Text 16 parents are too permissive with their children nowadays a Parent Must Tell Children “I’m in charge”

Few people would defend the Victorian attitude to children but if you were a parent in those days, at least you knew where you stood: children were to be seen and not heard. Freud and company did away with all that and parents have been dazed ever since.

The child’s happiness is all-important, the psychologists claim, but what about the parents’ happiness? Parents suffer constantly from fear and guilt while their offspring romp about pulling the place apart. Good old-fashioned spanking is out of the question, no modern child-rearing manual would permit such barbarity. The trouble is you are not allowed even to shout. Who knows what deep psychological wounds you might inflict? The poor child may never recover from the dreadful traumatic experience. So, parents put themselves out to avoid giving their children complexes which a hundred years ago weren’t even heard of.

Certainly a child needs love, and a lot of it. But the excessive permissiveness of modern parents is surely doing more harm than good.

However, psychologists have succeeded in undermining parents’ confidence in their own authority. And it hasn’t taken children long to get wind of the fact. In addition to the great modern classics on child care, there are countless articles in magazines and newspapers. With so much unsolicited advice flying about, mum and dad just don’t know any longer what to do. In the end they do nothing at all.

As a result, from early childhood, the kids are in charge and parents’ lives are regulated according to the needs of their offspring. When the little dears develop into teenagers, they take complete control. Lax authority over the years makes adolescent rebellion against parents all the more violent. If the young people are going to have a party, for instance, the parents are told to leave the house. Their presence merely spoils the fun. What else can the poor parents do, but obey?

Children are hardy creatures (far hardier than the psychologists would have us believe) and most of them survive the harmful influence of extreme permissiveness which is an accepted fact of modern households. But a great many do not. The spread of juvenile delinquency in our age is largely due to parental laxity. Mother, believing that little Johnny can look after himself, is not at home when he returns from school, so little Johnny roams the streets.

So, if parents wish their children well, they must learn to say no to their children and exert their authority.

Mike Beale, chairman of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools (IAPS), states that parents must set boundaries if young people are to make a success of their education. The recent call for a return to old-fashioned parenting will strike a chord with both parents and teachers.

According to Mr. Beale, home is “the cultural capital of the child”. It’s a recognized fact that young children who are looked after by their mothers up to the age of three do significantly better in developmental tests than those cared for by nurseries, nannies, childminders or relatives. As it follows from a long-term study of 1,200 children led by Penelope Leach, a known childcare expert, children looked after by anyone other than their mothers tend to show higher levels of aggression and are inclined to become more withdrawn and unhappy. Tests included the ability to do a series of set tasks and the level of eye contact maintained with adults. Toddlers in nurseries fared the worst.

Mr. Beale, who himself has two grown-up daughters and has been head of Craigclowan school for 26 years, supports Leach’s opinion. “Language development in the first two years determines the pace of learning for evermore,” he said. “What is more, values have been learned before school begins. Yet school and teachers are held responsible for any shortcomings that children demonstrate as they pass through their education.”

Parents must learn, for the sake of their children, not always to give in to their demands, and to tell them who is in charge. “It is essential to draw the line for children beyond which they are not permitted to go. It is not essential that families are democracies. My heart sinks when mum and dad say to me that they have made a decision, they don’t really like, just because Maggie wants this, that or the other, and they are afraid not to agree (‘After all, we have to be best friends’).”

“Sometimes I’m afraid, the reasoning still has to be that parents, like school heads, have to say no because they know best.”

(compiled from www.timesonline.co.uk)