[Rhodes22-list] Raising children Redux: Brad

[Gregg MacMillan]

Very good article... I pasted it below. Just in time for my wife's  
"parent's night" this evening... eighth grade social studies.  She  
does have one of the best "looks" and uses it often. Unfortunately, I  
get it often myself.

--Gregg

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A Lost Art: Instilling Respect

By Patricia Dalton
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, September 11, 2007; Page HE01

There's been a fundamental change in family life, and it has played  
out over the years in my office. Teachers, pediatricians and  
therapists like me are seeing children of all ages who are not afraid  
of their parents. Not one bit. Not of their power, not of their  
position, not of their ability to apply standards and enforce  
consequences.

I am not advocating authoritarian or abusive parental behavior, which  
can do untold damage. No, I am talking about a feeling that was  
common to us baby boomers when we were kids. One of my friends  
described it this way: "All my mother had to do was shoot me a look."  
I knew exactly what she was talking about. It was a look that stopped  
us in our tracks -- or got us moving. And not when we felt like it.

Now.

These days, that look seems to have been replaced by a feeble nod of  
parental acquiescence -- and an earnest acknowledgment of "how hard  
it is to be a kid these days."

In my office, I have seen small children call their parents names and  
tell them how stupid they are; I have heard adolescents use strings  
of expletives toward them; and I remember one 6-year-old whose  
parents told me he refused to obey, debated them ad nauseam and  
sometimes even lashed out. As if on cue, the boy kicked his father  
right there in the office. When I asked the father how he reacts at  
home, he told me that he runs to another room!

It came to me like a lightning bolt: Not only are the kids unafraid  
of their parents, parents are afraid of their kids!

What ever happened to the colorful phrases our parents relied on to  
put us in our place? "Keep your shirt on." "On the double." "What do  
you think we are, made of money?" "Because I said so." "If you want  
sympathy, look it up in the dictionary." Or one of my personal  
favorites: "Don't bother me unless you're bleeding," which a friend's  
mother said to her six kids when she sat down to read before dinner.

Today's generation of children is the most closely observed,  
monitored, cherished and scheduled in our history. They are also the  
most praised. Families are smaller, and there are fewer children upon  
whom parents can beam their attention.

Today there are moms and dads who aren't just parents -- they believe  
in "parenting." They read volumes and volumes about how to be good  
parents and view parenting as both an art and a science that must be  
studied and updated and practiced self-consciously. Letting children  
run around the neighborhood and be bored some of the time is anathema  
to them.

Many parents these days don't expect their children to contribute  
much around the house, although they do expect them to achieve  
outside the house. They have strong beliefs about what makes children  
successful and happy-ever-after, and underpinning those beliefs is  
the concept that they -- the parents -- are all-important in this  
quest. Such parents believe that self-esteem is the key to lifetime  
success, and to this end they compliment their children a lot.

They are egalitarian, and they believe families should be  
democracies. Needless to say, they don't give orders. They believe  
that children will do things when they are ready to. They ask their  
child politely if he or she will do something and are surprised and  
dismayed when the response is "no."

It's as if parents have rewritten the Fourth Commandment to read,  
"Honor thy children."

And, boy, are they paying for it.

When a teacher, pediatrician or therapist suggests that perhaps these  
"parenting" behaviors are not helping but in fact causing harm, such  
earnest parents can be hard to convince. They don't want to have to  
hear that their New Age concepts for raising kids not only do not  
work, but actually are prescriptions for disaster.

Let's take the constant parental praise. I first noticed it when my  
three children were small, and I would hear mothers lauding their  
kids' incredible artwork or rich vocabulary. I can recall one mother  
who brought her 6-year-old to my office after the school observed  
some social difficulties. "Isn't she scrumptious?" she said, in front  
of her beaming daughter. (I made a mental note to myself: This may be  
part of the problem.)

After all, there is a difference between appreciation, which is from  
the heart, and flattery, which is from the mouth.

Starting in the mid-1990s, a team led by psychologist Carol Dweck did  
a series of experiments on fifth-graders over a 10-year period. One  
study compared two randomized groups of children in a classroom  
setting. In one group, researchers attributed children's achievement  
to their effort and in the other to their intelligence. Those praised  
for their hard work, it turned out, were more likely to attempt  
difficult tasks and performed better than those praised for  
intelligence. Children who were told that innate intelligence is the  
key were less likely to expend effort and take risks, perhaps because  
they were trying to maintain an image that they felt was not under  
their control.

A later study that Dweck conducted among seventh- and eighth-graders  
confirmed these findings and found that an effort mind-set also led  
to higher achievement, as measured by math grades.

More-serious concerns were raised by a 1996 review of 200 studies on  
self-esteem by Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State  
University. Rather than promoting success, he found that an  
"unrealistically positive self-appraisal" was linked to aggression,  
crime and violence.

It all makes a therapist long for the days of the good old  
inferiority complex. And for parents who could put children in their  
place. Some interesting research on interpersonal attraction has  
shown that self-confidence in combination with some degree of  
vulnerability makes a person more appealing to others. Unshakable  
self-regard is a liability. And dominance is the kiss of death.

Over-parented and under-disciplined children can also have trouble  
later as young adults with the process of separating from home and  
creating an independent life. Kids who were constantly praised often  
become thin-skinned adults who have trouble taking negative feedback  
on their job or in their personal lives. And I have had more than one  
client over the years who was positively indignant when a boss  
expected him or her to be at work on time and to call in sick only  
when necessary.

Kids who were told, "You can do anything," may have extremely high  
expectations that can be hard to attain in our multifaceted modern  
lives. In her 2006 book, "Generation Me," Jean Twenge, a psychologist  
at San Diego State University, documented an enormous rise in young  
people's expectations from the late '60s to the late '90s. Twenge  
refers to a quote from the character Tyler Durden in the movie "Fight  
Club": "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day  
we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we  
won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very  
[ticked] off."

Maybe it wouldn't be so painful if parents would sign on to the  
following manifesto: Let's expect more help from our kids around the  
house and withdraw some of our frenetic investment in their academic,  
sporting and social achievements. Let's shore up boundaries and let  
them be kids in the kid zone. And let's allow them to experience some  
of life's disappointments. Let's talk on the phone and go out on  
weekends with our friends. Let's start worrying less whether our kids  
are happy all the time and more about whether we are enjoying them  
and ourselves. Let's get a life in the parent zone. And last but not  
least, let's resurrect an old concept: Father and Mother Know Best. ?