Children Can Participate In Own Upbringing
One of the main themes of my sixth book, “A Family Of Value” (Andrews and McMeel, 1996), concerns three fundamental understandings that parents should begin communicating to their children when they are 2 and need to have succeeded in communicating by the time they are 3:
1. “From this point on in our relationship, you (the child) will pay more attention to us than we, generally speaking, will pay to you.”
In other words, while the child was the center of the parents’ attention during infancy and early toddlerhood, now it is imperative that the parents be the center of the child’s attention.
2. “You will do as we say.”
The “long form” of this understanding includes: “You are always free to disagree with us, but you are never free to disobey.”
3. “You will do as we say not because of bribe, brutality, threat, or good explanation, but simply because we say so.”
These three understandings (which actually are one understanding in three parts) allow parents to successfully discipline, which, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, is the process by which parents turn a child into a disciple - one who will follow their lead.
As such, these understandings form the foundation of a lovingly creative parent-child relationship.
Parents ask, “If we haven’t accomplished this by the time our children are 3, is it ever too late?”
The answer is both no and yes.
No, because it is entirely possible to paddle up this particular stream in a child’s life. My wife and I, for example, did not begin communicating these understandings in any consistent manner until our children were 9 and 6. We discovered that what takes approximately one year with a 2-year-old actually takes less time with older children, though it takes considerably more effort.
But yes, parents who have not communicated these understandings will, at some point during their child’s early teen years, pass the point of “too late.” The reason has to do with a second set of three understandings that children need to understand by the time they are young teens:
1. You are completely responsible for the choices you make.
2. If you make bad choices, bad things will happen, sooner or later.
3. If you make good choices, bad things are much less likely to happen. (Note, good choices do not guarantee good things. This is what Rabbi Harold Kushner means with the title of his best-seller, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”)
The first set of understandings stabilizes the parent-child relationship. The second set stabilizes, as much as is possible, the teen years.
Another way of saying this: The first set enables the parents to effectively lead; the second enables the youngster to effectively lead himself. A child who has not learned the latter by early adolescence is in imminent danger of becoming a “loose cannon,” a teen who, lacking a moral compass, begins to careen unpredictably and self-destructively.
In this regard, two points are material.
First, the first set of understandings is prerequisite to the second, but there is no guarantee that a child who learns the former will learn the latter, even if parents do a good job of teaching.
Second, a child who learns both triads greatly increases the likelihood of, but does not guarantee, a stable adolescence. Good choices - in this case, on the part of parents - don’t guarantee good results, remember?
In short, children share responsibility for both the course and the outcome of their own upbringings, and their share of that responsibility increases as they get older, along with the risk of irresponsibility.
Stated even more succinctly, children have minds of their own.
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