Weekend Intelligence: Exegesis of a Bad Parent

I've decided to forgo the typical weekend intelligence style this time. Not much happened this weekend anyway. We slept in and did minor cleaning. Hurricane Ike missed us by leaps and bounds. All we got were evacuees. >.>;

I need to address something that needs addressing: it's come to my attention that some of my readers, people who I know and love dearly, are a bit concerned with a few of the beliefs and practices I've set forth for rearing my children. From chores to the morning routine, when I talk about what Colin does on a daily basis, I get raised eyebrows at best and the good ol' fashioned tongue-lashing and unrequested parenting advice at worst, sometimes from people who aren't even parents! So allow me, if you will, to provide an exegesis of my poor parenting, and its relevance to my children and today's modern world.

The fact of the matter is that my two children were born into a world that is increasingly forcing the young to make adult decisions, while at the same time depriving them of the adult status and esteem and blurring the line of consequence for making poor adult decisions. This is very dangerous territory for children, who are innately prone to be hedonistic, impatient and completely self-gratifying. Colin, in particular, is on the threshold of this land of mixed signals. Soon, if he hasn't already, he will be making decisions on things such as whether or not to drink, use drugs, have sex and blow off his education.

Colin is a very bright boy. Very intelligent. But history has shown that intelligent people do not necessarily make intelligent decisions. Intelligence, tempered with sensibility, responsibility, patience, and honor are prerequisites to choosing the right path and enjoying success, and are hallmarks of true manhood. It takes takes intelligence to recognize all options available to you in any given choice, sensibility to sort through the options and appropriately assign probable consequences, responsibility to choose that which is good and right and true before God, and so to act courageously, patience to act at the most opportune moment, and honor to accept your consequences, good or bad, with dignity and respect.

This is what it means to be a man.

So, in a world that asks boys as young as 9 to be men, it's important he be trained up in these essentials as soon as he can. As silly as it sounds to people who grew up in another world, another time, this is the reality of our world now: a choice made at the tender age of 9 can dramatically change the course of his life, up to and including being the end of it.

So, how does getting up and getting dressed, preparing for the day ahead, completing daily and weekly duties and following a schedule and curfew translate into these lofty goals? By instilling in him what it means to make appropriate decisions in an environment that, while not free from consequence, is relatively safe in case of failure. He is given things that are within the scope of his capability, and he learns he is capable because he is intelligent. He is given options to sharpen his sensibility and through experience learns how to anticipate and weigh consequences. Through consequences (good and bad) and guidance, he receives reinforcement to make good decisions, and is emboldened to make them more frequently. Through rewards, he learns the power of patience and gets to enjoy the benefits of his good decisions. Through discipline, he learns from the consequences of his poor decision, learns to take his consequences with honor, and is given the opportunity to try again with the full support of his family.

It is in this way that something as simple as doing the dishes every night promptly can train him up to be a good and honorable man. He is capable of doing the dishes promptly, and this capability and expectation is relayed to him. If he chooses not to, and go play his DS instead, he will loose his DS and still be responsible for completing the dishes. If he chooses to do the dishes, but dawdles and plays in the water, he is made aware of the time he just lost that could have been spent doing something fun, and has the added responsibility of cleaning up the mess he makes. But by choosing the correct choice, he is praised and given the evening to play with friends or spend his hard earned time however he sees fit. Once a schedule is in place during the school year, he earns an additional reward in the form of allowance for successful completion of the day's duties.

Some people might say that this talk is all well and good, but that I'm asking way too much of an 8 year old boy. Get up in the morning and out the door all by himself? Do his homework with no one to help him? Do housework with no prompting? Isn't that a bit much? If you're asking these questions, you are correct: they are not in the scope of what an 8 year old can reasonably do. Which is why I don't expect him to do them.

The above are goals - things to work on, things he will eventually need to be able to do. He doesn't get up all by himself, I or D get up bright and early with him. We usually alternate, but he's never all on his own. When we get him a working alarm clock again, we'll be getting up before the alarm to make sure he gets up to it. He walks 4 houses down to the bus stop with the herd of other children on their way, 5 mins before the bus arrives. It's nothing he isn't capable of and he's not alone while he's working on it. When he's successful, I'm sure to let him know, and when he repeats successes with regularity, we move on to the next step, add responsibilities and privileges, and generally build the foundation of sound work ethic and responsibility.

But why can't you just be nice and let him be a boy? Little boys are supposed to be carefree and not have to worry about these things! Why can't you be a friend? That's an easy one: because I am not his friend. I'm his father. The world already wants to call him a man, and propose ways to prove he can be one: so many messages today reinforce the idea that to be a "real man," you'd do fill-in-the-blank, no pun(s) intended... >.>; And none of the worldly ways to real manhood have anything to do with being a real man. He doesn't need another person in his life making it easy to do the wrong thing - he'll have plenty of them.

On a side note, Clara is not off the hook for this, either. Clara will one day enter this phase (unfortunately, it will likely be even earlier than Colin), and I will have to do with her as I am doing with him. To be honest, they'll probably think I'm their worst enemy when all they want to do is be indulgent and hedonistic. And I am perfectly OK with that role.

Bottom line: my children need all the things I have outlined for all the reasons I have outlined, and time is fleeting. The time we have as parents to have a true impact on our children's lives is, by its very nature, evanescent. Eventually, the boy becomes a man, the girl becomes a woman, and both are subject to the same rules and consequences to which all adults are bound, regardless of whether or not they have experience with the idea. I'd rather not throw my children to world unprepared.