Parenting Is Valuable Part Of Community
Musings on parenthood and families, Part 3:
When the ideal of child rearing was to produce responsible citizens, parents were not likely to lose sight of the “forest” - their obligations to the community and the culture as a whole - for the “trees” - their obligations to their children. They were better able to keep the two considerations in balance, realizing that the only way to strengthen the community was to produce a child of strong character.
When the ideal of child rearing became that of producing good self-esteem in the child, the balance was destroyed. In the course of spending so much time and attention on the theoretical needs of a certain tree, today’s typical parent has lost sight of the forest.
The problem is that when parents lost sight of the forest, the “trees” lost sight of it as well. They grow up oblivious to their own obligations to the community and the larger culture. This is disaster in the making, a time bomb ticking in the heart of America.
The next time your child tells you that all of his friends can do something you won’t let him do, or don’t have to do something you make him do, or have something you won’t let him have, just look him squarely in the eye and with a slight smile, say, “Well, then you’re going to be the most special child in your entire peer group.” At this point, your child is likely to storm off to his room, screaming words to the effect that he hates living in your house and can’t wait to be gone (!), and won’t talk to you for upwards of several days. Lucky you!
When you have a disagreement with your spouse, you don’t call it “marital rivalry” do you? That’s because there’s no third party trying to make you get along - and if there were, you’d never learn how.
The problem, you see, isn’t that siblings have conflict. That’s to be expected. It’s that instead of holding both children equally responsible for disturbing the peace of the family, parents usually blame one child for “starting it” or being “unfair.”
As a consequence, the conflict between the siblings escalates as each tries, ever more desperately, to get the parents to blame the other, and every time Child No. 1 “scores” on Child No. 2, the latter becomes focused on payback. Holding both children equally responsible - regardless of what may have happened - will keep sibling conflict to a manageable minimum, but there are only two ways of avoiding it altogether: First, have no more than one child; second, if you have more than one, space them at least 18 years apart.
How can parents get children to begin taking care of their toys and other possessions? Simple. Stop giving them so much.
When I was 5 years old, I had a few basic toys: a set of Lincoln Logs, a set of Tinker Toys, a cap pistol, some army men, and an electric train. I still had them as a teenager, when they disappeared from the house during one of my mother’s cleaning frenzies.
I took care of my toys because if one broke, another was not forthcoming. In fact, if I broke a toy, it would have been regarded as proof I wasn’t responsible, and it would have been a long time, indeed, before another would have taken its place.
Today’s child has no reason to take care of his toys. By age 5, the typical American child has received 250 of them. That works out to a toy a week from birth on. Under the circumstances, anything parents say about the need to take care of one’s possessions is meaningless. So, the child receives a toy, abuses the toy, breaks the toy, and sure enough, another is forthcoming. Silver platter syndrome, I call it.
And mind you, it’s not the child’s fault. The syndrome is caused by good intentions, which, as I constantly remind parents, count for naught in child rearing.
xxxx