Parenting: The Challenge

The world today moves at an astounding rate. How often does your entire family sit down to eat and talk together? In many western cultures individual family members are so busy, many of them rarely sit down to share a meal together. Mobile phone companies advertise a family plan for togetherness which is really about a family subscribing to a plan where everyone has their own phone so they can call each other to say they won’t be home for dinner.

Issues facing children today are more intense and complicated than a generation ago. You probably had restrictions on your use of the telephone and television. Today, families are inundated with media sources from cell phones, 100’s of TV channels not to mention chat rooms and the internet in general.

Parents experience confusion with all the conflicting expert parenting information, do not want to raise their children the way they were raised, but don’t know what else to do. We are witnessing a breakdown of the influence of family on children in the west. There is evidence all around us indicating the problems facing families today; the lack of discipline and the sense of entitlement that we see in our young people.

All, one has to do is look around and see scores of whining, tantrum throwing, impatient children being dragged along by frustrated, hostile, bewildered parents.

We hear from the school administrators that the main job of teachers today is maintaining discipline in the classroom. How many of us have known good teachers who quit teaching because it was about just keeping the children in their chairs and trying to have positive meeting with parents who resented any negative comments about their children.

How often are children in restaurants so badly behaved that embarrassed parents leave before the meal is finished or worse pretend that the behavior is normal and acceptable in a public place.

We see schools making parents be the ‘Homework Police”. Making it mandatory that the parents keep track of and are responsible for their children doing their homework. So the only real job of school age children, doing well in school had now been put on the parents.

Often we see and hear children show an incredible lack of respect for their parents and other adults. They feel they have a right to privileges without responsibility, resent any restriction of their freedom and see no reason to take participate in household chores.

Parents are upset and bewildered. Doctors are seeing more disturbed children, diagnosing more behaviors that they can treat with drugs some which have not been tested for use with children. Often the parenting style and behavior problems are not evaluated to see if there can be changes made to improve the situation before resorting to medications.

Parents are upset, some regretting they ever had children. Children are out of control, bored, unmotivated and defiant.

What is the answer?

And on top of all that the old parenting strategies and child rearing techniques just aren’t working anymore. As the feminist movement caught on and women declared their equality to men, husbands lost influence over their wives and both partners lost power over their children. Children over the last couple of generations have been sensitized to the equality of adults at home and in the workplace. Parents as well recognized that the do as I say form of parenting children has become less popular and effective but have not solidified new methods based on democratic principles and frequently mistaken unrestricted freedom and chaos for democracy. Freedom based on responsibility and accountability is missing. Children who feel entitled to do what they please without consequence are selfish, immature, unable to follow rules and be sensitive to the feelings of others.

As a consequence parents have become slaves to their children’s whims and desires. They cover for their children, disallow their experience of natural consequences, put up with unreasonable demands, are afraid to say no and basically have lost influence over their children.

It is clear that parents can no longer threaten or use physical force to discipline their children. There have to be new strategies to encourage and motivate children into cooperation and responsibility. Parents must learn how to become a match for their children. Become the masters at finding ways to guide and influence their children without letting them have unbridled freedom and without stifling their individuality and creativity. Taking a parenting class is a great way to educate parents in effective parenting strategies that can make a real difference in the behavior of their children.