hard to decipher everything in politics, especially now-a-days since everything is so monetarily-based. But I'm sure he'll be able to figure it out. He's just being rebellious.

college cures apathy.

Parents vs. Media?

All responsibility lies with Parents.

i agreed with you on the 10 reasons to hate bush thread, but i don't think you're right here.


Parents can only do so much. I don't think watching a violent movie will make a child kill his classmates, but i do think that the culture of overpowering violence and objectifying women don't do any good.

Parent: "this is wrong, and you shouldn't ever do it"
EVERYWHERE else: "do what you want and you can get away with it"


When children start to 'rebel', and learn there's a world outside of their parents' beliefs, they can EASILY become desensitized to violence.


Again, this isn't saying these kids will kill people, i'm just saying the kids who DO kill people aren't solely the responsibility of the parents.

I hear ya.

Its a bigger subject than this thread, for sure!

And you have a point. I just want to make sure that some or most of the onus lies with parenting, and there is no substitute for good parenting.

i agree with you there. if there's a great parent, the kid will be a good kid. If there's a bad parent, the kid will be a bad kid. Most of the time.

He is a good kid and I think I am a good parent.

If he's a good kid, i'm sure you're a good parent... the fact that you're worried about this 'trivial' of a subject (lets face it, it is trivial in the big picture of things), then i know you're a good parent.


i don't think that the choice to vote or not is a determinate of a person's goodness.

As a 17-year old who won't be able to vote, I just wanted to say that I share some of your child's chagrin about the electoral process. Most of what I've heard has been sludge campaigns and endless arguing about things that realy don't matter to the election. Even when I watched the debates, I found both candidates lacking in their responses to the questions. However, I don't see it as a vote between 2 evils. If I could vote, it would be more likely I'd vote for Kerry out of the two major candidates, but I'd rather vote for a third party. I also believe the other parties in this nation need more of a say. A two party system in which neither party can produce a candidate that people actually like, but that they don't hate as much as the other guy, is not a good system for the American people.