More on parenting today. We have one “America’s Worst Mom” and another that focuses on what our boys are up against. There’s a huge range of opinions on parenting, so you’ll probably disagree with points in every parenting book you read. But you may be surprised with how much you have in common with parenting approaches that seem completely different from yours. And you may glean some valuable ideas on new techniques to try with you kids.
“Teach him that respect is active.”
Swagger: 10 Urgent Rules for Raising Boys in an Era of Failing Schools, Mass Joblessness, and Thug Culture
By Lisa Bloom
In Swagger, Ms. Bloom first lays the ground work by identifying four social and economic factors that disproportionately harm boys: the failing public education system, the struggling economy, “thug culture” (including particularly music that glorifies violence), and mass incarceration. As someone who listens primarily to either country or classical music, the chapter on “thug culture” was quite a revelation. There just doesn’t seem to me to be any way to read those lyrics (one of the tamer examples: “Man enough to pull a gun, be man enough to squeeze it”) other than as a glorification of murder, violence, and rape, not to mention the objectification of women. While I’m hesitant to tar the entire genre with this brush, I certainly didn’t see any redeeming qualities in the image held up in these songs for kids to idolize.
I was also blown away by the chapter on our prison system. I had no idea just how large the “enormous surge” in the American prison population was; over two million adults are incarcerated in the United States today, 93% are men. Another five million are on probation or parole. Those are absolutely insane numbers. And the life-long penalties after incarceration are stunning. In many states, after a felony conviction, voting rights are taken away, as is the ability to serve on a jury. Finding employment becomes increasingly difficult, federal educational assistance is denied so you can’t go back to school, federal food stamps are not available, the military will not allow enlistment. With few options, recidivism rates are high, and the cycle continues into the next generation. And it costs taxpayers millions while our schools are desperately in need of funds to cover the basics.
Ms. Bloom’s “Ten Rules for Raising Boys Right Now” actually made me feel pretty good about how we’re doing in our family of three boys (ages 4, 7, and 10). We’re right on track with many of these suggestions already, but they also provided food for thought on ways we can improve, too. (Since this review is getting on the long-ish side, I’ll post the first five rules here and the last five on my blog Build Enough Bookshelves. So come check out the rest of Ms. Bloom’s rules, and enter my current giveaway while you’re at it!)
1. Lose the Swagger, Kid – Humility (as opposed to overconfidence) and modesty (as opposed to bragging) are important values that many children are not learning. “Your son is an important person, a child of God, with the spark of the divine animating him. But so is every other person on the planet–no more, no less.”
2. Set College Expectations Early and Often – In spite of rising college costs, a college degree is still a necessity for a middle-class lifestyle. Not only is life-time earning potential more than twice that of a high school graduate, but job security is greater, with unemployment rates for college grads significantly lower than those for high school grads or dropouts.
3. Make Your Home a Reading Mecca – Preaching to the choir, here! Fluent reading is critical. Period. According to an extensive survey done, the National Endowment of the Arts concluded that “reading correlates with almost every measure of positive personal and social behavior.”
4. Eliminate the Competition – The competition for reading time is TV, video games, anything with a screen, so cut back or completely eliminate it. After recounting numerous scientific studies and their findings regarding TV watching in particular, Ms. Bloom concludes “if we were child haters and wanted to come up with one magic device that would make them stupid, mean, narcissistic, fat, and sick, we would have invented the television and twenty-first-century programming and put them in every home, even in kids’ bedrooms…”
5. Become Aware of the Data Pinging In and Out of Your Boy’s Brain – “George Orwell’s 1984 has arrived, just a few decades behind schedule. Only it’s not big government that’s watching us; it’s corporate America.” One pointed suggestion here was to insist that “a condition of his access to the Internet must always be your ability to watch him there.”
(Don’t miss out on reading Rules 6-10 on my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves!)
While Ms. Bloom was focused in this book on helping boys, most if not all of these suggestions would be valuable to apply while raising girls as well.
“If you’re not willing to fail, you’re not going to learn how to ride a bike.”
As you might guess, I deal with questions and with the unknown by reading. A lot. If there’s a topic I need to know about, I research online, I go to the library, and I come home with a stack of books on the issue. And then I read and analyze and process and read some more. So I’ve read lots and lots of parenting books over the decade that I’ve been a parent. Some were definitely more helpful than others; some seemed solely designed to make me feel inadequate and incompetent. So when Ms. Skenazy described parenting experts in her introduction as a “breed [that] seems to exist only to tell us parents what we’re doing wrong and why this will warp our kids forever,” I could totally relate and appreciate how refreshingly different Ms. Skenazy’s approach is.
I agree with Ms. Skenazy that “mostly, the world is safe. Mostly, people are good. To emphasize the opposite is to live in the world of tabloid TV. A world where the weirdest, worst, least likely events are given the most play. A world filled with worst-case scenarios, not the world we actually live in, which is factually, statistically, and, luckily for us, one of the safest periods for children in the history of the world.” By extension, when we raise our children to be afraid of “the big, bad world” – a world that doesn’t really exist – we are crippling them and their ability to function in the mostly safe, mostly good, real world.
Instead of teaching our kids outdated useless platitudes that just serve to help us feel better, we need to teach them skills that will actually help them be safer and more empowered. For example, Ms. Skenazy declares, “‘Don’t talk to strangers’ is one of the most useless pieces of advice ever foisted on us to foist on our children.” Rather, we need to “teach kids NEVER GO OFF WITH STRANGERS, even if those strangers say they have something nice to give you or need your help or were supposedly sent by Mom.” Of course, our children need to be able to talk to strangers! Everyone is a stranger before you’ve met them! Not being able to talk to strangers will diminish our children’s social skills and may even make our children less safe in certain situations if they cannot approach those who would be able to help them (like if they are lost, for instance).
Another important lesson: “Teach your children, including your teens, that they have a right to say NO to anyone who wants them to do anything they don’t want to do (except homework).” We want our children to be obedient and respectful to authority figures, sometimes (if we’re being totally honest) because we feel that it reflects well on us as their parents, but there are those few authority figures who will take advantage of that ingrained obedience. Our children need to know that if they are uncomfortable, they can say “No” and we will support them, and help them work through the situation.
A lot of the differences in parenting styles boil down to our perspective on what the ultimate goal is. Again, I’m with Ms. Skenazy that “raising happy, responsible, independent young people is parenting’s goal.” It seems, however, that the fear some parents experience is focused on a “hyperconsciousness” of any danger that might be lurking anywhere, and an opinion that “any risk is seen as too much risk,” where the goal is to control the environment to the point where our children are always safe and happy, above all else. But as Ms. Skenazy points out: “Control is a figment of our imagination. Seeking it only makes us more anxious. It certainly isn’t required for good child rearing. And to the extent that we do manage to solve all our children’s problems–or keep those problems from ever even popping up–we are doing them a disservice…we are steering them away from the real source of confidence and independence, which comes from navigating the world and its surprises.” Our children are often far more competent than we give them credit for, and we need to find opportunities for them to recognize and realize their own abilities.
It’s comforting to know that “there’s a lot more leeway than we think when it comes to raising good kids…The whole Free-Range idea is that the twin notions of constant supervision and perfect parenting are not necessary…Our kids are not solely formed by our input, not will they be irreparably harmed by our bumbling oh-so-humanly along.” That’s a sane parenting philosophy I can definitely get behind.
**************************
On My Bedside Table…
Just finished: In My Father’s Country by Saima Wahab
Now reading: The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine by Sue Monk Kidd
On deck: Bossypants by Tina Fey
**************************
Read more book reviews and musings on my life on my blog at Build Enough Bookshelves. And, as always, you can come find me on goodreads.com or email suggestions, comments, and feedback to egeddesbooks (at) gmail (dot) com.