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Time to start raising children again

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(Editor’s note: This week we introduce a new monthly column on parenting by retired Poway Unified School District teacher Wendy Faucett.)

I am a member of the first generation of American children to be parented (no longer “raised”) by pop-psychology psycho-babble.

I can vividly picture the P.E.T. (Parent Effectiveness Training) binder on my dad’s bookshelf. Born in 1958, living in Southern California, I must have been around 7 when my parents took the training. My father, with a degree in psychology and employed as a human resources specialist, was enamored of pop psychology. He was also a staunch Democrat and I can imagine his joy in finding a theory of parenting based on true democracy. And you can imagine my dismay when I took the binder down from the shelf, thinking it was about domestic animals!

What my parents and many others in the mid-1960s were swept up in was a tidal wave of experts telling parents how to “parent.”

The noun became a verb almost overnight, and suddenly traditional understandings of raising children were tossed out, replaced with the notion that raising children should be an egalitarian situation in which your children’s opinion/feelings/desires/vote should matter, and all decisions, including and maybe especially those having to do with rules, expectations and discipline, should be reached by consensus.

Years later, when I reflected on the unfortunate things I did because my parents were too concerned with my feelings to step in when I needed leadership, I swore things would be different if I was ever blessed with children. And 20 years later, I took the knowledge I gained from my parents’ examples into the classroom with me.

We were indeed blessed with children in 1993 and 1995 and my two favorite t-shirts as they grew had the following printed on them:

“She Who Must Be Obeyed” and “Because I Said So.”

My friends would see my shirts and nervously giggle. So many of my peers were conducting family meetings and striving to create a democracy in their homes. So many of my peers tried not to “stifle” their children with rules and expectations. So many of my peers negotiated, cajoled, pleaded, bribed and provided lengthy explanations to their children. So many of my peers were frustrated, confused, exhausted and so stressed. When I suggested they try “Because I Said So,” so many of my peers were horrified.

As my teaching career continued, and our friendships with other parents grew, I found that parents everywhere were declaring that the “n” word (“no”) would never be spoken in their home, as it most certainly damaged a child’s confidence and self-esteem.

Over the years, in parent-teacher conferences and at gatherings with friends and neighbors, I learned that most of my students and our friends’ children had no household chores, few manners, no responsibility for their belongings and no meaningful consequences for errant behavior.

They were 5-, 6- and 7-year-old sociopaths who had learned that adults existed to serve them. And they were taught this lesson by the adults who are supposed to lead them.

I’m frightened by what I see these generations of parents (GenX and Millennials) doing to their children, in the name of child psychology, albeit with the best intentions.

Last fall, after 15 years teaching preschool in the PUSD, I held the final parent-teacher conferences of my career. I suggested to all the parents that they assign their 4-year-olds at least one daily and one weekly household chore, that they stop negotiations with their children and start employing “Because I Said So,” that they stop trying to be their child’s friend and start being their child’s parent, that they vow to not help their children with homework, that they say “no” often, that they mean what they say, and say what they mean, that they understand their children are CHILDREN and not short adults, that they realize parenting is not a popularity contest and making your child unhappy, for the right reasons, will not damage their self-esteem, creativity, or love for their parents.

And I make the same suggestions to the readers of this column. I promise you won’t be sorry.

Faucett is a retired teacher, a certified leadership parenting coach, who lives in Rancho Bernardo. Find her on Facebook at Love & Leadership Parent Coaching. Have a child-raising question? Send an email to wendyfaucett@gmail.com.

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