Kids need authority (parents, teachers, rules) just like adults need authority (leaders, governments, laws, religions, deities). In both cases we need to know that our behaviors are justified and validated by something higher than ourselves. Even when kids misbehave, on some level they like being controlled/corrected/punished/educated by their parents or teachers, because it takes away the burden of ambiguity; it is comforting. I suspect the same is true of "normal people" who do "bad things" or commit crimes as a "cry for help." We want attention, comfort, consolation. I don't want to make it sound like a simple idea, I'm sure the human psychological relation to authority is quite complex, but I do think it's safe to assert that most people want it to some measurable degree.
This makes sense on an evolutionary level because uncertainty costs energy. We can't spend time learning how to make fire and cook mastodon burgers if we don't know whether or not a team of bloodthirsty, caveman-eating sabertooth tigers is waiting in the shadows outside our camp. Uncertainty takes up our mental resources. So if we can live in a system in which certainties are maximized and uncertainties are minimized, our resources and our utilization of our resources are more competitive. This translates into wanting to know that everything is okay, that someone is watching out for us, monitoring us, setting boundaries for us.
I can't speak for society prior to the last 15 years or so, as I wasn't paying attention back then, but I feel that parenting in American society today is astonishingly lenient. I'm guessing that it's a side effect of America's incredible wealth and prosperity in the last 50-100 years. Parents give kids whatever they want, in an effort to make them happy; toys, junk food, television and movies....it gets worse as kids get older. In college, the number of kids whose parents had given them new cars, fancy phones, laptops, expensive clothes, surfboards, snowboards, the list goes on and on, was mind-boggling. I don't understand how anyone can reach age 18 and never have had a job. Unfortunately, these efforts to provide for one's family visibly backfire. Giving your kids all the material possessions they want does not make them happy, it makes them feel entitled and unappreciative. Likewise, sheltering your kids causes them to either rebel when they get out of the house, or it suffocates them. They will either drink and sleep around and do drugs (not that there's necessarily anything wrong with those activities, but I'm just saying that parents who stiflingly prevent their kids from being exposed to those behaviors often end up making their kids want to participate in them even more), or they will continue on being sheltered and become completely lame adults.
This is not to say that all people or all kids should completely kowtow to authority. Obviously there are incredible good reasons to question and challenge authority. Everybody should learn the value of thinking for oneself and drawing one's own conclusions.
That being said, kids need to learn how to work. They need to learn to apologize when they do something inappropriate. They need to learn to respect that their parents are usually working their asses off to take care of them, not because their children are at the center of the universe, but because it is a parent's prerogative to safeguard the entire family's well-being. Parents who teach their kids otherwise are doing their progeny a disservice. Feel free to be stern, strict, authoritarian with your kids. They are little bundles of misguided emotions and undeveloped neural connections. They need you to set a strong example so that they can become strong people.
No comments:
Post a Comment