Posted on 01/03/2004 6:50:17 PM PST by Holly_P
Is the parenting culture poised to come to its collective senses in the new year? Well, probably not. But at least common sense is getting some attention in some quarters.
In the article "Are You a Parent or a Pushover?" in the January issue of Parents magazine, author Kellye Carter Crocker reported on a Parents survey that showed most mothers expressing "deep concern over today's discipline methods."
For starters, 88 percent said parents "let children get away with too much."
Magazine surveys may be notoriously inaccurate, but still this reveals some level of angst over how kids are being raised.
As Crocker wrote, parents may be "sensing what mounting evidence is starting to reveal: Some of the discipline strategies that have been in vogue in recent years just aren't working."
"Elaborate systems that give kids multiple chances, prolonged discussions about the 'feelings' behind bad behavior, negotiations about consequences and so on are often ineffective."
Well, excuse me, but, um, "duh."
Time magazine, in its Dec. 15 edition, ran a compelling piece titled, "Does Kindergarten Need Cops?" It was subtitled, tellingly, "The Youngest School Kids are Acting Out in Really Outrageous Ways. Why?"
As the authors, led by Claudia Wallis, put it, "Temper tantrums are nothing new in kindergarten and first grade, but the behavior of one little 6-year-old in Fort Worth, Texas, had even the most experienced staff members running for cover."
"Asked to put a toy away, the youngster began to scream. Told to calm down, she knocked over her desk and crawled under the teacher's desk, kicking it and dumping out the contents of the drawers. Then she began hurling books at her terrified classmates, who had to be ushered from the room to safety."
A child with "oppositional defiant disorder"? Well, no. As Time revealed, this kind of outrageous behavior is escalating dramatically among so-called normal, healthy, middle-class kids, like this one.
Time reported the child-advocacy group Partnership for Children just completed a survey of child care centers, elementary schools and pediatricians throughout the Fort Worth area.
It showed 93 percent of 39 schools responding said kindergartners today "have more emotional and behavioral problems than were seen just five years ago." A majority of day-care centers, which host the tiniest tots, revealed that "incidents of rage and anger" have increased over the past three years.
Ronald Stephens, director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village, Calif., said this is true across the country. He told Time, "Violence is getting younger and younger."
Time cited such problems as "economic stress," though youngsters have lived through far more stressful times without 3-year-olds stabbing classmates with forks, as the authors describe one tyke doing.
Time suggested there may be too much time in child care, a politically incorrect but at least sane observation, and the authors looked to academic pressure, though it's helpful to note that's waxed and waned for a century.
The authors largely blamed violence in the media. Well, OK. But then why do many kids who see the same images not act this way, and how is it then that adult criminal activity has been on a significant downward spiral for years?
What the Time authors didn't do is give anything more than a glancing nod to parents and how they raise their kids.
Talk about a root cause.
As Ronald Simons, a sociologist at the University of Georgia in Athens, told Parents: "Without structure, children become self-absorbed, selfish and unhappy - and they make everyone around them miserable, too."
He cited studies that show kids raised by authoritative parents, meaning loving moms and dads who set firm limits and stick to them, "excel academically, develop better social skills, feel good about themselves and are happier overall" than peers raised by lax or excessively harsh parents.
Interestingly, Simons echoed other research that finds the longer the child behaves poorly the more permissive parents become, setting in place a terrible cycle that ends - who knows where? With a healthy 6-year-old attacking her teacher?
I call it a modern-day commitment to the "cult of the always-contented child." We parents are committed to our own pleasure and to the constant pleasure of our kids, too.
We worry they won't like us if we give them anything less. Tragically, we don't worry about the consequences of sending them down such a self-destructive path.
In more technical terms, Simons told Parents, "There's an (unfortunate) fear that it's traumatic for a child to be disciplined and to hear 'no' too often."
Ah, a slim ray of common-sense advice on parenting. 2004 may already be looking up.
Maybe, ... maybe not, but the manual would still be in how many different languages? With each of the pages requiring a gas station map refolding expert to refold it. Even worse the manual would be written by the same person that writes all of those instructions for putting together all of the "Barbie Dream (you name the indebtedness object of the occasion)." or the G.I. JOE Combat (somethings)
So do I - and hubby is even worse when it comes to keeping a straight face!!!
LOL!!! I like that!
My ittle angel decided ice cream was a great idea for a snack this morning - she proceeded to get it herself after I had dozed back off while we were reading in my bed.
What could I say to her?!!!!
ROTFL! I love the imagery.
(Happy New Year.)
That about sums it up!!!!
I'm sure your girls are positively delightful. No one is questioning your affection or concern for them. (BTW we picked up Shaw's book this a.m. on the strength of this thread)
That being said, idle statements like the one above would lead one to conclude you're very comfortable casting yourself in the role of Goldilocks; and that's just not where a parent with a tantrum throwing child belongs.
I also have to disagree with you on the "manual." And men do read it, but it's not in one volume, and it's certainly not a baby book. It is the literature of Western Civilization. Literature that produced men we can scarcely identify with anymore. We have been so preoccupied proving we superceded our forbears, we don't even understand what it is that made them great. That's one reason I love C.S. Lewis.... Screwtape Letters, God in the Dock anthology (which contains the previously mentioned First Things), The Great Divorce, etc. are all studies in how we convince ourselves to do that which we want, rather than that which we should. Furthermore, as Tammy Bruce recently said in "the death of right and wrong," Lewis does not try to convince: he demonstrates.
I will. Do you think I can get a copy from the local library?
If you can't, the local librarian should be jailed for malfeasance and dereliction of duty ;o) (God in the Dock is my favorite, though my wife like the simplicity of Screwtape Letters. Englishmen take a bit of effort for Americans.)
I have to go on my experience from my own childhood where I was told constantly, to stop being angry or there is no need to be afraid. I help my girls define the emotion (I know you are angry but you are not allowed to act this way or I know you are scared of the dark but if you close your eyes you see nothing and there is nothing in the dark that is not in the light) then teach them what is an appropriate reaction to that emotion.
No doubt you do, but if I take your verbage at face value, I'd have to conclude you were constantly carping about those two things. And just the two points you mention in the above sentence, frustration and fear, speak more toward your resentment over their not being properly appreciated by your parents, rather than any developmental burden suffered by you. You may not have liked it, but that doesn't make it wrong.
If the kid comes down on Christmas morning and starts crying because the new bike is the wrong color...that emotion is a punishable offense! "Why" will be explained in excruciating detail for an extended period of time, but it will be punished swiftly and severely.
Note, I am not saying the grief and upset experienced by the child is anything but genuine. I'm not questioning the identitiy of the emotion, I'm questioning it's pedigree. If it's not legitimate, it's not relevant.
And before we get on the "who are you to say" merry-go-round, know that I can just as easily, and with no hesitation, ask "who are you to say I can't?"
I contend a proper understanding of Western Civilization will make the moment by moment decisions of child-rearing as reflexive as typing to a typist, and evoke the bitterest of criticism from the "hunt and peck" crowd.
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