Ask me why I hate Amway and its offspring, Melaluca, and my answers are many. No, I don't hate the people involved. I've known my share of them, and they want the American dream. I don't ever diss someone who wants a great life.

However, when I see people get fed a bunch of crap -- "only stupid people work regular, everyday jobs" -- that's annoying. It gets worse when that whole line of thinking seeps down to their children. It's not usually direct, but it exists in the mentality of these people.

Wonder why some kids love showing up for their team's games, but seem to miss half of the team's practices? Wonder why kids are lazier than ever when it comes to practice, both with their teams and on their own? This is an age when kids don't have a park to hang out at, to play pickup games at, like our generation did in the 1970s and '80s. So how will they get better at a sport that they say they like, but fall short in the essentials like hard work?

"Blood, sweat and tears" isn't some weak cliche. It's the real deal, and with those elements, kids learn what hard work amounts to. They learn what teamwork really is about. They find out that wins and losses are part of life, not just sport, but more importantly, giving a best-only effort is always worth the effort.

But folks who want to kowtow to every single excuse a kid makes -- 'Oh, baby, you have sniffles? OK, just stay home -- only reinforces a lifetime habit of weak-minded thinking. I'm afraid we're raising a society of wusses because too many moms are so scared of "scarring" their children by making them go to school, practice, clinics, camps (and later work) just because they "don't wanna go."

No 10-year-old kid begs a mom or dad for signup to sweat. Begging to stay out of hard work is what a kid does, but it's not really the kid's decision, no matter what all the yuppie guidebooks on parenting say. If you give a 10-year-old kid all the choices on earth, he'll skip school, play video games from morning until bedtime, and his meals will consist of Cheetos, Otter Pops and Gummy Bears.

I've heard people say that, 'Hey, kids eventually learn from their mistakes. They learn from consequences.' Sure, they do. But are you gonna wait until they burn the house down to stop them in their tracks?

All the talk about giving kids all the choices is such a pure pile of crap that it's amazing how some baby boomers have bought into it, not realizing that their childish longing for pre-teen freedom is still percolating somewhere deep in their middle-aged souls.

It's fine to have those old yearnings. Go jump out of a plane. Go hangliding. Heck, go mudsliding down Moanalua Valley trail on a rainy day. It's OK to be a kid.

But please don't subject your own kids to those stupid ideals. 'Oh, you got a C to go with your Ds, honey! That's wonderful.'

Hell no, that ain't wonderful. Most parents expect more, and that's why the utter bullshit that some folks try to preach (to me, for example), that there should be zero expectations of children and that they should have 100-percent choice in everything is not working, not on me.

I'll speak up if it's appropriate, and if I see folks raise their kids that way, I say nothing. I don't really care, really, in the big picture, how they raise their kids. That's their kuleana.

But depriving a child of basic boundaries and rules is tantamount to anarchy, pure and simple, and the more I hear about this gibberish, especially when Amway people are preaching it, I really have to believe that they may have horns and a tail tucked away somewhere.

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