Children Have Faults And Foibles
In the last four decades, “helping” professionals have contributed greatly to a view of children that is romantic, sentimental and idealistic, as reflected in the contemporary tendency to describe children as inherently wonderful beings who are corrupted by parents who were corrupted by parents and so on down to the beginning of civilized time.
The father of such thinking was 18th-century philosopher Jean Rousseau, who argued that humans, inherently good, were warped by society. According to Rousseau’s subversive, yet highly seductive ideology, individuals were not guilty of anything; rather, society was responsible for all the depraved things people did. In this century, Rousseau’s concept of collective guilt enjoyed a resurgence of popularity since the 1960s, when it resurfaced on college campuses as a proscription against “blaming” and (thereby) putting people on “guilt trips.” Note, more recently, the liberal media’s penchant for explaining anti-social behavior in terms of bad parenting, racism, poverty, etc.
I was recently sent a newspaper clipping advertising one of the “latest things” in parenting programs. To identify the program by name would be gratuitous. Suffice to say, what caught my interest was the “hook,” which read, “Children Are Flowers, Not Weeds.”
How sweet; cloying, in fact. Excuse my gag reflex, but children are not flowers. Nor are they weeds. The truth is, children are wild things.
They are self-centered, foolish, under-socialized little people who, if left to their own devices, are capable of incredible selfishness and cruelty. The author of this trite snippet of saccharine sentimentality should be required to do penance by handcopying William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.”
It’s not that children aren’t lovable, but to idealize and to love are entirely different things. “Children are flowers” is an idealization. As such, it is disrespectful. One is capable of loving children honestly only if one faces facts.
Fact: Children are fraught with fault.
Fact: Their fault is inherent. It is the result of being human; of being born with free will in the head and foolishness in the heart.
Fact: It is precisely because they are so fraught with fault that they are capable of being unconditionally loved. True love, after all, is nothing more than the complete acceptance of the loved one’s imperfections.
If children were flowers, it would be possible to simply stand back and admire them. But flowers they aren’t. They must be pruned and grafted and wired and sprayed in order that they might some day, with a little luck, become admirable. The great paradox of parenting is that those who accept the “wildness” of children are most capable of loving them wisely and best suited to defending their long-term interests.
A realistic, unsentimental appraisal of children is essential not only to truly loving and respecting them, but also to disciplining them. If, as a parent, you do not see your children with clarity, their mischievous ways are likely to throw you off-balance, and you cannot discipline effectively if you have lost your center of gravity.
Once upon a time, when young parents became disillusioned or upset with their children, they went to elders for advice. Entrusted with helping these naive young people regain their balance, elders said such wise things as “He’s just a child” and “Boys are like that sometimes.” With an economy of words, elders tried their best to prevent young parents from taking the things their children did personally, from being threatened by them.
Almost all young parents have their heads in the clouds where their children are concerned. As a consequence, they are prone to disillusionment and anger when their children reveal their real selves. Grandparents and other elders once helped young parents get their heads out of the clouds and their feet on the ground, to help them see that their children were neither flowers nor weeds and thereby “come to grips” with them.
A task many parenting “experts” have yet to master. xxxx