Last Sunday my husband and I went out on a lunch date in the town. As it turns out, our town’s main diners close at 2pm on Sundays (whatever happend to breakfast all day?), so we just ended up at the local Friendly’s (we love Friendly’s). What my husband saw at the table behind us was quite disturbing: kids misbehaving, messing with their food, being nasty to one another; but that was not the disturbing part: it was that the parents were on their phones (texting/typing) the entire time.
That is just one example of many where parents simply fail to apply discipline to their children. If you’ve ever been at a toy store or a grocery store, you have likely been witness to kids tantruming, and parents either just telling the kid to stop it, or giving a “stop crying” gift to their children. I see this all the time. My friend Christine also saw this in full action (read her experience watching a couple of rowdy kids at a coffee shop here). In Christine’ story, those kids just learned that it is OK to get away with not taking accountability for your own actions, and that screwing someone over is better than taking the heat yourself. What a life lesson to learn when you’re 7.
Do you remember when you were little? Would this kind of behavior have been withstood by your own parents? Do you remember always getting what you wanted, and knowing that crying will help you get your way? I don’t recall that part of my childhood either… but now, millions of future adults are learning that discipline is a four letter word, and that they can get whatever they want just because they want it.
All of this made me think of whether kids are really learning right from wrong. I could get into why parents act this way (guilt? Ignorance? Tiredness? who knows), but what is most important here is that WE are the ones that will have to deal with an entitled set of adults in the future. This is how we end up with rapists among us, with bullies in our schools, and with crooks without a conscience running the most powerful businesses in the world.
Not even TV shows are helping kids understand right from wrong. It used to be that you would sit down and watch an episode of Full House every day, and you understood that you should be nice to your siblings, that lying is wrong, that you should be respectful to others, and that you should do your homework to get ahead in life. Those themes are too “corny” nowadays. Kids just want to see other kids having sex and being deceitful and taking advantage of others in order to make it. Nice girls finish last, nice guys do not get the girl. Garbage. Bullshit.
I fear for the world. I really do.
I thought this was a reasonable article on how to deal with tantrums: Heptune – Tantrums. It doesn’t get to the heart of discipline, but it’s a practical guide to a good start.
ina
Photo Credit: http://www.playingmom.com/tag/tantrums/