Children Don’t Need Parents To Be Their Pals

I’ve noticed journalists often conceal an inability to think dispassionately about a given subject by engaging in prose that is “cute.”

Such is the case with Miami Herald columnist Michael Browning, who recently wrote a cute column (that was distributed nationally) in which he asked what I would think about the “horseplay” he regularly engages in with his two sons, ages 11 and 15.

Then, over a distance of some 800 miles, he pretended to read my mind and came up with this answer: I would disapprove. I would “shudder” and be “shocked.”

That’s cute.

Browning characterized me as “the anti-Spock, risen to rebuke us in these latter days of loose-reined indulgence.” Cute again.

In support of his thesis, he mangled an anecdote I recently shared with my readers: On a spring Saturday when my own now-28-year-old son Eric was 9, I confined him to his room from approximately 2 o’clock in the afternoon until bedtime for “forgetting” to do one of his chores. This is the beginning and the end of the anecdote, according to Browning, who apparently thinks Eric spent most of his childhood in his room.

Browning characterizes my disciplinary style by lapsing into German - guaranteed to conjure up images of jack-booted storm troopers. Schrecklichkeit, he terms it: sheer frightfulness. Very cute.

The whole story: My wife, Willie, and I had assigned Eric and his 6-year-old sister, Amy, to a routine of chores several weeks earlier. Until then, the kids had been on family welfare. They had virtually no family responsibilities, watched television almost constantly, and were the proud possessors of hundreds of toys.

Having determined that their often “spoiled brat” behavior was due to our magnificent largess, Willie and I staged what we now refer to as the “Rosemond Revolution.” In the space of several months, we turned the kids’ lives right side up. Our effort to turn them into good citizens of our family included posting a seven-day calendar of chores: Three chores per day per child. When we posted the calendar, we told them, “Don’t make us remind you to do these things.”

Things went swimmingly for three weeks, then Eric lapsed. Without rancor, much less rage, I simply made him do the chore in question and sent him to his room to contemplate his apostasy. He never forgot to do a chore again; therefore, no more half-days in his room. This is sheer frightfulness? No mention was made of the event ever again.

Oh, and by the way, when Eric was a preschooler, he and I engaged in regular, raucous roughhousing. We had lots of fun. I made great effort, in fact, to be his good buddy. And I learned - the hard way - that you can’t have a constantly playful relationship with a child and expect the child to clearly recognize your authority.

Some playfulness is fine, but at some point a parent crosses a line and the child no longer sees the parent as a parent, but rather, as a big kid. Since he was presumptuous enough to speak on my behalf, I’ll be presumptuous enough to give Browning some hard-earned advice:

Good parenting requires sacrifice, and one of the sacrifices one must make is that of restraining the urge to become your child’s best bud.

The challenge of parenting is not that of figuring out how to make the next moment into a funfest; it’s that of providing effective, loving leadership.

Such is the state of parenting in late 20th-century America that Browning and not a few other loving, well-intentioned fathers think the Good Dad acts forever and always like the village buffoon.

When our children left for college, they thanked Willie and me not for making their childhoods a gas, gas, gas, but for preparing them well for adult responsibilities. Browning can become the recipient of similar kudos from his boys, but he first needs to learn to delay gratification - his own.

xxxx