It is probably best to make as many big parental decisions as possible before they become necessary. It is easier to think about, say, obedience before it becomes an immediate issue.
How important is obedience? I think most parents will answer, “Well, it depends.”
But the question is whether parents feel obedience is an important principle. Small children’s safety can depend on them immediately obeying “stop” or “no” when their parents see a danger that children can’t see. Obedience is what frazzled parents want when they end up saying, “Because I said so, that’s why.”
Parents get frustrated when children ask, “Why?” or say “Just a minute” or when parents are silently ignored. They want their children to hear them the first time rather than tune them out in favor of a TV program.
Parents with active preschoolers can be heard saying, “Jason, get your coat on … Jason … one… two…” About two beats after “two” Jason begins to get his coat on. Then, for the next task the parent gives the instruction a couple times and starts counting again.
The counting has become a signal between the parent and the child that the parent wants obedience, but not until the number two is uttered.
There are parents, of course, who don’t provide their children with any reasonable limits and have no expectations that their children will obey them. Some parents themselves act in undisciplined ways and expect obedience “just because.” Other parents yell so much and follow through so little that their children pay no attention to orders.
But, most parents struggle with how much obedience they expect in what areas of life, and how quickly they expect it. Their struggles can show up and wear them down in their day-to-day activities. It’s easier to think about the principle and make some decisions before that happens.
Here are three thoughts to consider about obedience:
Some European child-rearing experts in the early 20th century emphasized a need to teach children to obey authority without question, according to Alice Miller in her book “For Your Own Good.” Some experts encouraged parents to issue outlandish orders to children and then to punish them for questioning those orders. Miller says that emphasis on obedience without thinking helped form the generation of Nazis who thoughtlessly obeyed.
In war zones some parents adopt authoritarian styles to survive. However, that style doesn’t always translate easily or well to safer environments.
Young children who learn how and when to say “no” to their parents in acceptable ways, are learning the fundamentals to later say “no” to teenage peers. Youngsters who know how to resist peers are less likely to get in trouble with them.
Parents make many other important decisions. How important are individual rights, for example?
If they didn’t know it before, American parents soon learn that the overemphasis on individual rights in this country conflicts with the demands of good parenting.
As important as they are, America’s near-worship of individual rights conflicts with other equally important issues. Watching convicted criminals clamor for their individual rights – and watching courts seriously consider their clamoring – is evidence enough that many want their rights even when they don’t exercise their responsibilities.
Parents are wise to teach their children the important pairing of individual rights and responsibility. But even individual responsibility is a small counterbalance to individual rights; the balance is still on “me.”
Taking it a big step further, parents can help their children learn about their responsibilities to issues bigger than themselves: other people, their families, their communities, and to values and beliefs that are even bigger than their communities.
Parents who make some of those big decisions before they become immediate demands make them more thoughtfully; they can select and form their decisions out of several possibilities.
There will be times, then, when they can retreat to those decisions to help make tough choices. When they do that, they and their children learn and practice self-discipline together.
Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. He is on the Snohomish County Child Death Review Committee and the advisory board for the Tulalip Children’s Advocacy Center. E-mail bill@billfrance.com.
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