All the books on child-rearing say that consistency in disciplining children is crucial, but it’s taken me a long time to divine why it is so crucial. I believe that children act up, rebel, and push against rules and boundaries so they know when and where they will be safe. If they are told repeatedly that doing this will harm them, or going there is dangerous, then they know that as long as they don’t do this and don’t go there they are safe, and can feel secure.
Unfortunately, in our society more and more parents are being inconsistent in disciplining their kids. They come home exhausted from work and the anxieties of their own lives, and don’t have the patience to be consistent and firm with their kids. As a result, kids learn that whining and wheedling will wear the parents down, or that if you ask dad for something when he’s in a good mood, you’re more likely to get it than when he’s in a bad mood, and consistency goes out the window.
But it doesn’t stop there. Kids, including teenagers, will still want to know where they can be safe, and so will continue to push at the boundaries of parental discipline, no matter where they are, no matter how lenient the parent is. This means that without consistent boundaries, kids will rebel more, act out more, and push harder, almost without limits.
So, with the way our current society is trending, we are teaching our children to misbehave, and, simultaneously, instilling fear and anxiety in them because they don’t feel secure. Moreover, an environment where the rules keep changing makes it impossible for them to learn behaviour that will allow them to function in society, and get along with other people. We are therefore creating a generation of dysfunctional children.
There’s more to it than this. Why are parents so inconsistent? Partly it’s because families are more likely to have two parents working than in earlier generations, or to be single-parent families. As a result, parents just don’t have enough time or energy available to devote to the hard work of disciplining their children. But beyond this, our society is systematically destroying the authority of the parents, and making them doubt their own abilities.
Think of any television show that portrays parents, notably fathers, as smarter than their kids. Whatever show you’ve just thought of, I’ll bet it’s off the air, and may be remembered from decades ago. Television today shows the kids as being the intelligent ones, always ready with the snappy answer, whereas parents (especially dads) are dopes and fools (“Dooohhh!”).
Moreover, the virtues transmitted by commercial culture are all related to consumption, and have no relationship to the needs of either children, or our society as a whole. Dr. Robert Glossop, of the Vanier Institute of the Family in a recent speech titled “Societal Influences”, said “Until recently, parents were largely supported in their efforts to instill in their children certain 'traditional' civic virtues of duty, honour, honesty, contribution, temperance, dignity, conscience and sacrifice. Yet, today, these words that were once reinforced by neighbours, teachers, community groups, faiths, employers, and politicians all sound just a little too quaint.” Civic virtue is not taught, and won’t appear on its own.
Meanwhile, if a company wants to motivate kids to buy a their products, then in many cases their best bet is to inspire their market to nag their parents into buying it for them, whether it’s suitable or not. The most egregious recent example I can think of is the computer game, “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.” In this apparently extraordinarily well-executed and addictive game, the player takes the role of a low-life auto thief. In the game, you get to steal cars, get involved in high speed chases with police, pick up hookers, and rub out competitors. This game is rated as suitable only for adults. Yet one of the big stories of Christmas, 2002 was the number of parents who were buying the game, and giving it to their adolescent and pre-adolescent kids. But it’s only a game, right? No. Dr. John Colwell, a lecturer at Middlesex University in the U.K., found that the longer boys play violent computer games, the more aggressive they become.
We have, in other words, created a social environment that actively promotes anti-social behaviour, glorifies the denigration and exploitation of other people, and belittles the importance of parents. It is, in short, what Bob Glossop calls a “socially toxic environment.”
Teachers know this is happening because they see it in the behaviour of the children in their classrooms. At a time when children need more education to succeed in life, more and more classroom time is being eaten up in discipline issues, and less time is available for actual learning.
This is a prescription for disaster for the future of our society. We – parents, teachers, governments, and corporations – need to come together and determine how we can change this socially toxic environment. No one group can do it alone, just as no one group is entirely at fault for it happening. But unless we do something remarkable, we are not only dooming the future of our society, we are betraying our own children.
by futurist Richard Worzel
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