“Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (28 Aug 1749-1832)

Encouragement is one thing. We should help our children be all that they can be.   To do this though, we do not get there by handing them easy victories and refusing to challenge them.  What we get from this sort of thing and the excesses of false praise is the exact opposite of what we as parents naturally desire.  Making life too easy does not prepare children for life in the real world.

Instead what this over indulgence leads to is a generation of children who are selfish, spoiled and entitled.  Doubt my words on that?  Take a look around at the current events on the daily news.  Explain what you see fairly without the end analysis that we are dealing with folks who are selfish, spoiled and entitled to the point of violence if they have not been given what their whims.

A generation of misguided experts led parents to believe that children should never be allowed bad feelings.  This was no service to the children; nor the parents; nor society.  A child needs solid boundaries and to be scolded when they have done or said wrong.  This is how they and we learn accountability.  Absent a solid sense of accountability, there is an absence of social cohesion.  This leads to the very issues manifesting themselves throughout the United States today.    We have bred and semi-raised a generation of persons who believe “Do What Thou Wilt” is the maxim to be lived.

There has been a generation of children who were raised without any sense of discipline.  Now, I’m not saying it’s every child in this generation.  A good deal of my generation believed in notions for children rearing that conflated with the standards  (read that lack of standards) that too many fell for.  The sociologists and psychologists who encouraged this wrong path for children and society should feel a huge dread that their monster is coming home to them.  These so called experts might want to hang their heads in shame.  The rest of us?  We need to make some huge corrections on this immediately.

Rewarding children for just showing up has not taught them a single lesson in becoming successful.  The end goal of this sort of mentality was that it was to protect the children.  What good is protecting a child if as an adult they cannot successfully function and succeed?  Protection of a child to a reasonable measure is one thing.  Making believe that life is handed to us, does nothing to raise a child into a contributing, successful member of society.  It is those things which do that which we should set our eyes on.

By rewarding children just for showing up, they aren’t learning what it really takes to become successful and showing up definitely won’t build self-esteem.  Do not hear this wrong.  I am not saying that children should be ruthlessly treated.  Children should feel loved and protected.  This is what allows a child to venture out and explore this great big world. Against we come to the old tenets of moderation and reason.

Without a healthy balance of disciple, accountability and love, children do not learn to own their actions and inactions.  It is important to instill a good sense of consequences.  The laws of nature are replete with these.  As a subset of nature, so is every human life.   Do good things, usually good things happen.  Do bad things, bad things should result.  Giving in to a child’s impulses routinely is essentially giving up.  Oh, I don’t mean just being a parent.  I mean on society as a whole.

A child must be allowed the privilege of owning their mistakes and failure as well as their successes and achievements.  This is where meaning in life is really found.  Not in a pat on the back for everything good, bad or indifferent done.  When we do that, we have managed to raise not citizens and competent individuals but victims trapped in a victim mentality.   Ownership allows a child to know that they can take the bad they find in life and make it good or at least better.  They will not be victims, but instead, overcomers.  Overcomers of the adversity that is found in each and every life.

If we want to leave this world a better place than we found it, we could find no better place to make the effort than in how we teach and love and help our children grow up.  Sure, mistakes and failure hurt.  All the more reason to do better the next thing attempted. This is how the world changes the bad into good.  Not by pretending to give a false sense of unearned, undeserved ‘self-esteem’.  Think on this, please.  Self-esteem belongs to the self of an individual.  You can give it.  It cannot be taken.  It must be earned.

To earn this children must be given the one thing they all need, the opportunity to do so.  The avenues that they take will differ but it’s available to all.  School, sports, performing arts, relationships, family responsibilities – all of these afford the opportunities needed.  No more victimization allowed.  It is time to truly live and to teach our children to do so as well.

How do we get there?  Excellent question and I am glad you thought on it.  I am no expert.  I am still ‘perting’.  But it seems to me that the answers might very well include:

• Loving our children no matter what;
• Giving them opportunities to grow their competence;
• Focus on efforts not necessarily results;
• Encourage appropriate risk taking;
• Tell them what you expect as to their behavior and hold them accountable;
• Have consequences for bad behavior and stick with it just enough but also maybe slip a lesson or two in about forgiveness.
• Include children in decision making (how else will they learn this important skill?-
• And my favorite actually…. Remember to appropriately award the efforts, successes and achievement.

This then is how we get our society back.  One child at a time while reining in the violent self entitled hooligans who are currently acting out.  Who is with me? We can do this thing!