Warning: disjointed thoughts ahead!

Over the last few days I've been thinking a lot about the amazing bumper sticker of awesomeness and how we parent our children. When I say "parent our children", I mean in the general sense, that is, how ADULTS guide and direct children towards what's right and instill in them a sense of right and wrong. Not just their parents, biological or otherwise, but grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, mentors, and friends. Hillary said that it takes a village to raise a child, and although her application of that message was far more socialist than I agree with, her point is well-taken. Children grow up surrounded by adults. ALL of those adults have something to do with raising them, even just reinforcing proper behavior.

I've often heard it said (and I believe it) that parenting is an act of will. As a parent, you are the boss, and what the kids want is secondary. It seems to me that a hell of a lot of ADULTS are abdicating this responsibility because they just don't want to "hurt the kid's feelings" or they'd rather let someone else be the bad guy.

See, here's the thing, and this is what has come up over and over and over in conversations about the bumper sticker, good kids are NOT kids who never think of doing bad things. Good kids are not kids who say "it's wrong, so I won't do it." At least not all the time. Good kids are good simply because they know what will happen to them if they get caught doing what they want to do that their parents disapprove of. They have rules and boundaries and consequences. Consistent, very negative consequences. I was one of those goody-two-shoes kids. But sure as hell NOT because it was wrong to do bad things. Oh hells no. I was terrified of what my parents would do if they caught me.

Good parents make it possible for their kids to reach the stage in their life, where as adults, they can recognize all of their right and wrong steps in the past and use that knowledge to "parent" other children: their own, nieces and nephews, students, mentees, etc.

I've gone down the road before about no consequences for kids and how THAT turns out. But I'll sum up. Kids who don't understand that their actions have consequences CAN NOT succeed in life. They don't turn in homework, but they expect an A. They can't show up to work on time, but they'll sue you for firing them. They expect hand up after hand up and if they don't get one, it's YOUR fault. Mom and Dad fix everything, from a bad grade to a parking ticket to getting kicked out of college because of academic dishonesty. Kids who don't understand that actions have consequences are precisely the ones who will take a gun and try to make their own.

It's a simple principal of Psychology: Associative Learning. If I get zapped every time I press the red button, pretty soon I'll learn not to touch it any more. It's not just a fancy trick, either. This is how the mammalian brain is wired. We learn by experience, both positively and negatively.

Which brings me to a recent experience. I was involved with a community outreach program sponsored by our school a few weeks back. Two groups of high school students were assigned to be helpers to the college students and faculty involved with the program. One group of kids was from a high-achieving science-related magnet school. The other was from a "cultural" charter school. The difference between the two groups was remarkable, and not surprisingly, correlated with the expectations of the adults around them AND the consequences of their actions.

The "magnet" kids were friendly and polite, they pitched in to clean up without being asked. They were creative and helpful and spoke respectfully to each other and to us.

The charter kids were (with a few exceptions) just the opposite. They were loud and lazy, they yelled at each other and spent their time making messes and trying to break things rather than helping out, and when faced directly with consequences, they ignored requests to sit down and/or be quiet from their teachers and principal. Which, I later understood, because the threatened consequences never materialized.

What you don't know is that these kids all come from the same background: ethnically diverse, lower-middle-class and underprivileged homes. They all live in the same neighborhoods, have the same kinds of "stereotypical" families. What's different about them is the expectation that positive and negative behavior each have their own set of consequences. It couldn't be more striking.

So yeah, it's not about the damn guns. It's about shitty adults who think "kid gloves" means "use with children" instead of "made from baby goats".

Posted by: caltechgirl at 12:00 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 814 words, total size 5 kb.

1 EXCELLENT POST! Yeah, I just yelled out loud 'excellent post'.

Posted by: pam at December 10, 2007 12:42 PM (l6NIn)

2 Yeah, apparently most people don't know what "kid gloves" means anymore. Even my husband just learned, when my mom had hers from when she was younger out to look at them. I think he just pictured kid-sized boxing gloves with extra padding or something. But you're 100% right. I could see it from watching the people i was in school with -- especially college. The kids who were pre-med (cough) and just whined themselves to better grades. I saw a lot of it in the undergrads at JHU, too. Um, not to pick on pre-meds. Or doctors. It's just the people I found were around me who did it most!

Posted by: silvermine at December 10, 2007 01:07 PM (4gdyI)

3 Warning: disjointed thoughts ahead! Disjointed? Beg to differ, dear. Very nicely done, and I say that as the father of two wonderful adult children.

Posted by: Ken S, Fifth String on the Banjo of Life at December 10, 2007 08:22 PM (Yh9SA)

4 As someone who works with kids in a certain capacity, but does not have kids of her own, I have to admit I sometimes take a bit of issue with the "it takes a village" mentality. An example: some of the kids in my youth group are whispering in church. I specifically DO NOT sit with them (they sit near their parents) because I have other duties during the course of church and I feel that, if their parents are there, it is not my job to "parent" them. But then someone comes up to me after church..."Those darn kids where WHISPERING again. Can you not DO something?" No. When I go to church, I go to worship. I do not go to be the parent, when the parents who are there choose not to. I feel it would be overstepping my bounds to sit behind the kids and knock their heads together...er, hush them...when they are whispering. But, because I'm the Youth Leader, because these individuals know me (and don't necessarily know the kids' parents), and because they know I won't lash back at them, they come to me and make me feel guilty for not being Mama Hen 100% of the time. The lives of those of us who work with students (either little-kid, teenaged, or college-aged) would be SO much easier if parents just took on the responsibilities they are supposed to, and don't let their kids run wild, and expect someone else will be the "bad guy" with the discipline. I've come so close to resigning as youth director BECAUSE it seems that every misbehavior of the kids is somehow my fault, that I could stop it if I really wanted to...even if the parents are sitting right there, oblivious.

Posted by: ricki at December 11, 2007 10:04 AM (O5SYw)

5 For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I press a key, a letter appears on the screen. At the age of 13, my parents punished me for something I did for the last time. It made an impression. I don't remember what I did wrong, but it must have been bad, and the consequences fit the offense. The punishment, a few licks from my fathers FRATERNITY PLEDGE PADDLE. Nothing excessive, but enough to make a deep and lasting impression on me to never ever do what I had done again. And I never gave them a reason to punish me again. Another highly effective consequence I received was "wash your mouth out with soap." At the age of 8 or 9, I cussed at a video game, while my mother was in the other room. She was into the room I was in in a flash, had me by the hand, and into the bathroom for a mouthful of softsoap. I took profanity out of my vocabulary for a long time after that (now I do use it sometimes, as a stress reliever, much better than losing my temper). From my perspective, it comes down to making sure that when a child does something they know is wrong, the consequences should make a deep and lasting impression on their mind, such that when the situation arises again, they have a moment of pause to think, "wait a second, if I do this, it is going to make my life really SUCK afterwards."

Posted by: Petey at December 12, 2007 09:01 AM (tmnSV)

6 well said

Posted by: wRitErsbLock at December 12, 2007 02:30 PM (+MvHD)

7 It doesn't take a village, it takes a boot-camp. Adults who in their moral vanity busily impress themselves with their own sensitivity and broadmindedness do no service to kids - and produce poor, nonperforming results.

Posted by: DirtCrashr at December 12, 2007 04:31 PM (VNM5w)

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