March/April 2000
Who's in Charge Around Here?
by John Rosemond
Like a songwriter, I often respond to spontaneous inspiration-some
thoughts about families, children or schools-by writing down what might be called a
snippet on the nearest piece of paper. Sometimes, a snippet grows into a larger piece, and
sometimes it doesn't. The following is a collection of these diverse ideas. You can read
them in any order you please. You can even cut one out and put it on your refrigerator or
make a dartboard out of it. Be creative!
We live in the age of "Everything Has Rights." Now, I'm not denying that the concept of rights is valid, but I wonderwhat ever happened to obligations? One rarely hears the term anymore. Indeed, have you ever heard of a "human obligations movement?" I think I know how this one-sided state of affairs came about. It stems back to how children are reared.
Once upon a time, children had obligations. They were obligated to avoid embarrassing their families, for one. They were obligated to respect their parents. The family was where obligation was learned. Later, it transferred to spouse, one's own growing family, employer and nation.
Many of today's children, it seems, are being reared in families where the only people who act like they have obligations are parents. Modern parents act like they're
obligated to buy children what they want, take them where they
want to go, do their homework for them and so on. And so many of today's kids act like their only allegiance is to themselves. The very ideal that holds a democracy together--the willingness to make personal sacrifice for the common good--is going quickly by the wayside.
A family financial counselor tells me that parents who both work outside the home are usually kidding themselves. The second income is an illusion because it often pushes the family into a higher tax bracket, necessitates costly outlays for child care, and results in significantly higher costs in health care, clothing, transportation and food. My source told me that for most middle-income families, a second income is completely cancelled by all the increased costs.
Unfortunately, a bank will loan the two-income couple more money than if they were subsisting on the greater of the two incomes alone. So they buy a more expensive house, more expensive cars, more expensive appliances, and are more likely to put their children in private schools. Not only are they kidding themselves, but they're going ever deeper in debt in the process, which convinces them they need the second income, and around and around they go. We have become a society where things are more important than the well-being of the family unit.
· A few months ago, at the end of a column in which I proposed that children should not be paid for doing their share of household chores, I asked readers what they thought. Of 945 respondents, 902 agreed. The 43 "disagrees" included 20 third graders, which only goes to show that being on an "entitlement" program for a long time--8 or 9 years in the case of a third grader--is indeed a disincentive to work.
· It's every bit as ridiculous to make a blanket statement such as "I like children" as it is to say "I like adults." Personally, I like children who are well-behaved and have learned manners--children who do not attract a lot of attention to themselves. In other words, I like some children. Mind you, I don't necessarily dislike the rest; I just don't want to be around them, especially if they're with their parents, who inevitably enable their misbehavior.
· Recently, in Miami, an older woman told me that years ago she was assigned to teach a class of 70 first-graders. Not 70 students who came to her during the course of the day, but the same 70 first-graders all day long. This is the highest number I've yet heard of, but, in the postwar years, classes of 50 were not unusual. This woman told me she had no major discipline problems and every student learned to read and write that year. Her story is similar to others I've heard from teachers of her vintage. Yet today's parents--many of whom paid reasonably good attention in classrooms of 40-plus children and learned to read and write in the first grade--are being told a large proportion of the sudden explosion in this thing called attention deficit disorder (ADD) is caused by genes. Why, I wonder, were these genes seemingly inactive before this generation?
The increase in classroom behavior problems has provided part of the impetus that has made home-schooling the fastest-growing educational movement in the nation. Today, 1.5 million U.S. kids are schooled at home, a fivefold increase over the last eight years. Invariably, the home-schoolers with whom I speak tell me that not only are their children doing better academically, but the family unit is strengthened, and the children are better-behaved.
· Are you, like many other parents, agonizing over how to talk about sexual matters with your child? Agonize no more! The Physician's Resource Council of the Alabama Family Alliance has produced a very helpful 71-page booklet titled "Questions Kids Ask About Sex and How Parents Can Respond." Every imaginable question is dealt with, and the answers are abstinence-centered. Send $5 to Physician's Resource Council, 402 Office Park Drive, Suite 300, Birmingham, Alabama 35223.
· According to many parents and professionals, certain children are born with mechanisms that render them immune or highly resistant to normal discipline. Foremost among these is the "strong-willed" mechanism, which supposedly causes a child to defy parental instructions and rules. Then there's the "argumentative" mechanism, which not only causes the afflicted child to disagree with everything his or her parents say, but also incapacitates the child's ability to comprehend simple explanations. Some children--the most accursed of all--are born with the "difficult" mechanism, a hybrid of strong-willed and argumentative. Actually, these terms say little, if anything, about the children and a lot, if not everything, about their parents--parents who are, in a word, wimps. Having been there, done that, I am an expert on the subject.
· I am fascinated by the perspective people from countries outside the United States have on parenting. For example, an Asian man recently remarked to me that one of the problems with parent-child relationships in the United States is the lack of a generation gap. Say no more, eh?
· The realms of the spiritual and the material are forever in conflict. Most parents would say they want their children to acquire spiritual values, yet these same parents are often found worshiping such secular things as their children's grades and athletic achievements and indulging their children with expensive clothes, electronic equipment, and well, you name it.
Question: Would you rather raise a child who grows up to be (a) an honest, ethical, family-centered person who works on an assembly line or (b) a habitually dishonest, amoral narcissist who is the CEO of a big corporation? If your answer is (a), then answer this: Which child would you brag more about?
For more information on John Rosemond and his organization, please visit his website at www.rosemond.com or call (800) 525-2778.