I know, I probably have no business posting to this one, neither being a parent nor having any desire to be one, but I’m kind of surprised not to have heard from any other only children on this thread. I’m not sure if I grew up the way I did because I was an only child, because of my parents’ disciplinary decisions, because my mother stayed home with me, or what, but I too was a Good Child. Specifically, I had very few friends my age - not only was I an only child, but we lived way out in the country and the few friends I had were not in walking distance. So I saw them a lot, like any kid, but I still interacted most with my parents and their friends. It seems like most of the kids I knew as a child knew how to hang out with grown-ups, though, and that dosen’t seem to be the case now. Not just with small children, either - it seems like most of the middle and high schoolers I know have… reduced attention spans. (I’m sure there are exceptions - but I don’t seem to come into much contact with them.)
It seems like maybe fewer people expect children to be able to sit through a longish dinner at a decent restaurant and contribute to an adult conversation without monopolizing it if they have something to say.
Unlike some of you, I never felt threatened or overwhelmed or robbed of anything by my parents’ high expectations, and I always had better jobs and was more successful at them because of skills I picked up this way - how to be an active listener, how to make a conversation work, how to present yourself at an interview or dinner or cocktail party. Maybe this is because it was much easier for my parents to take along one child, because there was nobody for me to react against - I know how much harder it is for two children to behave, certainly.
What really distresses me, however, is that I see children all the time these days who aren’t just incapable of interacting with adults - they’re incapable of decent behavior at all. Children act up sometimes - fine. But if they can’t stop from running screaming around a restaurant while other people are trying to eat, that’s a problem. The parents always seem to either think it’s cute or have this strange bewildered “why don’t they listen?” look on their faces.
I’ve often wondered about it - are they afraid to damage their fragile little psyches? Afraid of producing “little adults” who don’t know how to be children, or who are afraid to have fun? It seems like there aren’t ever consequences for these children - the parents don’t count to three, they count one, two, two and three quarters, two and seven eigths… There’s a difference, to me, between not wanting to hurt your child and being terrified of providing consequences to actions. So what happens when the two and forty-nine fiftieths generation tries to get a job? And finds out that other people have no problem whatsoever in assigning consequences? I don’t understand it, and I sort of feel like I don’t have any business bitching about it, since I don’t have any children - but, then, it’s my dinner they’re interrupting and my cereal that’s now all over the grocery store floor.
Maybe there’s a fine line between respecting your children as people and letting them walk all over you and everybody else, but there’s definately a line, and disregarding it does your children an enormous disservice. Occaisional misbehavior is what children do - they aren’t adults, they can’t be expected to glide through life in bevhavioral perfection. Fine. A very young child can’t be expected to sit quietly all the way through a three hour dinner - but a teenager should be able to, and know that his or her conduct indicates respect or lack of respect for others. Kids are naturally selfish - that’s the nature of the beast. Respect is learned. Parents have to be the ones to teach it.
