Childrearing practices (semi-long and very confused)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m solititing opinions on the “best” ways to socialize children. This isn’t a debate or a flame because I don’t know what I think.

As background, my parents were very strict about behavior. They were never physically abusive but the limits were clear, both in public and at home. We were never permitted to “act up” or whine. Examples: mom would tote along paper and crayons or small toys but in restaurants, etc. we were expected to be quiet and amuse ourselves. The surest way to NOT get candy, treats, etc. was to whine for it–ask once, then give it up. Mom tried to cook foods we’d like but the rule was to at least try one bite of everything. We didn’t have to finish foods we hated but whining or complaining were not permitted. Tantrums were flat-out verboten, impossible to contemplate.

In some ways (as my sister says), we weren’t children: we were little adults as far as behavior and expectations went. We could cut loose in play situations but the standards were very strict otherwise.

I like kids but must admit I’m appalled sometimes. Everybody has horror stories of kids running amok but my ambivalence runs even deeper. I’m genuinely disturbed by the tacit pact behind some childrearing practices. I HATE cheery, chirpy commericals where kids whine and make faces if they don’t like food–and are rewarded by getting the “junk du jour”. It’s profoundly disrespectful and plain rude, treating parents as short-order cooks. I hate “wise child/stupid parent” back-talk.

But maybe my shock over lack of respect for parents just mirrors my own up-bringing. Respect and manners were certainly there my parents never seemed to particularly enjoy us much as kids either.

I’m seriously muddled on this–any opinions and reactions are most welcome.

Veb

2

I’ve dealt with a lot of parents who were pretty clueless about parenting (“Well, Johnny may be drinking up in his room at 14, but you can’t just go in and take the beer from him - he won’t feel like he’s allowed any privacy!”), and I’ve seen a lot of out of control children. The concensus I’ve received from the kids (YMMV) is that kids like rules - within reason. The kids with no rules feel like their parents don’t really care much about them. Kids who are well-behaved enough to have a hand in their own upbringing (once they are of an age that they can participate in rule-setting sensibly) tend to be happier and more agreeable.

And I think respect is definitely learned. You can’t respect a parent who’s an idiot (see comment above), or a parent who doesn’t respect you.

I usually see a worst-case scenario though, so it’s difficult to generalize that to the norm sometimes. I realize this is a half-assed reply, but I’m at work. I might be able to be a little more cogent once I get home - good topic, TV.

FD.

3

So how are you raising your kids? We strove for your ideal, but in practice it had a habit of not working that well. We did our best to rope in bad public behavior, and were not above just leaving public places lik restaurants when their behavior demanded it, but frankly a 5 year old is not gonna sit quietly real long and play with a few crayons or toy soldiers forever.

Overall the kids clean up pretty nice now, ages 12 and 16, and we’re not afraid to take them anywhere fancy.

And as for giving in to them, we opted to choose our battles as wisely as we could. Our youngest has a chromosomal illness that predisposes her to malnutrition, so we tried never to use food as a weapon, since she was on a high fat, high salt, high cholesterol diet, and we desperately needed her to gain wait. So Chocolate malts made with cream and premium iced cream, along with french fries au gratin and a cheeseburger became her norm.

Well, that’s a pretty unfocused and rambling response to your post. Doubt it helps, but there it is.

Qadgop

4

Weight! Gain weight! duh

5

Veb, babe, this is a very, VERY complex question. Feel free to e-mail or IM me, as little Banjo and Pianola are two Incredible Genius Children, and I’ll be happy to share my “methods” with you.

6

Sorry, didn’t mean to mislead. I don’t have children. (Ain’t it always the way, nonparents getting pissy? <–assume broad smile here.) Childlessness wasn’t so much a choice as a fluke medical reality that became apparent when I was young. It’s NOT a tragedy, just life along a different path. I don’t live a childless life; they’re just in different relationships–and kids are the future, y’know?

**

Again, sorry–my post was confused, and confusing. It isn’t my ideal, honestly. It’s most familiar to me but danged if I know how healthy it is/was. Early imprinting is strong but doesn’t mean it’s right.

**

See, this is where I’m muddled. My sister and I did; we remember it, and our folks prided themselves on it. But I’m very ambivalent, even in retrospect–and so’s my sister, btw. We were “little adults” in behavior, so I know it CAN be done. I guess my question is SHOULD it be done–and to what degree?

Toldja I was confused!
Veb

7

It really depends. I am fairly insistent about being polite and well mannered in public and yet (at times) both my children seem to think this is the ideal medium in which to test the limits of obnoxiousness. My children have a highly developed sense of how a social setting in which I want us to be seen as a well behaved “nice” group of people gives them almost infinite license to push the envelope in that my menu of responses to their mis-behavior is constrained by my sense of social propriety.

If we are out at a restaurant and I set cost limits on entrees like 8 or 10. dollars each and what my 10 year old wants is 12 or 14 dollars (he likes $eafood) much whining, pouting etc ensues to the point that harshly whispered threats to take him to the car ensue and a pissed off mood (on my part) settles over the table. My 14 year old is better behaved than she was a few years ago but she still occasionally takes going out to eat as setting the stage for a dramatic performance of VERY LOUDLY saying “PAY ATTENTION TO ME I"M TALKING TO YOU” (to me) or “AAAAH! HE’S (her brother) HITTING ME UNDER HE TABLE” etc etc ad nauseam.

They’re great kids overall but it just seems that going out sometimes brings out the worst in them. The more I press to them to behave the more they push back because they know they can get away with it up to a point and they are world class experts at riding the crest of that wave of incipient punishment all the way onto the beach untouched. It’s uncanny. Individually their fine, together they are occasionally a PITA per above and if we dine with another family with similarly aged kids fuggetaboutit, it’s the monkey house at the zoo.

If I saw someone else’s kids behaving the way mine sometimes do I’d probably think they were raised in a barn but it’s not that way. I insist (to the point of hardassedness) on getting homework done, using reasonable grammar and being polite to guests etc. I’m no pushover and yet it still continues. Maybe it’s the split households. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s the heat. Who knows.
[Fixed da bolding-Czarcasm]

[Edited by Czarcasm on 06-02-2001 at 05:13 PM]

8

Sigh…preview is our friend.
Sigh…preview is our friend.
Sigh…preview is our friend.

9

I have no answers, only an observation.

My parents were not abusive in any way, shape or form. However, my sisters and I were also expected to sit quietly in public places, not run amok in restaurants and all the rest of that type of thing. We would never dream of acting out in public because, well, it just was not done.

If fact, I remember once, very clearly, sitting in the living room of my Great-Uncle’s home while a group of adults played cards in the kitchen. We were given a few pieces of paper and some pens to entertain ourselves with, and that’s what we did. For hours. When we got bored we talked or stared at the wall or whatever, but we did * not * tell the adults we were bored or bother them in any way. I don’t know exactly why. We did not get treats or toys or rewards of any kind. Just a “you were very good tonight girls, we are very proud of you” and that seemed to be enough I guess. This was my older sister and I and we would have been about 7 and 5.

Later on, my younger sister was born and my parents had relaxed somewhat. The were still strict with her but somehow not * quite * as strict as with the two elder of us kids. She was babied in the way that all youngest children are by the whole family.

Now that we are all adults we have talked about the way were raised and how different we are about some things. The biggest difference seems to be in the way that my older sister and I handle authority. My younger sister does not get intimidated easily in any kind of authority-type situation as she seems to identify herself more as an equal. My older sister and I seem to be intimidated far easier in the same type of situation and we seem to fall into a more submissive “do as you’re being told” attitude.

Not that either my older sister or I are push-overs. We just seem to not be as, I don’t know, self-assured as my younger sister in some situations.

In public the older two of us almost always use our “public manners” at all times. The younger one is always polite but in a much less “fade into the background” kind of way.

The three of us have wondered at times if the difference that is so apparent in us was caused by the way we were raised. With my younger sister being given more margin for error, so to speak, as far as her public-politeness was concerned perhaps it made a difference in who she is as an adult. It is odd that both my older sister and I are so very similar in our weird mental-quirky-type things. But then we were raised almost identically as we are so close in age.
I doubt this helps much. But there it is.

10

When raising the three of us, my Mom made it very clear. If you act up in public, you get killed.* We understood this, and after a few instances of reprimands, we generally fell in line. By the time I was 7, I was a good kid, and smart to boot. We all behaved, and everything went well.

Now, as adults, we all are well adjusted people. None of us bow down to any authority. My kids know by now, that they do not act up, and when Dad starts counting, the “fun” ends and cleanup begins. I let them play, but they know their limits.

*[sub]Well… not killed. Maimed, maybe. My Mom would intimidate Drill Sergants.[/sub]

11

Maybe the fact that values and the meanings of terms have shifted considerably since your (and my) childhood contributes to the confusion. You describe yourself and sister as “little adults.” I think that’s a rather common description in today’s terms (and perhaps pejorative), but back then I’m sure you were referred to as “very well-behaved children”. What is considered “healthy” or “right” - and why? What is the evidence for considering something “healthy” or "right?

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

I am over 40, not a parent and have no intentions of becoming one. Being a parent today is much harder than it was for my parents. A split household makes it harder still (including if the kids pit you and your ex against each other). However, I have to say that my parents would have punished me severely if I had behaved like your daughter. I learned long before 14 that speaking disrespectfully to my parents was absolutely forbidden.

12

I’ve gone through some very similar questioning. I knew, before I had children of my own, that I wanted to do things differently than my parents did, but it took a great deal of thought and reading to figure out how to go about it. And, really, it is a continuing process. I have 4 children (ages 11, 9, 6 and almost 3) and I still feel that I am growing, learning, and improving as a parent.

I, too, was a very-well-behaved-child sup[/sup]. But that behavior came at a cost. As an example, when my mother dropped me (age 4 or 5) off at Sunday school each week she would warn me to “be good.” When she picked me up, she always asked, “were you good?” I had, of course, been well behaved, but there was (I now realize) a constant pressure to be even more polite/quiet/cooperative. I never felt that I was good enough. I would then, almost every week, throw a full-blown tantrum as soon as I got home. Naturally, I was punished for that, but at least some of the pressure was released.

I, too, want to have pleasant children. But I want them to be able to sit quietly through a restaurant meal because they want to, because they enjoy the social activity and because they understand that polite behavior makes things more pleasant for them as well as for everyone else. I don’t want them to do it because they fear the punishment they will receive if they fail. So, when they were small, we took them only to family restaurants and were prepared to take them out for a walk if they got fidgety. As they got older, we would discuss with them, before an outing, the type of behavior we expected and why. It seems to have worked. We generally have the best behaved children in the place, and we are often there because our kids asked to go.

I truly believe that children want to be able to behave in ways that gain them positive responses. If we allow them to learn and progress at a reasonable pace, they can surprise us with how well they can do.

I think the same sort of modelling works with backtalk and other rude behaviors as well. My children say “please” and “thank you” because I always said it to them, not because I forced them to. I have also never understood the reasoning behind forcing a child to say “I’m sorry” when, much of the time, it is clear that he isn’t. I have always apologized to my children when I have misunderstood something or over-reacted. I have accepted whatever age-appropriate form of apology they could offer. And when they reached the point where they could spontaneously say “I’m sorry; I was wrong,” it meant a great deal more to me than if they had been merely parroting something they were “supposed” to say.

13

This is a very interesting discussion for me, because, while I don’t intend to have any children myself, I have a 5 year old niece who lives nearby who is not a well-behaved child (and she has a 3 year old sister coming along behind her who may surpass her in rotten behaviour). My sisters and I were all raised to be on our best behaviour in public, or when there were family events, etc., so I’m not sure how it came about that my sister is raising her children to act so improperly so often (tantrums, rude behaviour to her mother/father/other adults, refusing to listen when instructed, always needing to be the centre of attention when adults are trying to talk (and I do mean always), etc.). Is there anything I, as an aunt, can do to help with this ongoing family problem? It has reached the point where we don’t want to be around this niece, which breaks our hearts because we want so much to just love her and enjoy her company.

14

That is really sad, featherlou. If you’re actually feeling that you are beginning to avoid them because of their children’s behavior, it might be worth the risk of offending her to talk to her about it.

Were the two of you raised in a particularly strict household? Would you, if you did have children, raise them in exactly the same way? Do you think her memories of being a child at family events are positive?

I ask because I think that it happens quite frequently that parents who are trying to “do things differently” often go overboard in the opposite direction. For example, I have a friend whose children are exceedingly loud. She will tell you that it’s just the way they are, that she can do nothing about it. I, on the other hand, think that any child (barring developmental delays) can learn to understand the difference between “indoor voices” and “outdoor voices” and use them appropriately. I think it is telling that she grew up with an incredibly domineering father who did not like to be argued/disagreed with. I think that she has very good reason for being unable/unwilling to tell her children to be quiet.

Personally, I have been less strict than I could be about encouraging my kids to try/eat new foods. I don’t let them substitute junk food, but I do allow them to go through phases where they enjoy only a small number of meals and just serve them the same things over and over. I’m sure it has something to do with being forced, as a child, to constantly eat foods that I intensely disliked. I can remember sitting at the table and gagging while trying to finish my dinner (and I had to finish it.) Those sort of memories have a lot of power, but I don’t think that people are always aware of them.

15

As children, we were both hellspawn and angels rolled up into one. On car trips we’d terrorize each other by making up songs about our siblings and sing them until one of us cried, our parents cried, or all of the above. I’d complain that my brother was “touching my air” and he’d yell that I looked at him funny.

But at the same time, if we were out in public, we were on our best behavior. Please and thank you all the time. We got so many compliments about how well behaived we were. Seriously, the other adults thought it was eerie. We were at the aunt and uncle of our cousin’s house once and they said that they didn’t even think we were children, we were so well mannered. They actually breathed a sigh of relief when my brother and I got into a fight because that signified normality.

What did our parents do? No clue. I don’t remember them teaching us to say please or thank you, I just know it was expected of us. They reminded us every chance they got and it was something we just did. They get embarrassed easily. It’s amazing we didn’t take more advantage of that…

16

…so now I’m confused Veb, are you saying you ARE or ARE NOT available for baby sitting duty for babybeagle this fall? :stuck_out_tongue:

17

Lay in the Guinness and I’m there. Of course your beagle goes for my underwear and there’s a problem. ::horselaughs::

Thanks for the opinions, folks. Offhand I’m leaning toward believing the standards I was bought up with weren’t too strict but maybe there are less inhibiting ways of learning them. My sister and I were very well behaved children but neither of us were ever much at ease with our parents, either. I really liked robinh’s point of encouraging kids’ desire to behave well. It sounds like a much happier, easeful solution that still produces polite, considerate children.

What a mess, featherlou, but sure understand your wish to avoid the hellions. I somehow doubt there’s much you could say that wouldn’t immediately trigger defensive anger though. FWIW we had a similiar situation in our family. My cousin is a clueless yuppie who, with her husband, reared their son to be a vicious, uncontrolled jerk. Even as a young boy he’d randomly kick or punch people as hard as he could for “fun”. His mother would rush to protect him after he’d nailed someone out of the blue. She’d bleat out jargon in a singsongy voice while everyone–including the boy–looked at her like she was an alien lifeform. His rich daddy would just smile: The Male Heir could do no wrong.

After he battered my branch of the family around once again, including my elderly uncle, we simply informed them we wouldn’t attend any gathering where he was present. Then the rest of the extended family followed suit–and stuck to it. She was offended and furious but eventually got over it. (Though not until he’d injured one his little sisters, he’d grown big enough to start smacking his mother around and Rich Daddy had split with a younger woman.)

Sad to say, he’s just turned 18 and he’s a genuine mess: rich, lonely, hate-filled and unhappy. He’s just enrolled in a presigious (of course) military school and realistically it’s his last chance to learn what his parents never taught him. Damned sad and sorry all the way around.

Extreme case but there ya are. IMO there’s no tactful way to criticize someone’s kids. It’s viewed as an attack on children and parents alike. BIG time hot button. The “X behavior bothers us and we don’t want to be around it” approach was pretty value-neutral but it still caused an ugly breach that lasted until everything fell apart so badly my cousin needed her family.

Gad, I’m longwinded.
Veb

18

No earth-shattering revelations here, Veb, but:

Take a look at yourself. Do you like what you see? If yes (and I suspect that the answer is yes), then your parents did it right. That’s not the only way, nor necessarily the best way, it’s just the method they used, and it worked for you. Socializing a child depends on the parent, child, and local social conditions. In otherwords: It’s an art. Every parent feels their way to a method that works for them.

That said, there are a few things that are standard:

  • Adapt to the child, they’re all different.
  • Be consistent.
  • Be consistent.
  • Give the child some wiggle room. Iron-clad rules suck (for both of you!).
  • Losening up on the traces is fine, but don’t let the children use social situations to push your buttons.
  • Be prepared to discipline in public.
  • Remember that you’re the adult, don’t let the child run you over.
  • Remember that you’re the adult, don’t let the child run you over.
  • Be patient.
  • Be patient.
  • Be pati…

You get the idea.

19

I’m the firstborn of 5. We were taught please/thank you/yes sir/no ma’am/excuse me… all that good stuff. I’m not saying we were always perfect angels, but I don’t ever recall being removed from a situation because of our behavior. However, I do remember the one thing that always stopped us in our tracks - the dreaded calling-us-by-our-names-in-Polish. We knew once mom or dad slipped into that mode, we were due to be grounded and/or assigned some manual labor as punishment. I guess it’s the equivalent of other parents using the first-middle-last name approach.

I have only one child - she’s closing in on 16. Just the other night my husband and I were trying to remember the last time we had to punish her. I’d like to say it was extraodinary parenting, but it could just be that she’s a good kid - she’s always known what was expected and most of the time she complied. We’ve had many a conversation about the value of trust and how hard it is to regain it once lost - methinks the impending driver’s license makes that talk all the more meaningful. I dare not congratulate myself, knowing full well at that point the doo-doo would doubtless hit the fan. Still, teaching her early on about actions and consequences seems to have had an impact.

That, or I merely birthed the perfect child…

20

featherlou, my niece is a lot like this. So willful and contrary, she’s not any pleasure to be around. I actually fear for her psyche at times, because I can’t imagine it’s healthy to feel like all the adults in the room are exasperated with you at every moment. I feel like she never gets the pleasure of knowing what it’s like to have people approve of you!

I live too far away from her now to do this with her, but when my nephew (her older brother) was small, I’d take him and do things with him myself. I disciplined him the way I thought (in all my childless wisdom) he should be discplined, and he did listen to me. I think he knew he couldn’t mess with me, for one thing, and I also think that when there are multiple adults around, kids just act nuttier and less well-behaved. They act up. Anyway, being one-on-one with my nephew was good because I developed a nice relationship with my nephew, got to appreciate what a great kid he was, and gave him a taste of some no-nonsense discipline. He’s actually turned out fantastic (I can’t take credit, though). The jury is still out on my niece.

As for child-rearing in general, that’s a tough one. Now that I’m a parent, I don’t know what’s right. I try to pick my battles, at this point (Cranky Jr. is only two). I try to read about parenting, but I also try to remember that our perceptions about children and child-rearing, regardless of the theories and the research to support them, are heavily embedded within our culture and beliefs, and that what we think we “know” about child development may not be fact at all. That leaves more questions than answers, I know.