Untouchable_Fire Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2043313,00.html My GF has only been in the U.S. for a few years and she has been a bit shocked by parenting styles here in America. I've personally been unhappy with the prevalence women who resent the burden of kids and want to party like teens, fathers who feel paying for a child is more important than providing attention, and the myriad of other stupid things we tend to do as parents. However, her top bone to pick was that we don't seem to push our kids to succeed very often. We sit back and expect teachers and other people who are often not emotionally invested in the children to do this for us. So I looked around and found an interesting book about parenting from a Chinese-American woman. Although she isn't Chinese my GF agreed with a lot of the principles this lady writes about in her book. It's very tough love. To the point where I could imagine myself being uncomfortable being that harsh with my kids. Two fold question here. One, is it a problem if one parent is harsher than the other? I don't have any kids, but I would really like some. My current GF is the best overall woman I've ever dated... and I'd really like to have kids with her some day. Second... is our parenting style just crap? I think a full 1/3 of the kids I graduated High School with are druggies, drunks, or some other variation of loser. We spend more than any other industrialized nation per child and receive some of the poorest results. Does our school system suck that bad... or is our parenting style basically a loser factory?
TaraMaiden Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 Best advice I ever got from my Mother: In matters of taste, swim with the current. In matters of principle - stand like a rock. Too many parents, everywhere, have no idea what a principle would be, if it smacked them in the mouth. The problem is, fundamentally, that parents don't take the time to TALK with their kids. Not TO them. WITH them. Time is the most precious thing you can give to a child.
Feelin Frisky Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 I have trouble limiting things to American versus anything else. I don't even think there is any kind of "American way" when it comes to parenting. It's to each couple's credit if things turn out well at all but there is so much wrong with so many things when it comes to human development that I'd be surprised if anyone has ever gotten it all right anywhere at all. Parents are products of the systems they came from. And they perceive no real problem with the systems that produced them they will probably try to produce new iterations of themselves with similar values. This does not mean that there was nothing lacking in their development--just that, as Donald Rumsfeld might put it, they don't know that they don't know something is wrong. But to get past this throat-clearing and start talking a little about what is "wrong", I'll start will the fact that the models of education and child development in the western world from which we emerge are completely tilted toward "competition" and are almost totally neglectful of "social development" or a balancing culture of "cooperation" which should accompany "competition" in order to produce a human product able to see that there in not just threat in everyone else but extraordinary potential for unique "synergy". "Synergy", you say? Classes upon classes of people can proceed through educational institutions and out into the working world never have hard the word synergy much less actually lived in a developmental model built to prove its extraordinary nature and potential worth. People scratch their heads and say "we've made class sizes smaller, paid teachers better salaries, updated our curricula, placed computers in the class room, what the else is there that is possible to improve education that much that will make a difference?" Well, is it not obvious that none of these measures addresses the human resource potential inside the students themselves to assume and play various developmental rolls in each other's social development so that a culture of responsibility, identity and motivation can come to exist there which may empower and accelerate young people themselves? Education has been on a "command and control" mechanization model called the "factory model" longer than anyone alive's entire life time memory. Thus means that generations now have simply acquiesced to a "knowledge and competition" authority model they have no say in designing in which the institution s preserved at the expense of the child. No significant systematic risk is taken to re-distribute authority into the student body themselves because the nature of educational technology which existed at the time of our current model's design--books, chalk boards, class rooms,--had no flexibilities to support an ala carte system. Economics were such that control was also important to show standard results that could prove that a greater good was being produced by the control model than any other risky way for which there would have to be other expensive overhead. But a big sacrifice in herding people into a factory model and away from a pre-industrial revolution apprenticeship model is that in the apprenticeship model learners were actually part of the economy of the institution in which they worked and learned. There motivations for doing excellent work were not "artifices" or "hypothetical"--they were tangible contributions to the economy of the enterprise and a chance to accelerate their own ability to succeed by displaying excellent work sooner than their peers. In a factory model where the economy and sociology of interaction between students is removed, so too is lost a great motivational "glue" that keeps people engaged in their development. What "synergy" is is the occurrence of dynamism between unique individuals whose product is far far greater than what either would have produced by themselves. It is often expressed as "the creation of a new whole greater than the sum of its parts". An example of synergy would be how Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak may have just been tooth paste salesmen or a fork lift operator, but their unique personalities and strengths in difference between them made for the creation of Apple Computer--something neither of them could have imagined the reach of and financial potential of in their youth when they started. Well, synergy in America happens mostly in spite of education and not because of it. There is no "believe" in if factored into the design of education. There is simply competition and all cooperation is left to hit or miss on the periphery. People with a little wealthier parents who might have a garage to let their sons cooperate on some science experiment and actually give them a few hundred bucks to get them started is "luck" for those who happen to be born into that. But there's nothing so special about a lot of the people who find synergy--it builds as their sense of personal success reveals itself to them. If we had an educational model that fundamentally believed in the value of synergy, cooperation and the need for students to be part of an economy rather than an expenditure no one trusts, we would not need so much "control" after the fact and "social remedy". The illusion that someone can live in relative peace, get "good marks" in school and get a job that pays enough to plan a family was enough to create the veneer of civilization that people in America think of as America. But the model of human development is sorely neglectful of the true potentials hidden behind the faces of the millions who sit silently through the machine never finding out while they are there who they are, what they care about, how hard they will be willing to work at the one thing they find turns them on the most. They acquiesce to the machine and emerge unprepared for a changed economic reality where America has no more factories--save perhaps defense industries--and twelve to sixteen or more years of youth has been squandered throwing good money after bad when all along education could have been an economic contributor in may regards rather than a drain. People don't know what they don't know as Rummy says. And this has been going on so long no one knows who's job it is to change the model. What is the right parental policy when your choices are limited to the meat grinder to turn your kid into the socially neglected nice boy and girl of the 1950s. The times demand radical change with new imperatives and the technology is all here to make it possible. But the wrong people are in charge and sign the checks--they don't know what they don't know and just want to replicate themselves.
sweetjasmine Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 I've personally been unhappy with the prevalence women who resent the burden of kids and want to party like teens, fathers who feel paying for a child is more important than providing attention, and the myriad of other stupid things we tend to do as parents. Stupid parents drive me crazy. Just yesterday at the store, some mean c-nt told her kid, who wasn't even complaining or throwing a tantrum or misbehaving in any way, "You ain't gettin no motherf-in toy. With all the sh-t you got already? Nuh uh, you ain't f-in gettin no f-in toy." Yeah, that's totally a great way to parent a 6 year old, lady. There are too many people who have kids who never wanted them in the first place, but they were either too uneducated or careless to think about that before having unprotected sex. It's maddening, but I don't think it's a problem unique to the US. However, her top bone to pick was that we don't seem to push our kids to succeed very often. We sit back and expect teachers and other people who are often not emotionally invested in the children to do this for us. This is going to happen more and more as parents have to work more each day for less. There's been a shift from single-income households to dual-income households in the past several decades, and for a lot of people, there just isn't enough time in the day to be fully involved in their children's lives. I find it interesting to see you mention parents sitting back in light of the "Women vs. Work" thread. This is a somewhat similar issue. So I looked around and found an interesting book about parenting from a Chinese-American woman. Although she isn't Chinese my GF agreed with a lot of the principles this lady writes about in her book. It's very tough love. To the point where I could imagine myself being uncomfortable being that harsh with my kids. From what I read about the book, some of the things Amy Chua did to her kids were arguably borderline abusive. Two fold question here. One, is it a problem if one parent is harsher than the other? I don't have any kids, but I would really like some. My current GF is the best overall woman I've ever dated... and I'd really like to have kids with her some day. It depends on the dynamic. A friend is stuck in a problem like this. Her oldest boy has ADHD and will drag his feet doing things, talking back and throwing tantrums. Their father, her exH, plays the good cop since he doesn't live with them. He buys them whatever they want and treats them to ice cream, trips out to restaurants, and all sorts of fun things. When the oldest boy throws a tantrum, he doesn't do anything about it and lets him arrive late to school. Meanwhile, my friend has to be the mean bad cop who makes the kids do what they need to do. She's short on money, so she can't spoil the kids with trips out to restaurants, and her son told her the other day that daddy is so much more fun than she is. Second... is our parenting style just crap? I think a full 1/3 of the kids I graduated High School with are druggies, drunks, or some other variation of loser. We spend more than any other industrialized nation per child and receive some of the poorest results. Does our school system suck that bad... or is our parenting style basically a loser factory? What's "our" parenting style? Just looking at all the overachievers I went to school with, there was a wide range of family situations. My Chinese friend had emotionally abusive parents, and her mom would often cross the line into physical abuse by sitting next to my friend while she was doing math homework and hitting her if she got it wrong. Some people came from families where the parents were very laid back and kind and didn't put a ton of pressure on their children. Some people came from families that were insane about pushing their kids to do as many things as possible and be the best at it, and they often had emotional/psychological problems. It's a mixed bag. You could be the greatest parent in the world, but your kids are human beings their own minds who can decide all on their own who they want to be. My brother and I had the same family, same environment, same school system, and I went to one of the best schools in the world while he flunked out of community college. Is that a parenting problem? Is that a school problem? Or is it that we just have different abilities and mine lent themselves more to school while his didn't?
sally4sara Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2043313,00.html My GF has only been in the U.S. for a few years and she has been a bit shocked by parenting styles here in America. I've personally been unhappy with the prevalence women who resent the burden of kids and want to party like teens, fathers who feel paying for a child is more important than providing attention, and the myriad of other stupid things we tend to do as parents. However, her top bone to pick was that we don't seem to push our kids to succeed very often. We sit back and expect teachers and other people who are often not emotionally invested in the children to do this for us. So I looked around and found an interesting book about parenting from a Chinese-American woman. Although she isn't Chinese my GF agreed with a lot of the principles this lady writes about in her book. It's very tough love. To the point where I could imagine myself being uncomfortable being that harsh with my kids. Two fold question here. One, is it a problem if one parent is harsher than the other? I don't have any kids, but I would really like some. My current GF is the best overall woman I've ever dated... and I'd really like to have kids with her some day. Second... is our parenting style just crap? I think a full 1/3 of the kids I graduated High School with are druggies, drunks, or some other variation of loser. We spend more than any other industrialized nation per child and receive some of the poorest results. Does our school system suck that bad... or is our parenting style basically a loser factory? Who is this "WE" white man? You don't have any kids. I'm quite proud of my own and quite comfortable with my own style (not the US style or the style of any other nationality) of parenting as it is and has been working well. Till you've had a kid and seen good results of your approach to raising kids, you're not going to understand that just because you live in the US and have a child, it doesn't mean you have to be crap at the job.
Author Untouchable_Fire Posted March 3, 2011 Author Posted March 3, 2011 Best advice I ever got from my Mother: In matters of taste, swim with the current. In matters of principle - stand like a rock. Too many parents, everywhere, have no idea what a principle would be, if it smacked them in the mouth. The problem is, fundamentally, that parents don't take the time to TALK with their kids. Not TO them. WITH them. Time is the most precious thing you can give to a child. I love that quote! I don't think our mainstream society values principles unless it's something esoteric like saving the environment or fur producing animals. Personal principles are kind of a thing of the past. I read somewhere that the average American mother spends 30 minutes a week talking to her teens. The average American father is about half that... so low it's pretty much zero. I have trouble limiting things to American versus anything else. I don't even think there is any kind of "American way" when it comes to parenting. It's to each couple's credit if things turn out well at all but there is so much wrong with so many things when it comes to human development that I'd be surprised if anyone has ever gotten it all right anywhere at all. What is the right parental policy when your choices are limited to the meat grinder to turn your kid into the socially neglected nice boy and girl of the 1950s. The times demand radical change with new imperatives and the technology is all here to make it possible. But the wrong people are in charge and sign the checks--they don't know what they don't know and just want to replicate themselves. I agree that our school systems are too old fashioned in how they teach... focused so much on memorization and regurgitation that they often fail to teach students how to learn. Additionally allowing children the chance to work cooperatively is highly beneficial, and I think we could slowly incorporate that into schools. Some kids would succeed in most environments because they have an innate drive and high level of intellect. However, the difference between a suburb school and a low income poor achievement school isn't really the money... it's the parents attitudes towards education and the family structure. I think we spend $8,500 per student per year.... to achieve 26-30th in the world. Singapore is often #1 and the spend $2,000 per student per year. They can teach students better with chalkboards than we can with computers. I agree with almost everything you say, but I don't think we can change the public school system. The teachers union is HUGE, they dictate how the vast majority of their members vote, and they contribute a lot to political campaigns. In my state they have blocked almost every attempt at school reform. They want higher pay and zero accountability for results. The one common denominator of human behavior is that if you find out how someone is incentivized.... you can most often predict what they will do.
Feelin Frisky Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 ..., but I don't think we can change the public school system. The teachers union is HUGE, they dictate how the vast majority of their members vote, and they contribute a lot to political campaigns. In my state they have blocked almost every attempt at school reform. They want higher pay and zero accountability for results. The one common denominator of human behavior is that if you find out how someone is incentivized.... you can most often predict what they will do. What you bring up is a serious hurdle which is very relevant. There is a way to solve it however. But it is no small thing. The answer lies "outside the box". There have been enough discoveries in brain sciences of enough weight to show that many of the assumptions upon which existing educational paradigms are grounded not only do a poor job but actually represent some "institutionalized dysfunction". Once those influences are removed from the model and a new one is engineered, the powers that be will be forced for the first time to have to openly chose between their own self interest and the interests of the children and their families. Because even at that, the incentive will be there for the establishment to vote in favor of itself, the whole thing has to be taken out of their hands. This means that an educational and human developmental model must be fully conventionalized in the private sector based purely upon ideals. And all manner of reform must be provided for in the design so that there is no need for the role we traditionally think of as teacher. All this has to be created and funded and have funding for a few years out but when the public then is given the choice between a known dysfunctional system, which is way behind the times and a new system which creates a new standard of modernity so far ahead that there will be unfair advantages of immense proportions, people will not choose to send their kids to the old model. If the difference and the dimensions are that profound, government will begin to accept that there is a model in place that it needs to have in order to keep its young people in it to be competitive with the rest of the world. This would begin to replace the existing educational model with a private sector one and public education will decline in a form of appropriate attrition. What's wrong now is that republican's seem to assume that by cutting out unions and defunding public schools that the idealistic privatized system will automatically happen. It won't. It has to exist first and be proving itself year after year for people everywhere to accept that they must accommodate a new driving reality. This is analogous to when the automobile came along. No one would abandon horse-drawn economic strategies because an automobile were feasible on paper. Individuals had to respond to seeing their competitors getting ahead using the automobile to abandon their horse drawn strategies. No one would have argued that is we stopped using horses the automobile would have automatically resulted. That's the disconnect today--someone has to totally re-engineer education and human development in such a way that it can work for a few years and deliver a product measured in ways far beyond "test scores". We have to produce a "culture" of super-achievers whose motivations take them out of the class room and into making a difference in the economy first so that people don't have to be sold on the idea as a hypothetical. This is what I have a vision to do. But it's really genius and very intricate and getting money to back it may prove impossible for me as the guy. Someone else may have to do it first. But the formula will be the same--throw away the book and unlock the true full spectrum of human potential and passion to innovate and make sure it can be seen in light of it's pathetically constricting predecessor.
elaina Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 It really depends on the parents. There are parents who seem to allow their kids to hit them, talk back to them, and be extremely disrespectful. When I see this, I'm shocked. I was never ever allowed to behave in such a manner when I was a kid... and my mind quickly learned anyways that it's much more fun being friends with my parents and having fun going on vacations with them and to the park and the zoo and fishing at the lake and doing fun things together where everyone is happy and having a beautiful day! I wish all kids had experiences like this... it makes respect and obedience to parents so easy, when you're having a wonderful time being their kids! There are some parents who seem too heavy-handed and seem to bite their kids with sarcasm... I have seen this too and it greatly saddens me. Neither extreme... allowing kids to walk all over them, or walking all over their kids, are good parenting methods. There needs to be discipline and teaching the important lesson of respect and WHY there are rules (for the safety of the kids), and there also needs to be fun and respect of the kids' feelings and thoughts and a great environment for them to thrive!
fishtaco Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 For the record, a lot of Asian people think that chick that wrote the book (I think she wrote a book about it) is psycho. And we feel bad for her kids. She's taking qualities that COULD be good, and going way overboard with them. The secret to good parenting is common sense. But common sense is so rare it's practically a super power. http://www.nastyhobbit.org/data/media/1/common-sense-super-power.jpg
hoping2heal Posted March 3, 2011 Posted March 3, 2011 http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2043313,00.html My GF has only been in the U.S. for a few years and she has been a bit shocked by parenting styles here in America. I've personally been unhappy with the prevalence women who resent the burden of kids and want to party like teens, fathers who feel paying for a child is more important than providing attention, and the myriad of other stupid things we tend to do as parents. However, her top bone to pick was that we don't seem to push our kids to succeed very often. We sit back and expect teachers and other people who are often not emotionally invested in the children to do this for us. So I looked around and found an interesting book about parenting from a Chinese-American woman. Although she isn't Chinese my GF agreed with a lot of the principles this lady writes about in her book. It's very tough love. To the point where I could imagine myself being uncomfortable being that harsh with my kids. Two fold question here. One, is it a problem if one parent is harsher than the other? I don't have any kids, but I would really like some. My current GF is the best overall woman I've ever dated... and I'd really like to have kids with her some day. Second... is our parenting style just crap? I think a full 1/3 of the kids I graduated High School with are druggies, drunks, or some other variation of loser. We spend more than any other industrialized nation per child and receive some of the poorest results. Does our school system suck that bad... or is our parenting style basically a loser factory? I believe there are still good parents out there. I agree with you though about those parents who want to act like teenagers. I also agree that too many teens are not pushed to succeed. I cannot stand teenagers Today for the most part. It is not that they are loud and obnoxious, as we all were at that age. It is more that they all appear to be dumber than a box of rocks that I find irritating.
Titania22 Posted March 4, 2011 Posted March 4, 2011 I am not an american parent and don't live in america, so I can't really speak to that. But I am a parent and I do tend to have a slightly different approach to parenting. . I've personally been unhappy with the prevalence women who want to party like teens. However, her top bone to pick was that we don't seem to push our kids to succeed very often. We sit back and expect teachers and other people who are often not emotionally invested in the children to do this for us. UF, I guess I could be accused of wanting to party like a teen. Dating young guys, or playing on the computer constantly. Not being terribly work oriented. And I don't push my kids to succeed. If I anything I push them to try to have balance in their lives. Schools here in australia often (but not always) push the kids constantly, and my daughter gets very stressed, I don't expect schools to do it, I seriously wish they would back off. The problem is, fundamentally, that parents don't take the time to TALK with their kids. What I do do, is talk with my kids. I figure my job as a parent isn't to produce an obedient sheeple person who will roll over for authority and have no independant thought. My job is to prepare them to be independant adult who will take responsibility for their choices. Generally I think I am looking for the middle ground, between letting them run wild and not caring, and being an authoritarian lording it over them. I don't think either way is right. I think the only answer is tons of open honest communication about any and every topic that presents, so that the kids can see that there choices have long term consequences, and so that they will make their choices based on the place they want to end up. I also think leading by example has a much greater effect then nagging. For that reason, I think it's awesome I have decided to go back to university. My son will see directly how much effort I put in, and the results I accheive, he will also feel my passion when I learn something new and I am really excited. He may not become excited about highschool, but it should give him a glimpse that learning can be fun and interesting when you get to choose what you are doing.
Recommended Posts