Do you see this as a problem?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Seeing as I’m home for the weekend I actually got to read a newspaper. So I even read Dr. Dobson’s little column. today it was on the horrors of having a Strong Willed Child (SWC) as opposed to a Compliant Child (CC)

The basic gist that I can pick up is that SWCs are bad. They do things like dare to question and test while thier CC brethren simply smile. And this is bad for them, they have lower self esteem, lower grades, and are less accepted in society.

As a SWC I personally want to tell him where he can put his study. But, as I am now the low life of society, I figured I would get a few opinions first.

The column is here

My HO? SWCs may be a pain to reaise, but at least they think. These are the movers and shakers, not the sheep. Its not a deliquency problem, its human spirit and no amount of statistics can make that bad. Theae are the people that grow to shape society, not in spite, but because they are “compelled from within to fuss, fight test, question, resist and challenge.” These people force society to grow. Sheep may be sweet, but why are you parenting? Parents make people. Hopefully these new people will do things like massively improve society. Using statistics to show they are less good people for it just feels wrong.

Anyway, how do the rest of you feel? (My mom says that I’m being silly.) Are SWC’s bad?

2

I don’t think so. I’m rather in agreement with Robert Anton Wilson that there are two types of children; those who like to go explore and those who keep running back to mommy. I think there’s a direct relation here to strong-willed and compliant. It seems to me (and my daughter Marybeth is a perfect example) that the SWC’s are the explorers who aren’t afraid to question things more deeply and come up with deeper answers. The compliant ones are the ones more likely to accept things the way they are. Guess which ones end up creating the future?

3

Ah, but consider the source. I have a feeling Focus on the Family would love it if all children were cheerful, compliant little zombies who believed everything they were told; they’d have a much easier time propagating their right-wing agenda.

A fine reason to hope for strong-willed children, right there.

4

I don’t see anything wrong with a SWC except the label. I myself was a CSWC (Compliant Stong Willed Child). Compliant on the outside, Strong willed on the inside).

IMHO, if you know you have a SWC, why try to treat him/her as you would a CC? That’s just stupid. While 2/3rds of my kids are SWC, I would hate to see them suddenly acting like Stepford Kids. My sister’s kids are ALL CC! What a bore. Where is the spontenaity(sp?), where is the impulse, where is the adventure? So, Dr. Dobson, kiss my SWC ass.

5

Not to be the voice of sanity, but it doesn’t read as a blanket condemnation of being Strong-Willed, or a Psalm to “Compliant Little Zombies”.

It is, however, a bunch of conclusions based on a survey. These are general conclusions, and probably not very accurate outside of the 35k people who responded.

I think the main thing he said, is that accepting ones self-worth is the key to a successful future. It doesn’t really matter if you happen to have been a CC or SWC, as long as you realise you’re worth something to someone, you’ll go far.

Which is what the responses here so far are saying. :slight_smile:

6

My son is a SWC and I wouldn’t have him any other way.

It isn’t really society into which they don’t fit in or aren’t accepted. There are a lot of SWC out there. It’s situations like school that are so hard on them. They do question things. A lot. “Why?” and “How do you know that?” are standard fare in my son’s every conversation. I don’t think he’s being rude, just questioning, but it can get tiresome.

These are the kids who, whether they need it or not, get put on Ritalin at the drop of a hat, get stuck in special classes and sent to the principle’s office at least weekly or daily out into the hall because the teacher just can’t deal with them in her class of 30 second graders. They get labeled early as “Problem Children” and that label follows them all through school. Their peers pick up on it and react to the SWC because of it. They get blamed for things they didn’t do because the kids know the teacher will likely believe “Josh did it.”. Fortunately, my son has an exceptional teacher who he will be able to be with for at least the next school year.

But he is also the child that will, as the others have said, discover things. Josh has a fascination with science fiction that has led to late night star gazing and discussions about the moon and “are there really aliens?”. Everytime I buy a replacement component for my computer he saves the old ones for that robot he plans on building someday and asks lots of engineering questions of anyone he thinks might be able to answer. He takes things apart to see how they work (something I did as a kid). He questions everything and he has a storehouse of knowledge above his peers because of it.

My daughter is, to a lesser degree, also a SWC and we had similiar issues with her. But she also is far above her peers in her knowledge base and at 14 can carry on intelligent conversations with adults on politics, religion, science and sex, just to name a few.

The psycologist I took them to a couple of years ago told me that because of their personalities, my children would have a hard time fitting in with their peers, and sadly, this is so. Most of the kids their ages just don’t get half of what they’re talking about. So they have older friends and they’re happy with it and as long as my kids are happy and getting along with the world, I don’t give a rat’s tail what someone else has to say about it.

7

I see a problem, all right, but it belongs to Dr. Dobson. Then again, most convenient labels make me nervous but never more so than when they’re slapped onto children. Kids are just as variable as any other group of people.

Isn’t helping children learn the point of parenting? Lyllyan made an excellent point: kids can be quiet on the outside and stubborn as hell on the inside. IMO the whole construct is nauseatingly false. CC’s aren’t sheep/ideals and SWC’s aren’t problems/rebel heroes.

Compliant kids need to learn how to make decisions; willful kids need to learn how to take other people into account, shy kids need to learn how to reach out to others, talkative kids need to learn to listen, confident kids need to learn compassion, timid kids need to learn to take risks, active kids need to learn how to be still and inactive kids need to learn to use their bodies. The subtleties are as infinitely variable as the kids themselves.

IMO it isn’t one category=good and the other=bad. There are just kids who need to learn different things. It’s why parenting is one of the toughest, most rewarding challenges going. Stuffing kids into convenient boxes is copping out.

Veb

8

There are compliant children???

9

Didn’t anybody else read Dr. Dobson’s column and see the many, many holes in his “study”?

How were these 35k parents chosen? Random sample? Doubtful. It was probably a “hey parents, write in and answer these questions”-type deal. Since Dr. Dobbs seem to try to help people be better parents, it only makes sense that people who are having trouble with their kids are more likely to be reading him, and are therefore more likely to respond. The higher percentage of parents of “problem” children participating in the study is going to skew the results.

Ah. So not only is every kid in the study divided into one of two catagories, SWC, or CC, but the job of putting each child in one of the catagories is done by that child’s parent.

That’s the equivalent of doing a study on obesity, and asking 35k people if they consider themselves “fat” or “skinny”. You’ll get people at a healthy weight saying that they are “fat”, and people who are overweight saying that they are “skinny”, because there is no quantitative definition given for the two conditions, and each person rating him/herself is using his/her own standards.

Which will tell you how people feel about their weight, but is completely useless when you’re trying to draw general conclusions about “fat” people. Likewise, this method invalidates any conclusions that the study happened to find about “SWC”.

Or, for those of us living on earth, “Parents tend to see themselves in their children, and are therefore not good sources of unbiased information about them.”

I’ll also point out that most of the “conclusions” also could be suffering from selective reporting, where he states a statistic that supports his view, but leaves off related statistics, suggesting that they might not support his view. But I’ve given his article more time than it deserves.

LordVor

*all quotes from http://www.family.org/docstudy/solid/a0006731.html

10

Speaking as a person who has no love for and little respect for Dr. Dobson, I would like to point out that he did not draw the conclusions outlined in the OP for which he has been so roundly castigated.

His very first point is that roughly 75% of all kids are SWCs. He does not go on to say that they are doomed. He does not claim that he has some easy (or difficult but surefire) cure for SWCs. He simply notes that they seem to have more difficulties, overall, than CCs. This is a surprise? This is open to challenge?

The absolutely worst thing he says about SWCs has to do with their self-esteen issues in which fewer than half have a genuine issue (35% + 8% according to point 11).

So reading the whole article, he seems to say that one (very large) group of kids are born (not shaped) with issues that have the potential to interfere with their lives. (He also noted that by their twenties, nearly all such kids have resolved those issues for themselves.)

For this we should get mad at him? If he has a follow-up article explaining how “you, too, can turn your SWC into a CC in five easy steps,” then let’s burn him at the stake. However, his article seems to say that fewer than one kid in three (43% of 75%) will have innate issues that are outside the control of the parent (relieving the parent of any “responsibility” for having “caused” the problem) and that the parents should be aware that these kids are at somewhat higher risk for having difficulty becoming socialized or acculturated. In other words, understand that a lot of kids (including yours) have some problems that are not your fault and try to recognize that those problems can contribute to other issues.

Dobson has said many things that have irritated ne, but this is not one of them.

11

Interesting thread.

The article by Dobson seemed thin to me. Seems to me the concepts of “strong willed” vs. “compliant” children is fairly subjective. But having said that, let me offer this…

I’m a teacher, and I see some pretty strong willed kids. Not all of them are being smothered by “the system”. Here are a few that come to mind:

  • The first grader who was caught spitting on other kids (for the third time).

  • The big third grader caught beating up a small kindergartener.

  • A second grader who dumped out his desk and started throwing the contents at the other students.

You know all those mean, stupid adults you don’t like? Guess where they come from? Not all kids are bright little vessels waiting to be filled. Some of them are nasty little bastards.

12

Quote: “Most parents know they have an SWC very early. One-third can tell it at birth. Two-thirds know by the first birthday, and 92 percent are certain by the third birthday.”

Where did this guy learn math?