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Our childhood TV characters repeatedly tell our children how special they are; our schools seem singularly directed toward building their self-esteem, or heightening their love of themselves; our politicians tell them they can be whatever they want to be; our entertainment-industrial complex reinforces the belief that any impulse of passion they have is self-justifying.

It's difficult to compete with all that. So don't.

If your child takes a swig from a bottle of bleach, there are ways to counteract the poisonous effect. But wouldn't it be better to avoid the poison instead?

But no, we want to feed our kids on bleach and then jabber on about our ingenious ideas for counteracting it. "After all," we say, "there are some benefits to TV and school and entertainment."

Yeah, and bleach whitens the teeth.

“It’s difficult to compete with all that. So don’t.”

Exactly. Let them crash and burn and go through a brutal awakening. It’s better this way.

My kids have turned out to be grateful, decent and kind. Neither the Mrs. nor I were perfect parents or even close. I attribute a lot of the way they turned out to having been raised in Japan until the youngest graduated from elementary school.

Socially, it was like the U.S.A. of 20-30 years ago. Listen in to what kids say they want to be when they grow up.

By and large, American kids aspire to be pro-football players, the president, entertainers and the CEO of a large corporation. Dreams are nice, but few have the ambition, drive and work ethic necessary to achieve those dreams. Then they blame society.

Ask Japanese kids the same question and, by and large, their ambitions are realistic. They want to become a policeman, own a pastry shop, be a nurse or an engineer. Most of them have the drive, ambition and work ethic to achieve or exceed these realistic goals. Sort of like the America I knew growing up.

Ronald Reagan's childhood ambition was to become a sportscaster for the Chicago Cubs. He achieved that and so much more.