Are Kids As Well-Behaved As You Were?

A month or so ago, I put this question to an audience of some 500 people in Davidson, N.C.:

“How many of you are certain your children are as well-behaved as you were as a child?”

I often poll my audiences on various issues, but this particular query was a first-timer. I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I guessed, however, that around 100 hands would go up, thus helping me make the point that nouveau child rearing (child-centered, sentimental, “feel good about yourself”) doesn’t get results as good as did traditional, much-demonized child rearing.

Lo and behold, not a hand went in the air. Intrigued, I repeated the exercise two nights later in Lexington, S.C., with an audience of around 750. Maybe five hands went up. Several days later, 10 out of 800 in Asbury Park, N.J., raised their hands.

I propose: It is in everyone’s - the child’s, the parents’, the community’s, the country’s - best interest that a child be well-behaved.

It would seem our foremothers and forefathers served those interests better than today’s parents, on average, are doing. But nouveau parenting experts would have us believe that the relative good behavior of yesterday’s child was obtained at great cost to the child’s psychological well being.

Was it? I’ve asked a number of audiences, “Raise a hand if you think you were a reasonably well-behaved child.” Typically, more than three-fourths of the attendees respond affirmatively. Then, “Keep your hand in the air if you feel you had a happy childhood.” Very, very few hands go down.

Given that my audiences are not just a cross-section of American parents, but a cross-section of hard-working, conscientious, well-intentioned American parents, it’s obvious that hard work and good intentions do not a well-behaved child make. What, then, does? I proffer the following answers:

First, a nonintellectual (nonpsychological) approach to child rearing, one that values good behavior above a child’s feelings. Not that a child’s feelings are unimportant, mind you, but parents of not-so-long-ago seemed to grasp the fact that sometimes one must make children feel bad about themselves (temporarily) to promote the general good, the child’s included.

Given that most of yesterday’s well-behaved kids, at least the ones who come to hear me speak, claim to have had happy childhoods, the psychological consequences of this philosophy were obviously not detrimental.

The understanding that children are not angelic beings sent down to grace us with their heavenly presence, but - in Judeo-Christian terms - “fallen” (or sinful, if you’ll pardon my political incorrectness) and therefore capable of outrageous behavior.

Until children are capable of restraining their own capacity for outrage, adults must perform this function for them, or at least teach them that outrage is not free.

A solid grasp of the fact that parenting is leadership, not friendship. Here’s a fact: If you try to be a friend to your child today, you will still be trying to resolve parenting issues when your child is old enough to have become your friend.

That so few hands went up in Davidson, Lexington and Asbury Park (and a number of other places since) is solid evidence that American parents have lost a grip on these commonsensical ideas. And thus, today’s all-too-typical parent works twice as hard at child rearing as did his or her parents and gets not even half the results.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Rosemond The Charlotte Observer