According to a recent article on Huffington Post by Emma Jenner, an experienced nanny, many parents make the same five mistakes that she thinks is leading to a crisis of sorts. Our kids are becoming bored, entitled, spoiled, selfish, and rude. And she thinks it's because we are not delaying gratification and instead trying to give them everything they want.
Remember when we were kids? We'd never dare use the words "I'm bored." Because if we did we knew we'd get an earful. Our parents would tell us to go clean the garage, or rake leaves, or straighten out our messy rooms if we were so bored. Then they'd tell us they'd "give us something to be bored about."
And also, I remember rarely being bored. We knew how to spend and appreciate lazy days, and we also knew how to get things done when so motivated. It wasn't our parents full-time jobs to entertain us, soothe us, or keep us occupied or "unbored". We took that task on ourselves. And we did it without the ability to text our friends. Instead, we'd wander around the neighborhood and knock on doors and see who was around and up for a game of freeze tag or running bases. Our parents didn't arrange constant playdates or shuttle us to multiple camps/programs/classes/lessons. We made our own plans. We were movers and shakers in this way.
If we wanted to see a movie, we didn't instantly download it onto our phones. We had to first find the funds (by looking under couch cushions or counting up our paper route money) and then we'd walk a mile to the nearest movie theater. Our parents rarely dropped everything for us. It just wasn't the way things worked back in a day. They weren't our full-time drivers. We walked or biked most places. If we wanted something bad enough, we figured out a way to make it happen. This made us responsible for our own happiness. We didn't insist or demand things from our parents. And if we did? Well, we know how that turned out. Our parents laughed when we held our breaths or threatened tantrums. "Go ahead," they'd smirk. They had the power (and patience and wisdom) to tune us out.
We didn't realize it at the time (and maybe they didn't either) but they were teaching us delayed gratification. They were showing us we weren't the centers of their universe or anybody's universe. And they were motivating us to solve our own problems instead of having everything done for us.
The attached article about parenting mistakes does touch on a lot of ways in which we are overparenting and overprotecting and over-managing our kids lives in ways that I do feel is somewhat detrimental. Now that I am on the other end of things, and my kids are almost fully baked, I can see clearly that making the tough decisions early on, when they were irrational and demanding toddlers, may have seemed hard at the time, but was well worth it. Some of these lessons we learned the very, very, very hard way. What nobody tells you (sometimes until it is too late) is that it much easier to correct a toddler's bad behavior than it is a teenager's, especially when a behavior has been rewarded and enabled for years without being challenged. These bad behaviors can begin to rule a family and become the primary dynamic.
There were many times I could have taken the path of least resistance or caved under pressure, or surrendered all my power to my kids, but with the help of my husband (who generally remained strong) and the advice of a therapist, I learned skills to parent without becoming my children's servant. I learned I wasn't a bad parent because I set limits and boundaries and allowed my children to be bored. I also found out it was okay to say NO, even when it broke my heart to see my children's tears or to hear I was the "worst mother in the world."
Of course, I can say this because now, many of those battles are behind me, and I am no longer in the thick of it. My kids are lovely teenagers. But I look around and know I am lucky because unlike many parents who seem to have thrown up their hands in defeat, I CHERISH MY TIME WITH MY ALMOST GROWN CHILDREN. Not that it's always been easy. We've waged many battle of wills during the Teenage Rebellion, just as we did during the Toddler Wars. But unlike most bloody wars where one side is vanguished, we have all come out winners.
I can happily say my children are not bored, spoiled, entitled, demanding, selfish or rude.
Can I take total credit for that? Of course not. But I do agree with this author of this article:
"Expect more. Share your struggles. Give less. And let's straighten these children out, together, and prepare them for what they need to be successful in the real world and not the sheltered one we've made for them."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emma-jenner/modern-day-parenting-in-c_b_5552527.html
