DON'T SPOIL YOUR CHILDREN:  AN ARTICLE BY JOHN ROSEMOND:

John Rosemond is "the nation's leading parenting expert."  He has been around for a long time, and here is a link to his web site:  http://www.rosemond.com/Columns.html

If I could find this old column anywhere on line, I would just put up a link to it, but I cannot find it. It appeared in the Houston Chronicle on September 15, 1911, but it is no longer on their web site either.

So I am copying it here because it offers the best advice ever on what the relationship of parents to their children should be.  Too many parents in today's world think they need to be their children's best buddy. For reasons outlined below, that is the worst thing a parent can do!  Also this parental behavior leaks over into the school classroom, because children who are buddies with their parents usually don't have respect for them or any other adult, don't listen to instructions, and become mavericks and eventually cause everyone around them many problems.  Take heed.

UNSPOILED CHILDREN  by John Rosemond

Respect Requires Boundaries Between Parents, Children That Others Appreciate

Question:  Why do today's parents have more problems with obedience than their grandparents ever thought possible?

Answer:  Because obedience requires that a child (a) clearly and correctly perceives that his parents are providing for him the steady authority he cannot provide himself and, therefore, (b) pays close attention to them, the answer is obvious:  Many if not most of today's parents do not cause their children to (a), so children do not do (b).

The question becomes Why not?

Because today's parents -- and especially those of the sort that consume parenting information --(a) desire close relationships with their children and (b) pay lots of attention to them.

Respect requires boundaries.  People who do not establish clear relationship boundaries open themselves to being manipulated, exploited and taken for granted -- that is, disrespected.  Not coincidentally, those happen to be complaints I often hear from today's parents.  To cut to the chase, their children do not respect them.  Right.  In the course of striving to form close relationships with their children, they fail to establish boundaries.

This is especially true of today's moms who, paradoxically, have no problem telling their husbands, "I'm not available right now," but have great difficulty bringing themselves to say the same to their kids.  In fact, if they were constantly available to their husbands, most of their husbands might like it, but they'd have far less respect for them.  Their children are no different.

The notion that parents should not enter into close relationships with children is radical only to someone who was not a child in the 1950's or before.

As was my case, the pre-1960s parent was in close relationship with his or her spouse and/or friends, not his or her children.  That's why we emancipated earlier and more successfully and why our mental health, as children, was so much better than is today's kids' mental health.  Dependency has its season, but that season is finite.

Concerning attention, the simple fact is that the more attention a parent pays to a child, the less attention the child will pay to the parent.  In a young child's mind, paying attention is either the parent's obligation or his own.  As a general rule, today's parents make it clear that this is their obligation.

As we are told is likely, good intentions have backfired once again.  But the problem of ubiquitous child disobedience is not simply a function of good parental intentions.  It is the logical consequence of the very bad parenting advice mental health professionals have been dispensing since parents began listening to them in the 1960's.

They said high self-esteem was a good thing, and we believed them because, after all, they had capital letters after their names (as do I).  The research now says that people with high self-esteem have low regard for others.  Hello?

They said that firm, "because I said so" authority was a bad thing.  The research now says that the most happy kids have parents who provide firm, "because I said so" authority, along with a love that will go the distance.

So much for capital letters.

It takes effort, but it is possible for parents to turn the parenting clock, in their own homes, back 60 years.  I know some who've done it. Without exception, their children obey them. 

No surprise there.

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What I see as someone who observes families and parents all around me, is that parents seem unable to enjoy themselves without their children tagging along.  It's as though they cannot make friendships without their children.  I realize that most of our friends come from parents of our children's friends as we all spend/spent many hours in Little League, school programs, et cetera, but make the friends, and leave the kids at home while you enjoy adult activities!  When you take your children with you wherever you go, or you only go to children's level activities, you are robbing them of the joy of discovering those things on their own as an adult--not to mention robbing yourselves of the great fun afforded by being with other adults sans children.

There are, of course, family times, and they are important, but they should not become the center of today's family's activities in my opinion.