Posted on 08/06/2007 9:09:46 PM PDT by goldstategop
If you want your children to be happy adults and even happy children -- and what parent does not? -- minimize the excitement in their lives. The more excitement, the less happy they are likely to be.
In both adults and children, one can either pursue excitement or pursue happiness, but one cannot do both. If you pursue excitement, you will not attain happiness. If you pursue happiness, you will still experience some moments of excitement, but you will attain happiness only if happiness, not excitement, is your goal.
When we give our child a present, he experiences excitement, and we are delighted when we see how happy he is. When done occasionally -- a holiday, a birthday -- this is perfectly fine and even beneficial. Children should have those special moments and remember forever that wonderful Christmas, Chanukah or birthday present.
But because we parents so delight in the excitement we see in our children at those moments -- because they seem so happy then -- we can easily fall into the trap of providing more and more exciting things to keep them seemingly happy at just about every moment. And they in turn come to rely on getting excited to keep them happy and to identify excitement with happiness.
But excitement is not happiness. In fact, it is the ultimate drug.
It is excitement that people seek when engaging in any destructive addictive behaviors. Excitement is a major part of what people seek in doing drugs, in having sex with multiple partners, in gambling (from slot machines to risky stock purchases) or in having an extra-marital affair. And even for many criminals, excitement is a major lure of criminal behavior.
It is argued that we are programmed to desire excitement. But we are also programmed to be lazy, to be irresponsible and to eat unhealthy foods. And just as these other natural instincts do not lead us to happiness, neither does excitement.
Today's young people have the ability to experience excitement more than any generation in history. Outside of school, excitement is available almost 24/7. MTV is exciting (MTV has done far more damage to this generation than has the tobacco industry); video games are exciting; the nearly all-pervasive sexual stimuli are exciting; MySpace (largely a human cesspool) is exciting; getting tattooed is exciting; piercings are exciting; many pictures and videos on the Internet are exciting. The list of exciting things many children experience is as long as there are hours in the day.
But all this excitement is actually inhibiting our children's ability to enjoy life and therefore be happy. All this excitement renders young people jaded, not happy. To cite a simple example, many children today would refuse to watch a black and white film -- "It's boring," they say. They would even refuse to watch many of the greatest color films if they lacked the amount of excitement -- usually meaning violence but also frequently meaning foul language and sexual content -- that they are now so used to seeing in films. Plot development is "boring"; blowing up people and buildings is exciting.
That is why the frequent complaint of "I'm bored" is often a sign of a jaded child, i.e., a child addicted to excitement and therefore incapable of enjoying life when not being excited.
All this excitement in their lives bodes poorly for the future happiness of millions of American children. Real life, let alone daily life, will seem so boring to them that they will not be able to enjoy it. And more than a few of them will opt for lives of constant excitement, often in ways destructive to themselves and others.
The solutions are as simple to offer as they may be difficult to enforce. Limit the amount of excitement in your children's lives: the amount of video games, the amount of non-serious television, the amount of music whose only aim is to excite. If they are bored, they will have to remedy that boredom by playing with friends, finding a hobby, talking to a family member, walking the dog, doing chores, reading a book or magazine, learning a musical instrument or foreign language, memorizing state capitals, writing a story or just their thoughts, exercising or playing a sport, or just thinking.
The younger the age from which children are deprived of superficial excitement, the longer they will remain innocent -- i.e., not jaded -- and capable of real happiness. For as long as they live under your roof, and therefore (hopefully) under your control, you can implement excitement detox. If you do, they may hate you now, but they will thank you later, which is far superior to liking you now and hating you later. And in parenting, that is often the choice we must make.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Not to want is a good thing.
However this piece seems to go way beyond that. Incredibly arrogant... telling others how to live, raise their kids, and what emotions to feel or avoid.
The obvious that the lazy and shallow (stupid)miss.
The thing is- I know exactly what he's talking about and I agree with him... for myself. I am a boring person, and very happy with that.
But I can't imagine telling others they should be like me, especially younger folks. Be yourself, whatever your age. Don't listen to grumpy old men.
He's not telling anyone anything. You can take it or not. He's a wise man though who's had a profound influence on my life.
Wet blanket Dennis would be of greater service to kids if they could hit him with water balloons.
I think Prager’s right on target. Look around our secular society. We are at the zentih of material wealth and leisure time. Yet as a culture we are a train wreck of social pathology and selfindulgence. Rich kids in particular tend to be major eff ups. Prager’s terminology may be simplistic but the core message is trenchant.
read later
I think Dennis is thinking way too hard. Maybe time for a break?
They'd probably find that exciting! Har har.
Christians call this “Joy”. I was taught not to seek happiness, but true joy and peace of heart and mind. They are totally different things.
“Rich kids in particular tend to be major eff ups.”
I’ll bet you got that from the movies.
It seems like many of my favorite childhood memories are ones of exciting times. Why take that away from a kid?
So "excitement" is Playstation, MTV and Ipod? The other activities are the left overs? C'mon!
At least Dennis knows school isn't exciting...
This is any interesting quote that agrees with you:
The Founders’ definition of “happiness” came from Sir William Blackstone’s 1765 biblically based definition: “[God] has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it can not but induce the latter.”
Actually I see it everyday among my business associates. I work with many driven, succesful, wealthy people but many of their young adult and older teenage kids are unmitigated failures. By my observation middle class kids tend to fair better than wealthy kids for a variety of reasons. Obviously my kids are the exception ;0)
I liked the article... and yes I agree with lots of it. The excitement some children have or recieving is gift is jaded if they seem to be showered with gifts on a daily/weekly level.
Thanks for posting JSGOP
My six-point plan for rearing children
By John Rosemond
Summer 1989
Here it is in brief:
Point One: Pay more attention to your marriage than you pay to your children. In other words, put first things first and keep them there, where they belong and are more likely to last. If you’re a single parent, this translates: Pay slightly more attention to yourself than you do your children. You can’t supply someone else’s “warehouse” unless your own is fully stocked.
Point Two: Expect your children to obey. Stop apologizing for the decisions you make in their lives. Get back in touch with the power of the phrase, “Because I said so.” Stop trying to convince your children that your decisions are for their own good. Have they ever truly listened? Have they ever, despite all the eloquence you could muster, agreed? Essential to a child’s sense of security are parents who are authoritative, decisive and trustworthy — in a word, powerful. So get with it, parents. Your children are counting on you.
Point Three: Mobilize your children’s participation in the family by expecting and enabling them from an early age to make regular, tangible contributions to the family in the only form possible: chores. And along with making them responsible members of the family, make them responsible for their own behavior. Stop running after the bus, stop tying their shoes, stop trying to keep them from falling flat on their faces. Give them the golden opportunity to learn “the hard way” — as in from their mistakes — which is often the only way possible.
Point Four: Give your children regular and realistic doses of Vitamin N (”no”). Sufficient exposure to frustration not only helps prepare a child for the realities of adulthood but also gradually instills a tolerance for frustration. This tolerance enables children to persevere in the face of adversity, and perseverance, as we all know, is the key ingredient in every success story. Stop thinking that your first obligation is to keep your children happy. It isn’t. Your first obligation is to endow them with the skills they’ll need to pursue happiness on their own. Frustrate your children for success.
Point Five: Where toys are concerned, less is more. And the more things any one toy can be, the better. Too many toys, and especially too many of the wrong kinds, can stifle creativity and resourcefulness. When children tell us they’re bored, they’re probably trying to tell us they’ve been given too much too soon.
Point Six: Don’t be misled by the accolades given certain children’s TV programs. Remember, there’s more going on then meets the eye when a child watches television, any television. Give your children one of the most precious gifts of opportunity possible in this age of high-technology for the sake of high-technology: growing years that aren’t constantly sidetracked by the flicker of the plug-in drug.
Point Seven: What’s this? Point Seven? I know I said there were only six. Nevertheless, I can’t end without mentioning the seventh, and perhaps the most important, point of fall, which is: Love your children enough to do the first six.
http://rosemond.com/index.php?action=website-view&WebSiteID=389&WebPageID=9891
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