No, just oblivious. They didn’t know they were supposed to be terrified of adults. (And I should have said “toddlers and preschoolers”.)
And MandaJo, I should have said, I thank you for bringing that issue out in the open. I always had that feeling in school, that if I liked the class/teacher/subject and enjoyed being in school, I must not be learning anything.
No he doesn’t in the least come across like he has an axe to grind considering the variation in chapter titles, like:
“I Knew If I Gave You Enough Rope, You’d Hang Yourself”
and
“Give 'Em an Inch, and They’ll Want a Mile”
Or
“You Made This Bed, and Now You’re Going To Have to Lie in It”
and
“You Will Have to Learn Your Lessons the Hard Way”
Or
“I’m Only Going to Say This Once”
and
“I’m Going to Keep This Short ‘n’ Sweet”
Or
“Lower the Boom!”
and
“I’m Going To Nip It in the Bud”
So apart from being a misguided, toxic douchebag, at least I’m sure he isn’t reptitive and tedious as fuck as well.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Either this guy has been trolling the right-wingers all along, or he’s lost his mind.
First, the column. Eighth-grade boy in a private school wants to attend the public high school. “…he says that he’s bored and wants to attend a bigger school that offers more in the way of classes and activities.” Parents worried because the high school is “risky” and he might “fall in with the wrong crowd.” Kid says that won’t happen. What say you, Rosey?
Of course Rosey says that the parents know best, that the kid will get into whatever kind of trouble there is to get into, but that he’ll never be persuaded to see it his parents’ way, so
Just say, “We have decided to leave you where you are. We aren’t going to explain ourselves to you because we aren’t going to argue with a 13-year-old, and we aren’t going to change our minds, but you are welcome to make us prove that to you.”…The problem is that you have already stepped into quicksand by including your son in the discussion. I just hope you’re not the sort of wimpy parents who can’t bring themselves to make their children unhappy, who are forever negotiating and compromising with the emotion-driven terrorists-in-residence because if you take my recommendation, your son is going to be unhappy. For a while, that is. And then he will snap out of it and move on.
Just a flat NO to everything. No compromise. No regard for the kid’s side of it. That’s not the 1950s in America. That’s pre-revolutionary China. Except I think this would not have happened in either era:
And then, brace yourselves for the storm of the century. But that, too, will pass.
And it is insane that he’s always predicting that the kid will rage, scream, yell, slam doors and generally act like a mad bull…and then settle down. He encourages this entirely unhealthy behavior. And the bit about “emotion-driven terrorists-in-residence”. That is a sick, twisted view of parent-child relations, and if he really thinks that that’s a typical household (among people who don’t follow his precepts), then he’s going over the edge. Like I said upthread, I’ve heard of ministers going over the edge, convinced that the Rapture or Armageddon was going to happen any day now, or believing in Satanic conspiracies. This has the same tone.
See, it sounds to me like the kid outgrew his environment. Parents should accommodate that however they can. Okay, maybe the public school really is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. But you don’t just tell the kid he’s staying where he is and that’s it. Ask him what, specifically, interests him about the public school, and find some other way. Heck, you’re already paying for private school; find a different one, or get him into an activity outside of school. But of course, that would take time, and a lot of that time would be shared between the young man and one or both parents. Which is what makes Rosey’s head explode. Looking for a new school might bring them closer together. And then he wouldn’t fear them. And then he wouldn’t be completely under their thumb.
And as far as that “storm of the century”, if the kid really is jonesing for something to do, I predict a really fun time for the parents as he finds other ways to channel his energy. (I love the myth that private-school kids can never get into any trouble.)
Second, the blog entry. “Harsh Words That Need to Be Spoken” is the title. Words such as “Really? You’re actually wasting my time with complaints of this sort?” And the old reliable “Go ahead and rant, and I’ll watch.” And so forth. Harsh is bad enough, but this is rude. Great example of mature behavior for the child to see. (There was another entry a while back with a true/false quiz: “True or false: Telling the kid to shut up, that he has to stew in his own juice, yadda yadda, will traumatize him. False!” To which I say “If it’s only once or twice in a lifetime, yeah, false. If it’s constant, if the parent is never pleasant, never more than civil and almost always harsh, yes, true, the child will be traumatized.”)
Beyond that, though, I get that swallowed-an-icicle feeling when I compare this to what I’ve read about domestic violence (two adult partners, not parent/child). Rosey often includes phrases like “child of mine whom I love with all my heart” and “young person whom I cherish” in his scenarios. Rubbing it in that this person who causes you so much grief only does it because s/he loves you. And s/he is probably the only person who will ever love you, because they’re the only one saintly enough to look past whatever’s wrong with you.
And this one.
“Why do you insist on hearing me say the words you hate the most? Can you tell me? It makes no sense. What are they? C’mon! Okay, here. Because I said so. Because I said so. Got that? It’s always, until you’re outa here, going to be the answer to ‘But why, Mommy?’ Because I said so. Now, go find something to do while you cook in your own juices. I don’t want to watch it."
“Heartless” is exactly why childrearing language of the above sort accomplishes putting the child in his proper place, getting him to stop thinking of you as a talking vending machine and respect you even though there are times when he hates the ground you walk on. Finally—in his or her early adulthood, maybe—he just might come to realize that you knew he sometimes hated you but you were perfectly okay with that and allowed it because you love him with all your heart
“Why do you make me do this? You love it, don’t you? If you’d just do what I tell you, this wouldn’t happen. Now go fix me a turkey pot pie.”
And where are these children and teenagers who see their parents only as talking vending machines? If the parents want to be appreciated, they should try to be the kind of people children can appreciate. No, not by lavishing them with material goods. By guiding them and working with them, which is not spoiling them. What this entry recommends is abuse, straight up.
(Yes, I know I shouldn’t read this guy’s blog. Can’t help it; sometimes I need to get aggravated about something that doesn’t matter, to relieve the pressure from the stuff that does matter but that I can’t rant about. If that makes any sense.)
Every time I read one of his columns, I think of that old trope,
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
(You know, the one that was supposedly said by Socrates, or Plato, or at least someone of their era)
This bit from the column says…something, anyway:
As today’s young people are prone to remarking, “Duh!”
“Today” being 1993, I guess.
All right, a roundup. Week before last, a pre-schooler who hits other kids. Usual recommendation to remove him from the scene immediately and confine him to a room that is “cleansed” of entertainment. This is happening at a pre-school, and the teachers have to be complicit and call Mom as soon as the kid (Rosey calls him Popeye) hits someone. But the teachers don’t want to call Mom in the middle of the school day; they tell her about any incidents when she comes to collect him.
The teachers don’t know what Mom is doing because she is convinced, and probably rightly so, that if they knew Popeye’s evil mother was inflicting psychological abuse upon him in the form of room confinement, they would not give her accurate information.
Interesting. He’s made the point over and over that a teacher’s decision is law, never to be contested by a parent. Of course, that’s in cases of wanting a child treated less harshly. But it’s okay to override a teacher if you want your child treated more harshly. (And it couldn’t possibly be that the teachers have their hands full with a lot of kids, and would rather not call mom, explain what happened, and then wait for her to show up and do a prisoner exchange. If they don’t agree that the kid has a huge problem, maybe they’re right. They’ve probably seen a lot of preschoolers and understand their language, and maybe their opinion is more valid than someone who’s raising one kid.
Then last week was a ramble about being respected vis-a-vis being liked. Basically, the less a kid likes an adult, the more right that means the adult is, so the goal is a kid who cooperates without question, while not speaking to you for weeks at a time. You can’t respect someone you like, and you can’t like someone you respect.
And the latest one, about a kid who’s not loving his preschool, the second one he’s been in for whatever reason. Letter ends with the $64,000 question: “Did I make a mistake?” Balderdash! In Rosemondland, parents never make mistakes. They make decisions their kids don’t like, but they’re always the right decision because they’re parents.
Unfortunately, today’s all-too-typical mother tends toward feeling that if her child has a negative reaction to a decision she has made, the decision was probably wrong and may well cause psychological problems. This is tantamount to believing that a child’s emotional reactions are accurate barometers of parental decisions…In this case, your son may know that he is anxious, but he does not know that the solution to his anxiety is for him to simply get out of the car and walk inside.
So how about leading him to that solution? IANAP, but the first thing that comes to mind is to ask him, “So what happens when you get inside?” Maybe a bigger kid is in the habit of tackling him the minute he gets in the door. Maybe a lot of things, but it is not a waste of time to try to find out what’s bothering him, and to find a way to make it work. Rosey never got over his mom (grandma, stepdad) telling him he was “too needy”.
Of course he recommends the usual: doctor says early bedtime until the behavior changes. Conditioning, not communicating. I think it’s not going too far to say that this line of thinking means that asking a child which high school he wants to attend is as absurd as my asking my car if it wants to go to Centerville or not. Children are investment tools. They don’t get a say in what happens to them.
I believe this man is a sociopath, but I think it’s a backlash against permissive parenting, which fucks kids up just as badly. There’s a really good Atlantic article about the rise of anxiety disorders in young people and how parents enable it. Sr. Weasel treats kids with OCD and unfortunately there’s a tendency to allow the child’s anxiety to dictate what happens, which reinforces the anxiety and leaves the kid unable to face basic conditions of reality. In one egregious example from the article, the parents bought a new home so that their anxious child’s bedroom would be closer to the parent’s room. What Rosey fails to understand is that kids need to be validated no matter what they are feeling. Accepting their feelings as valid doesn’t mean they dictate what happens. We don’t have to choose between “treat your child like property” and " indulge their every whim." But this man basically only exists to make shitty parents feel better about their shitty parenting.
It does. But I don’t believe permissive parenting is as pervasive as he thinks he is. Or as extreme: he always takes the furthest-out cases and reacts as if they’ve become the norm. Like the latest entry in his blog, where he talks about “gentle parenting”. Who knows where he heard about it; I doubt many people are doing it, and it may not even be as feeble as he claims. The problem is, it involves feelings. A quote from whatever he read:
“Unlike permissive parenting, gentle parenting is not based on a lack of discipline for children, which is sometimes misinterpreted. Instead, gentle parenting means understanding a child’s feelings at the moment and responding accordingly in a way that is beneficial to the child’s emotional well-being.”
And his response.
What, pray tell, is there to understand about a child’s feelings? Children are self-centered and self-serving and have no tolerance for frustration. So, when they don’t get their way, they emote in various antisocial ways. Why does that require “understanding”? Children do not need people who understand their feelings as much as they need people who insist that they control their feelings.
In a way, he is logically consistent. When he suggests treating children like single-cell organisms, stimulus-response, stimulus-response, it’s because he thinks children are that base and uncomplicated. So it’s not cruel to condition them with constant punishment, because how else can they learn to “control their feelings”?
And the beast goes on…
Besides, women think they understand other people’s feelings. Men, generally speaking, do not make that claim. Men, generally speaking, believe that feelings only complicate things. What this adds to is that gentle parenting is nothing more than one more school of parenting that diminishes the value that men bring to the raising of children and causes mothers to believe they are de facto single parents, in which case, no wonder they experience so much stress in the process of managing a child to emancipation.
He’s been on a roll lately. The two columns before that one were the usual blather about how everything was perfect in the Good Ol’ Days, everyone back then had the same, identical mindset, and “…a person who does not believe in the God of Judeo-Christian scripture cannot possibly properly understand human beings…the FACT that no compelling [to him] evidence exists that verifies the reliable efficacy of any form of psychological therapy.” And apparently, he’s gonna stay on his front lawn, yelling at clouds, until he physically can’t any more:
As most people who read my stuff already know, I am licensed to practice psychology by the North Carolina Psychology Board, which greatly regrets the day they gave me said license. I tell people the truth about psychology and the people who practice it and they can’t do a thing about it. They can’t even mount an argument against me because (WARNING! AN OUTBURST OF WHAT MAY SEEM LIKE NARCISSISM IS IMMINENT!) I’m right. Occasionally, one of them rages against me in an email or a letter to the editor of his/her local paper, but when I invite them to debate me publicly, they go strangely silent.
That is, in essence, why I have no plans for retirement. Like The Blues Brothers, I’m a man on a mission. The mission is utmost. Besides, I’m having too much fun.
And I forgot a couple things about that earlier column, about the preschooler who didn’t want to get out of the car and go in. First, he advice to deal with a child’s anxiety by choosing “forget it or force it…deciding that the issue isn’t really that important…wait until the child is older before re-introducing the child to the anxiety-arousing event or thing. When the issue is important, then forcing the issue becomes a necessity.” Why doesn’t he just say it: “Whatever is easiest and most convenient for you, the parent, the only person who counts.”
Secondly, that “doctor” bullshite. “I have never spoken to a pediatrician who disapproved of his authority being invoked in this creative manner. In fact, most of ‘em think it’s funny.” Really. I hope that means, he’s spoken to a total of two pediatricians about this, and either they’re in his pocket somehow, or they were laughing at him.
Nice of him to throw a little misogyny in there too.
Believing that you can eliminate the influence of a complex and complicating phenomenon like “feelings” (or like, say, a global pandemic) by simply ignoring its existence is magical thinking.
Yes, feelings complicate things. No, men who decide to ignore the existence of feelings (and I doubt whether Rosemond’s correct in thinking that applies to men as a group “generally speaking”) are not notably more successful in handling situations like conflict resolution or child discipline.
AFAICT, “gentle parenting” merely means not using your children as a convenient outlet for your own negative emotions or power trips. You can still discipline and be firm with your children, but you have to behave yourself while doing so, instead of using the kids’ “being bad” as an excuse to go all ragey and retributive on them.
Oh my Og. Today’s column? I am still shaking. Title is “The Problem with ‘I Feel Your Pain’,” which problem being that it’s enabling co-dependence and did not exist until it was invented in the late 1960s. The usual let-them-stand-on-their-own-two-feet blather, but lately, roughly since Covid, though I don’t know if there’s a correlation, his tone has gone beyond snarky, into nasty, and in the last few weeks, flat out sadistic. The last three paragraphs:
Far more often than not, the more vehemently a child objects to a parental decision, the more said decision reflects the child’s best interest. That is why the best response to a child’s declaration of hate for said parent is, “If I were you, believe me, I’d hate me right now too! Do you feel the need to share any other earth-shaking news with me? If so, I’ll stick around for as long as you’d like. I want you to feel, after all, that you have freedom to speak your mind around here.”
That is not the language of feeling a child’s pain. It is the language of informing a child that his feelings do not define reality in the family, that life is full of problems, that problems are always painful, and that the earlier he comes to grips with the foregoing, the better for him for a long time to come.
A love that isn’t tough is always to be regarded skeptically.
Sick. Sick, sick, sick. And speaking of sick, there are so many kind, caring people in his generation who died of COVID. Why was he spared? Mods, I’m not wishing death, but if G-o-d was as just as Rosey claims, why has someone who not only has so much hate in his heart, but is preaching hatred to others, not been “cleansed” as he would put it, from the earth?
ETA: kimstu, I don’t read his blog entries about COVID, quarantine or whatever. Is he seriously ignoring the pandemic?
FTR, that really only applies to talking about other posters, not off-board figures.
I don’t know, I don’t read him at all. But his attitude of “feelings can be ignored if I find them an inconvenient complication” reminded me strongly of the approach that many people of his ilk take to dealing with COVID.
About this particular bit of snideholery:
Dude, quit taking out your workplace frustrations on your small child. You can be understanding yet firm in disciplining a child without using the child as target practice for your spiteful sarcastic needling.
For instance, you can calmly respond to a child’s “I hate you!” with something like “I understand that you may feel like you hate me right now, but this is the decision I’ve made and I feel it’s the right one, so we’re not arguing about it any more”. No sadistic taunting to send the message “Hee-hee, you’re all upset, I’m going to enjoy upsetting you more by making fun of you for being upset!” is required.
AFAICT, for assholes like Rosemond the sadistic taunting is the point; calling it “tough love” is just an attempt at camouflage. He probably got punched one too many times in the past for being a snide spiteful asshole to other adults, so decided it would be more prudent from then on to direct his snide spiteful assholery at little children instead, since they can’t punch hard.
I’d compare the guy’s malicious picking on kids to that of Severus Snape, except Snape at least had the balls to be an asshole in person to other adults too, and take the potential consequences.
Here’s the link, if you want to get the full horror of it. Another reference to his sainted, ball-busting mother. Either he doesn’t see the irony, or he really is trolling. Shame for any family that has “benefited” from his advice, though.
Yes, that’s reasonable, what you suggest. What he suggests is effectively “I know you are but what am I?” A parent who talks that way is acting like a playground bully, not an adult. And of course, Rosey recommends never even bending down towards a child, much less crouching, kneeling, or any stance that could be deferential to the child. Getting down to their level is okay in the metaphorical sense, apparently.
And sure, sometimes a parent will make a decision the kid doesn’t like. It’s a rare kid who gets to age eighteen without having once declared hatred for one or both parents. But it’s not supposed to be the norm. If the parent is constantly handing down punishments, and the kid is constantly flying off the handle, either the child has some condition where normal discipline won’t work, or the parent really is being unreasonable.
Plus which, Snape really was a potions master, and a good teacher. Strict and stern, but a lot of people say that’s what the teachers they learned the most from were like. And he was teaching potions, which is a valuable skill for a wizard, also an exacting one. So he had license to be a hard-ass; this was not Divination. Minus the whole traitor thing, Snape did some good to wizarding society. Rosemond is a cancer on American society. (Though not quite as much as Michael and Debi Pearl. Following Rosey’s advice has never lead to a child’s death, AFIAK.)
I don’t even know who this guy is, but I get this impulse. The kid is being frustrating and aggravating, so make the kid feel some (emotional) pain. One of a parent’s responsibilities is to be better than that. It’s totally possible to be loving and firm. Leave behind the belittling and bullying, and your kid is still not getting candy for dinner.
I’m sure if this guy thought he could get away with it, he’d recommend making your kid go out and cut their own switch for the beating.
This guy needs to learn the emotional regulation and self control he expects kids to have.
He’s there to sell books to assholes, not to help them raise kids properly!
He’s losing it, I think. This week it’s about how therapy is useless because therapists tend to take the child’s side. Okay, first of all, therapists do not take sides. But it would probably seem that way to someone who believes in this authoritarian crap, Parents like that most likely only got the kid into therapy either because some busybody at the school insisted on it, or because they’re counting on the therapist to be a higher authority, “The Doctor” for real, who will proclaim, “Okay, kid, this is it. Start obeying your parents or else.” If the therapist dares to suggest that the parents modify their behavior in any way, that’s interpreted as taking the kid’s side. And I would think by now that therapists are onto this guy, so that they recognize the patterns, and out themselves as ignorant psychobabbles by saying “Are you reading John Rosemond’s books?..Please don’t.”
Secondly, there’s this:
As one set of parents told me, “Claiming confidentiality, our daughter’s therapist wouldn’t talk with us without her in the room and obviously believed everything she was saying about us, almost all of which was either fantasy or downright lies.”
Now I know I’m not the only person, either in this thread, this forum, or this country, who told an adult the truth about what was happening at home, and whose parents deflected inquiry by gasping “OMG, s/he’s worse off than we thought – now s/he’s delusional!” There’s nothing fishy about wanting the daughter to be present when he talks to the parents. Beyond that, though, this is another one of his weaksauce anecdotes with too little information. How old was the girl? If she was a teenager, she might be lying to save her own ass, but kids under 12 or so are rarely motivated to lie, and when they do, a therapist can usually see through them. What was she saying about you guys? And even supposing she was spewing “outright lies”, someone who does that would still need some kind of help! When a child is a compulsive liar, that can be a sign that there’s something going on that they constantly have to cover up.
Beyond all that, I don’t think JR is going to be around much longer. Not writing columns, anyway; he’s working up to a stroke. He’s certainly been getting very dramatic lately, as in
the operational definition of “child” is “one who has great difficulty accepting full responsibility for the choices they make”…The conclusion I have drawn is that the field of child therapy is populated to significant extent by people with a need to be liked by children. Very odd. Wanting to be liked by children, that is.
and
A message to the daughter in question and similarly mistaken teenagers everywhere: No, dearie, it’s not YOUR room. It is paid for on a continuing basis by your parents, the people who have ensured that you have never known true deprivation. It would be highly therapeutic for you to come to grips with the fact that you qualify as ungrateful and any sense of entitlement you cling to is a self-destructive delusion. In the Real World, you are not entitled; you are obligated.
Gah. I mean, I wouldn’t think a parent was unreasonable if they said “It may be your room, but it’s our house, and if your room is attracting ants/roaches/mice/squatters, that affects the rest of the house, so clean up or it all goes!” It doesn’t have to be so hostile. There’s no need for “dearie”. And enough with this jazz about “Without their parents, children would be starving and begging in the streets!” (Can’t find the link, but I swear he once said exactly that, only without the exclamation point.) Without their parents, children wouldn’t have been born. So the parents darn well better feed, clothe and house them.
And since I’m here, another thing. One of his recurring themes is a child/teen, usually but not always a teenage girl, whom everyone outside the immediate family thinks is wonderful, while her parents know how naaaaaaaaaasty she really is. The parents are always perplexed by this, and Rosey’s explanation is that she doesn’t appreciate her parents because they’ve always been nice to her. Another recurring theme is an adult male, sometimes JR’s generation, sometimes a bit younger, who claims that his father never spent time with him, so he’s making sure to spend a lot of time with his kids. JR always talks him around to admitting that his father was too busy working and being a pillar of the community to toss a football around with him and that was totally fair, and further, that his kids won’t appreciate him trying to be their buddy, so he should keep the appropriate parental distance.
But about that pillar-of-the-community bit. My dad wasn’t that, but he was seen as a terrific person. A regular Good-Time Charlie, and smart, too! People who said that never saw him when he was brooding, or in one of his rages. But that’s somehow okay, while teenagers who show a different face inside their homes are manipulative sociopaths. Adults = always right. Children and teenagers = always wrong.