Children Will Take Advantage If You Let Them

Some musings on child-rearing and families, with more to come next week:

Parents who constantly bend over backward for their children eventually fall over backward. Parents who constantly go out of their way for their children eventually lose their way. Parents who always put their children first should not be surprised to find that their children eventually put them last.

I find it supremely ironic when, on the one hand, a parent worries over whether her child will be able to resist peer pressure during his teen years, but on the other hand doesn’t want this same child to do without anything his friends have. This is a prime example of one hand not knowing what the other is doing.

The language of television-watching conceals its reality. People talk about watching television together, but the two things - watching television and togetherness - are mutually exclusive. You always watch television alone, locked into your own audiovisual tunnel.

Television is the single greatest threat to communication and family intimacy that has ever existed. You may as well be 200 miles away from the person sitting next to you if you’re both watching television.

Permissive and authoritarian parents are far more alike than dissimilar. Neither can think straight when it comes to children. The former’s ability to do so is hampered by worry and guilt; the latter’s by anger.

The more interesting a person you are, the more attention your children will pay you. Children are fascinated by adults who have lots of interests. They are also fascinated by adult-adult relationships, intent upon figuring them out. Children are not, however, fascinated by adults who pay a lot of attention to them. They take adults of that sort for granted.

Benevolently dictatorial parents derive no pleasure out of bossing children around. They simply recognize that it’s every child’s right to be governed well, and every parent’s responsibility to provide good government.

In a benevolent dictatorship, as children mature, they are honored with increasing responsibility and privilege. In a malevolent dictatorship, children have no honor.

Parents cannot effectively discipline (dictate) unless they are sources of genuine love (benevolence). Put another way, a child will not seek to please someone who cannot be pleased. Likewise, parents cannot genuinely love unless they are sources of effective discipline. A child cannot form a solid bond with someone he can’t pin down.

There are two entirely different ways of “going before” one’s children. The first is to claim one’s legitimate authority as a parent and lead. The consequence of this is that the children will follow. They become the parent’s disciples, in the truest sense of the term, in which case discipline becomes a natural aspect of the parent-child relationship and will never be a big deal.

The second way of going before is to run interference. The consequence of this is that one’s children have no reason to follow. Rather, they have every reason to sit on their duffs and wait for the parent to solve their problems. They become demanding, whining, petulant little people who are generally irritating to be around, which is most unfair, since they had no say whatsoever in the matter.

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