I have been thinking about this subject quite a bit in the past couple of days. We have become a society where the value of building good self-esteem is stressed. Particularly in schools. Teachers are constantly attending seminars and studying more about how to raise their students' self esteem. Is this honestly what is best for the kids? I am not saying that teachers should start calling the kids names and insult their intelligence, but maybe all of this self-esteem building is leading to more delinquency and less discipline.
How many times do you keep yourself from telling a kid the truth about something because you don't want to hurt their feelings? I'm not talking about insults of any kind, I am looking more at academics. For example. If a child is consistently failing a subject, they may use the "I'm perfect just the way I am" defense as opposed to studying harder to improve grades. Kids are so often told to accept themselves for who they are, but couldn't that decrease the amount of time and effort they put in to improving themselves? Why strive to be better if I'm already perfect? Why work to get an A when I still receive positive reinforcement for getting a D?
I am beginning to think that maybe our society is giving children too much power by being overly focused on their feelings. It has almost become a scapegoat. If a child misbehaves, parents tend to look at the things they, as parents, are doing wrong instead of the misbehaving child. This approach usually completely leaves out any form of punishment at all for the child. By telling children that they are misbehaving because of their emotions, it's almost like handing them the tools to manipulate any adult.
A child's parents are getting a divorce, so it's okay to burn the house down. What happened to accountability? Kids can get away with almost anything these days. A child gets caught smoking at school and the parents are fined. The society is telling children that they can do whatever they want and it is usually someone else's fault, whether it's the violence on tv, or family issues at home, or even a neighbor kid because they saw him doing the same thing.
When will the line be drawn? Even as small children, they cannot be spanked for bad behavior without this being considered child abuse. How are children supposed to learn anything if they cannot first learn that we DO have repercussions for our actions. Kids are taking part in more and more serious crimes every year. We need to start focusing on behavior modification while their young instead of constantly stroking their ego.
As an example, my friend tried to ground her eight year old son for selling Sharpie's at school for his friends to sniff. He told her that if she tried to ground him, he would just go to the police and use his skinned knee and tell them that she pushed him down. Since when did the kids hold all the cards?
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