I don't mind David Koch on Sunrise. He is proudly an older fashioned guy among a team of ladies and isn't afraid of being called sexist or putting noses out of joint. Often he has something worthwhile to say. This is his article on parenting. found here.
One surefire way of knowing you’ve officially become an old man is when you catch yourself coming out with a “kids these days…” rant. Well I’ve recently discovered that I am now among that special group of people with unending old school wisdom.
I’m mourning the demise of what I call the “respect your elders” values of kids today. But I don’t blame them. I blame a new generation of mamby-pamby (not sure that’s a real term but you know what I mean) parents who want to be a child’s friend rather than a parent.
I’ve had these concerns for a while, but they’ve been brought to a head by a couple of recent incidents.
First was that story last week about the Queensland 15 year old pulled over by police for not wearing a helmet while riding his bike.
Rather than fine the kid or give him a warning, they made him let down his tires and walk home to ensure he didn’t ignore them and simply get back on after they’d gone.
His mother was outraged accusing the police of bullying and putting her 15 year old angel in danger by making him walk half an hour home.
I interviewed the pair on Sunrise. The 15 year old retold the story, and highlighted how unfair it was that the cops also took his pack of cigarettes. He said he asked for the cigarettes back because he knew he had rights.
A 15 year old demanding cigarettes back because he has rights. You can just imagine the tone of the exchange.
Rather than his mother getting stuck into him for riding without a helmet and having a pack of smokes, she gets on the case of the police for “putting him in danger”.
This is the issue I have with modern parenting. It’s the rose coloured glasses that their little angels can do no wrong. Backing the kid rather than the authorities.
It’s the absence of basic principles like respecting elders and those in authority like the police.
It’s not the kid’s fault. He’s simply following the example of his mum.
These little things bother me. The values which were pretty standard not too long ago but are now seen as old-fashioned and irrelevant.
Things like standing up on a bus for someone older. Things like calling an adult Mr or Mrs unless invited to use a first name.
I had this discussion with some of my colleagues after I explained that I still expect my adult children to address friends of mine as Mr or Mrs unless invited to do otherwise.
They were gobsmacked. I explained it was a mark of respect to someone older.
My colleagues claimed adults must earn the respect of children before they than can expect to be shown it.
And that is the root of the problem.
In my opinion all adults (and those in authority) deserve instant respect from children until they do something to lose it.
Yes it may sound silly and unimportant, but it exemplifies what is happening on a larger scale. Parents are trying way too hard to be their kids’ best friends, rather than being the parent.
A good friend, and inspiration for me, is Father Chris Riley who runs Youth Off The Streets, an organisation which certainly deals with its fair share of troubled adolescents.
For years he’s been helping street kids, drug dependant kids and abused youth by helping them turn their lives around. Guess what his golden piece of advice for parents is?
He says setting boundaries is a sign of love, and that it shows kids that someone cares enough about them to set limits and values.
He says all kids crave boundaries and direction because it makes them feel safe and loved.
What I fear is that we’re bringing up a new generation of smart-ass kids who have no respect and assume they can get away with anything they like because the boundaries are blurred.
The results from a UK study this week are claiming that it’s better for a kid’s happiness to be an only-child. But reaching this conclusion involved simply asking a bunch of kids whether they’d prefer to be the sole child in their family (and get spoiled rotten). Not exactly a reliable study I don’t think, but now it’s being touted by child psychologists as new, valuable ‘knowledge’.
It’s time parents did their part, stopped worrying about the emotional fragility of their special little darlings and started acting like a parent.
The problem is that people are over-thinking parenting. It’s not rocket science; it’s just common sense.
These sort of basic moral lessons may be old-fashioned, but they work.
1 comment:
On the topic of boundaries, I once read someone's (apparently real-life) example of a school that didn't have a fence up yet. The children all stayed remarkably close to the buildings during lunch, unwilling to run around the oval. Once a fence had been put up, the children started feeling free to run around the oval and on the playground. The illustration of course is that without the boundaries they were lost and uncertain about what to do. With the boundary there they knew exactly what their limits were and took full advantage of everything within those limits.
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