I grew up in the era of Tough Love. There was no pretending in my home. My mother called it as she saw it, and what she saw wasn't always pretty. If I was trying out a new hairstyle, and she didn't like it, there was none of today's positive parenting tactics to offset the blow. Parents did not give praise in an effort to nurture a developing sense of self. Rather, a simple yet stern, "Go fix your hair," was muttered as her eyes remained fixed to the last pivotal minutes of General Hospital playing on the TV.
Despite my constant studying and hard work, when I got a bad grade in math, there was no sugar-coating my failure by blaming the math teacher for not teaching properly and the school for hiring the crappy math teacher. My parents did not hire a math tutor. They did not sit for hours explaining the homework to me in methodical detail. They didn't even speak to the teacher to find out why I had done so poorly. I got a simple yet stern, "Study harder next time."
When I was mean to my little brother, I was told I was mean. A cut knee or a scraped elbow was not an occasion where my pain was validated by describing me as a "brave little girl." Instead, as my dad wiped the snot from my nose with an old hankie from his pocket, I was told, "Stop being such a baby." Further injuries were not prevented by bubblewrapping me via the purchase of elbow and knee pads.
My mother and father were not aware that speaking the truth was detrimental to the very development of my confidence. Little did they know in the late '70s that the words used to communicate with us then, would today be considered not only cruel, but they would be obsolete. Who calls their kid a baby? Who tells their kids to "smarten up"? To say such a thing implies that they aren't smart, and that's not right. That could...scar them for life! Instead we kneel down at their level, wipe their tears with a fresh Kleenex pulled from the tidy little pack in our purses, and tell our kids, "It's okay for big boys and girls to cry. And you are going to do great things with your life."
When my children were little, and I was crouched at eye level with my toddler, patiently explaining, "No no, you must not hit your friend," only to watch him go off and conk his two-year-old buddy over the head once again, my mother interjected with a comment I will never forget. She said, "I feel sorry for you modern mothers. It was so much easier raising kids in my day. We didn't worry about that self-esteem stuff."
Although I was horrified then, as I've spent years meticulously choosing politically correct ways of disciplining my children; as I've parented my children in such a way as to preserve their dignity and develop their valuable self-confidence; as I've issued the time-outs after the obligatorily chanted "1, 2, 3, magic!" mantra -- I now think my mom was onto something.
As I chatted with a homeless person on the street the other day as my kids and I were walking into a restaurant for supper, upon sitting down at the table, my son said, "I hope you didn't give that guy the money you were going to give me for pizza day at school tomorrow." In that moment, as the reality of what I had done; how I had single-handedly created these beings with so much self-esteem that they considered themselves entitled to everything, I said something to my kids I never would have said before for fear of damaging them psychologically. I said, "Stop being so selfish." Then I said, "You'll all be donating your allowance to that person out there."
And then I said, "I know exactly where I went wrong." I need to ask my mom for advice.
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Build the confidence, but let your kid fail, and be honest and don't praise nothingness.
To have the presence of mind, not to mention the patience, not to mention the precise and correct wording, in any given moment of interaction with your child: whether advice, praise, or punishment: so that you don't cause irrevocable damage for life???!!!
My mom never worried about such things.
"Go to your room."
Why?
"Because I said so. we'll talk later."
And you know what? Off I went. That was good enough.
And you know what else? After she came in talked to me about what a spoiled, selfish brat I had been acting like ---- I doubt I ever made that mistake again. Because her approval meant something. Her authority was backed by an inherent confidence I had of her ability to teach me the Right Way.
Kids have lost that today.
But I agree - the fault does not lay with them.
Excellent discussion this has created!
I spent many an afternoon topping and tailing gooseberries or picking dandelion heads off.
The lesson was the same the punishment was communally useful to the family.
My family is pitifully small: in three households, all siblings together have only five children. And guess what? Two of them have never got a timeout in their lives (different households), two of them have spent a lot of time grounded in their rooms (different households), one of them morphed from devil to angel when presented with written lists and on ad infinitum. All of them are on track to become useful members of society.
Kids and parents are not pantyhose. One size never fits all.
Now that I'm fast approaching 30 and starting to think about having kids of my own, I realize what a great job my parents really did with my sister and I. We're confident, smart, independent, but far from being snotty brats who think everything needs to be handed to us. My parents were as the author described, tough but fair. If I did well, I was rewarded (although I failed to see it at the time), and if I did something stupid I paid for it. Not with abuse, but I remember writing apology letters to people if I had done something wrong, say breaking a friend's toy or damaging property.
I worked for anything I got. Getting something at the store meant a few hours of housework on Saturday morning rather than watching cartoons.
When I have a kid of my own, I hope to do as well as my parents did.
"It’s these kids – the way they are nowadays."
56 years later and nothing has changed. 56 years ago those kids were the people we apparently think grew up to be such excellent parents (who apparently raised neurotic kids who now raise apparently lousy grand kids).
If the sweeping rhetorical question of an article title needs to be answered, I'll say neither. If yesteryear's parenting was so great, why are parents today doing such a lousy job? It stands to reason that parents today weren't raised right.
Or, maybe it's just normal to be pessimistic towards youth and to lash out randomly trying to find a cause. I decided a long time ago not to jump on this ridiculous bandwagon and accepted that each generation grows up in the environment the earlier generation leaves for them. Kids today are fine, kids yesterday were fine, and kids tomorrow will be fine, by and large.
In contrast, however, our lousy kids with self-entitlement issues are going to have to solve a lot of problems that our reckless parents caused, that we were just too useless to fix.
Maybe think about the big picture the next time a child does something disappointing. Kids just do that. It's part of being a kid.
"...The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers..." ~ attributed to Socrates by Plato (469 - 399 BC)
So it's been going on at least 2400 years now. LOL
Your kids will grow up , mature & learn they are not the centre of the Universe. They are lucky to have such a loving mom so willing to see a different way of doing things. It's never to late to be a good example to our kids :-)
Character is earned through years of sacrifice, loss, and surviving hardship, self esteem is a gift from those who care about you. I think, pretending that a gift has the same value as something earned is one of the greatest injustices that one can do to your offspring.