Parenting

I was reading the newspaper at lunch today. One of my favorite parenting writers is John Rosemond, and he writes an article in the paper every Tuesday. Today his article was addressing the fact that for two generations parents had been told to raise their kids in a kids-centered way, that is to praise them, dote on them, build up their self-esteem, get them involved in as many activities as they wanted, regardless of the cost (time, priority, etc.) to the family. He puts it this way: "[They] devote[d] themselves to creating child-rearing environments that were rich in praise and reward but lacking in reality, elevating their children to idol status in the process." He talks about the negative impact of raising children with (too) high self-esteem--self-centeredness, risk for bouts of depression, anti-social inclinations, etc. He ends the article this way, and it sat with me like a mini mission statement:

How to put kids in place
Raising a child who possesses high other-regard requires that parents do what our great-grandparents did. They put their marriages first, not their kids. They gave their children all that they needed and very little of what they simply wanted. They assigned daily chores from age 3 on. They expected their children to do their best in whatever settling....They did not serve them individualized dinners. Family came first, not afterschool activities. And so on. This parenting paradigm is as workable today as when I was a child.