Guide
to Decision Making
A
FAMILY PSYCHOLOGIST TALKS ABOUT DISCIPLINE
SPECIAL FEATURE "Living With Children" by Family Psychologist,
John Rosemond
Positively
No!

In Hamilton's Blessing, author John Steele Gordon
explains the philosophy of deficit spending and why America's national
debt has been spinning wildly out of control for 17 years. With regard to
the latter, he says it's "for no better reason, when it comes right
down to it, than to spare a few hundred people in Washington the political
inconvenience of having to say no to one influence group or another."
Whether he knows it or not,
Gordon is saying that Congress is like some parents who are unwilling to
suffer the unpopularity -however temporary -of saying No to their
children.
When pressed to justify their
lack of fiscal restraint, parents tell me they don't want their children,
either now or as adults, to dislike them or blame them later for unhappy
childhoods. This is what I term the Everlasting Hate Theory, as in
"My child hates me today; therefore, he may hate the twenty years
from now:"
This is simply not true.
Recently, I've asked several audiences, "How many of you absolutely
loathed your parents for a significant period when you were
children?" Out of 500 people,
nearly half raised their hands, "Please keep your hand up," I've
then requested, "if you lack affection for your parents today."
All but a few hands go down.
Even considering that a few
people probably feel uncomfortable with publicly admitting that they hold
lingering animosity toward their parents, the point is made: The fact that
a child holds an unflattering opinion of his or her parents today is no
indication of how the child will feel about them when grown. In his first
letter to the early Christian community at Corinth, Paul wrote that when
he became a man, he put "childish ways" behind him.' Paul wasn't
talking about toys and games. He had in mind childish ways of thinking and
behaving.
Proverbs 22:15 tells us that
"folly is bound up in the heart of a child." There is only one
person more foolish, I would suggest, than a child who "hates"
her parents because they will not acquiesce to a whim, and that is a
parent who takes the child seriously.
Because
of obvious limitations, children always consume more of their family's
resources than they are capable of
replacing. The only way to
balance the resulting "deficit" is to
require that children perform chores around their homes on
a daily basis. Not to do so implies that something can be had for
nothing-the erroneous belief that lies at the heart of a poor work ethic.
Good citizenship is a matter of
willingness to promote the common welfare, which in turn requires
unconditional service. As John E Kennedy implored, "Ask not what your
country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Good
citizenship, as our foremothers and forefathers knew, begins in the home.
So, having children perform regular chores around the home not only is
good economica11y but also advances the children's sense of family
citizenship.
Parents
who fail to require daily chores of their children encourage their
children to have everything they want.
'their
children, as a consequence, become demanding and self-indulgent. They
want, complain, and regard any request for service as a major
inconvenience, if not an indignity In short, they are poor citizens of
their families. But in the same way that the national debt is a problem of
government and not the governed, this matter of poor family citizenship is
a problem of parents, not of r children. The problem is parents who indulge their children instead of
helping them to learn temperance in the acquisition of things. Children
who fail to learn this valuable lesson as children are likely to enter
chronological adulthood still clinging to "childish things." Do
you want to help your children shed childish ways of thinking and
behaving? Do you want to help them mature into fiscally responsible
adults? Then "balance the budget" in your home. Say No at least
four times as often as you say Yes to your children's request for material
things, keep their material possessions to a minimum, and encourage them
to be helpers in the family. The more you do for your children along these
lines today; the more your children will do for God and country tomorrow.
•Family psychologist john Rosemond is director of The Center for
Affirmative Parenting. Gastonia, North Carolina. For information on his
parenting newsletter, call (800) 525-2778.

Photo by Betty Blue
Raising Problem-solving Children
One of my psychology professors, a genial, graying, slightly potbellied
pedagogue with a distinct dislike for popular trends in the field, was
fond of saying that the Bible was "the greatest psychology text ever
written." When asked to explain, he'd point out that in its parables
and history, the Bible instructs us concerning the full breadth of human
emotion and motivation.
"It's all there," he'd say. "You just have to know what
you're looking for."
I was reminded of the good professor several years ago when one day I
realized that few, if any, of my clients were answering the first
"clinical" question put to them-"What brings you to my
office?"-with the truth.
Instead, they'd say, "Our child has a problem," and they'd
proceed to describe a lingering misbehavior or irresponsibility that was
driving them crazy. As they told their tale of woe, the child in question
would usually be sitting on the floor of my office, playing nonchalantly
with a toy.
It became obvious that many, if not most, of these children didn't have
any problems at all. Their parents had the problems. I then realized that
all these children from all these different family backgrounds shared
something in common: the biblical concepts of repentance and atonement
were not functioning in their lives.
To simplify somewhat, repentance involves the idea that when someone does
something "bad," that person, and no one else, should feel bad,
or repentant, about it. That same person is also responsible for whatever
atonement is appropriate-meaning that person should correct the problem he
or she has created.
In these upside-down families, the children were doing "bad"
things of one sort or another, but the parents were feeling bad, and the
parents were trying to solve the problems-problems only the children could
solve. The children, therefore, were off the hook.
Repentance drives atonement, or so the Bible tells us. Without repentance,
atonement will not take place. Translation: Unless complete emotional
responsibility for these problems were assigned the children, the children
would not, could not, solve them. So, "therapy" amounted to
helping the parents unload the problem from their shoulders onto the
shoulders of their children.
To give an example: Ted-by all accounts a capable nine-year-old was not
finishing his classwork or turning in homework. His parents agonized and
even spent lots of money having him tested and talked to by various
professionals. But the more Ted's parents tried to solve the problem, the
more it appeared Ted simply didn't care.
Finally, they began checking in with Ted's teacher at the end of every
school day. If Ted had completed all his homework, he was free to do
pretty much as he pleased that afternoon and evening. If not, he was
confined to his room after school and went to bed early. Ted quickly
learned that what he did affected his freedom, so he began completing his
classwork and turning in his homework.
Chalk one up for "the greatest psychology text ever "
***************************
Family psychologist John Rosemond is director of the Center for
Affirmative Parenting, in Gastonia, North Carolina. For information on his
parenting newsletter, call (800) 525-2778
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