William recently turned
six! He’s not a baby anymore—something he constantly impresses on my more
sentimental instincts. It’s because I long for him daily. There is a searing,
almost constantly panicked sense of missing out. But still, we are now faced
with the daunting task of making him understand that temper tantrums won’t work
because adults still run the world!
It seems that a lot of
good homes, dare I say “Christian homes” do not produce particularly good
children. Why? There are people who blame TV violence, video games, rap music,
divorce, the absence of fathers, bad schools, and poverty. But what about
parents? What are parents doing wrong—especially well-educated parents in
intact homes, with no financial worries? So, based on my own experience and
thinking, here are some suggestions why good homes and parents sometimes
produce bad children.
1) Goodness is Not Put
First.
Most parents want their
children to be good people; they just don’t make their child’s goodness a top
concern. Parents are more concerned with their child’s being a brilliant
student, a good athlete, or a successful professional. Would you rather have a
kind child with average intelligence, or a brilliant child who isn’t kind? How
much time to you devote to developing ethics in your child relative to
developing other qualities? Do you monitor very closely how your child treats
other people? What would your child say if someone were to ask them, “What do
your parents want the most? For you to be happy, smart, successful, or good?” Most
parents simply assume THEIR kids are good. Bad kids belong to other people. It
is hard to raise a good student, but it is much harder to raise a good person.
It is relentless, and requires attention to details. Why do I say this? Because
the widely held belief that people are born basically good, and learn to be bad
is not only wrong, it is dangerous. We are born morally neutral (innocent), but
with tendencies towards both good and bad. Since we live in a fallen world,
doing wrong comes easy. Goodness has to be cultivated. It takes as much time
and effort as learning to master the violin, yet more parents give their
children music lessons than goodness lessons. One more thing: there is a
difference between goodness and following the rules. Turning your child into a
morally blind automaton is not cultivating goodness!
2) Feelings Are
Overemphasized.
I have observed parents
give way more attention to how their child feels, rather than how they behave.
If your child is a bully, don’t ask them, “What’s troubling you?” What your
child FEELS may be important to you and the child, but the only thing that
matters to the other 6 billion people on earth is how they ACT. We have to make
our children understand that right actions trump good feelings, and that being
upset doesn’t give them license to hurt other people. This runs counter to the
almost religiously held belief that self-esteem is one of the most important
aspects of making a responsible person. This is laughable. Children are born
with nothing but self-esteem. They think the world revolves around their needs
and wants – day and night! To be a good person, self-control is more important
than self-esteem. Self-esteem has to be tied to good behavior, and it’s never
too early to impress this on your child. If not, they grow up to be immature
adults who throw tantrums whenever they feel uncomfortable or offended.
3) Parents Yearn to be
Liked Rather Than Respected.
This one is hard for me. I
feel like a complete hypocrite saying this. I’m Mr. “words of affirmation.” But
my brain says that in the same way you cannot be an effective leader if you are
afraid of being disliked, you cannot be an effective parent if you fear being
disliked. This is especially hard for single parents (both men and women). It
takes superhuman strength to be both mom and dad. It’s doubly hard to be both
mom and dad in a disciplinary sense and still have your kids like you.
4) An Overemphasis on
Micro-Goodness.
We have odd ways of
defining what it means to be good, particularly in evangelical Christian
circles. Goodness is very often expressed as trite moralisms. For Jesus this
was like taking a speck out of someone else’s eye, while you have a plank
protruding out of your own eye. It’s self-righteous and hypocritical. Jesus
also accused the Pharisees of straining out a gnat, but swallowing a camel. We
tend to blend into the culture in so many ways, so in order to be different,
attention is focused on the trivial. We teach our kids that it’s okay to be
captive to mass consumerism, as long as we don’t watch R-rated movies; it’s
acceptable to pursue cozy affluence, as long as we don’t mow our lawn on a
Sunday; it’s fine to be indifferent to systematic starvation around the world,
as long as we don’t ever drink a beer. My point is that we need to teach our
children that there are bigger issues of justice and morality in the world than
counting "bad words" in a damn movie!! Of course, this is a judgment
call every parent has to wrestle with, I'm just saying that good people
understand that the world is bigger than their likes and dislikes and specific cultural
expressions of morality.
5) The Belief in “Quality
Time.”
This is a term we use to
rationalize being gone from our kids a lot. I know. I use the term. When it
comes to time with children I don’t think quality can be separated from
quantity. Do we really think that parents who spend very little time with their
kids can bond in an hour? Children open up to adults when they want to, which
is usually only after a LOT of “non-quality time.” I know that most families
are under enormous stresses and time constraints, so I hope this doesn’t sound
too judgmental, but life is full of trade-offs. If you make good money working
60 hours a week, you may be able to buy your kids nice things, but you can only
give them so much of yourself.
6) NEVER humiliate your child.
There are obvious ways to humiliate a child—ignoring them, telling them to be
quiet, laughing at their mistakes, yelling at them in the grocery store, not
taking their ideas seriously, and never apologizing when you are wrong. Some
parents, out of a sense of pride, tend to treat their children like owned
commodities rather than autonomous human beings. This too, is a form of
humiliation.
