Children on Long Island are growing to be more and more adultlike at younger and younger ages. This morning for example, I spotted a small girl with her dad at a Starbucks. This little girl not only was yelling at her dad that her coffee was not strong enough, but she did this while clutching her Iphone. This young lady could not have been more than 8 years old. Im not sure about you folks out there, but when I was 8 years old, I was certainly not drinking coffee, and I definitely did not have a cell phone. While in these times of panic and danger it is necessary to be able to contact your children at any time, children drinking coffee, especially Starbucks coffee is certainly bad parenting in my opinion. Little girls should be at home with their siblings making pancakes on a Saturday morning, not getting their morning "fix" at the local coffee shop. The gentleman in front of me had noticed this before I had, and was outraged that a father could allow his child to be drinking coffee. Coffee it seems these days is the least of our problems. Kids are being introduced to more and more things that are not age appropriate everyday. Tv shows, smoking,drinking,sex,drugs,cursing,inappropriate dress, and that is just to name a few. You can walk into any store or restaurant and find a young girl with too short shorts on with a small tank top on, and where are her parents ... sitting right across from her, yapping away on their cell phones. People these days seem to use more of the "hands off" approach when it comes to raising their kids, and while I am no parent, I was raised by good, stern, loving parents. Parents that didn`t allow me to watch crap on television, gave me a bed time, and didnt give me things just to shut me up so they could go back to non sense. How do people feel that they have a right to be outraged about people behaving so poorly in society when they allow their kids to behave the very same way right in front of their noses. It seems that these parents need a wake up call, because pretty soon they will be taking orders from their very own 4 year olds about what the morning brew should be.
-Outraged Islander
