It’s not flashy or funny to read about what’s going wrong and what parents need to do to fix it, but the payoff is worth the agonizing effort. All the instant gratification of today isn't going to get us anywhere worth going, unfortunately. Who wouldn't prefer to live on take-out and trashy TV? I’d be okay with it. It takes so much work to get to a place where we want our kids to live in 20 years; maybe we have given up. We’re all tired, and I personally want to simply kick back on the beach and drink a tall glass of sangria. However, it feels like a pesky alarm is going off in my head - telling me to stand up and act on something I've been pushing out of my writing for a while. As it turns out, I’m already acting on it at home with my own kids, so I have some ideas to write about.
If you haven’t read Lisa Bloom's new book, Swagger: 10 Urgent Rules for Raising Boys in an Era of Failing Schools, Mass Joblessness, and Thug Culture, you should definitely peruse the excerpt. In her book, despite some dramatic and exaggerated examples, I found that I agreed with her fundamental points about the biggest fears in raising boys today: arrogance, apathy toward reading, and joblessness. It’s those three issues that I’ve been addressing with my own boys for years; and it’s always nice to find intelligent concurrence. Bloom also wrote a book about girls with a similar theme, and I'm guessing I'll be blogging about that one soon.1 The diagnosis may be slightly different, but the problems are quite similar for girls, believe it or not.
Wait, our boys are arrogant? Gasp! Surely you watch the news, and you’ve seen video clips of boys not only taunting each other, but taunting adults. The latest viral video of the grandma being verbally assaulted on the bus made my skin crawl. Apparently, boys are brimming with such thug-like arrogance that they have no fear of the consequences for their appalling behavior. Taunting and bullying is not just happening on the bus, it’s prevalent in the social interactions among certain groups of boys everywhere they go. They tease and insult each other as a form of socializing. At times, I’m certain that there is actual hazing going on amid 10 year olds. It’s shocking and saddening to think that my sons had to learn “good insults” in order to fit in. What an oxymoron! (I had to explain that term to my son; I imagine he was hoping it was an insult.) How can we, as parents, allow our boys to behave this way? Certainly the only way kids change is if parents change how they are parenting. We can’t realistically expect the schools to change, or put the onus on anyone else. We the parents have the power, the motivation, and the stage to make a change in our kids.
When I didn’t like the direction I saw my boys going, I decided not to accept it. I took them off the school bus around the middle of last year, and you better believe that if I take an hour out of my day to drive my kids to and from school, something really disturbing is happening on that bus. I learned (from my kids) of behavior going on at recess that I would have been happier not knowing about, but at least we were talking and making changes. Interestingly enough, my boys aren’t trouble makers at school, they are good students. So why worry? I guess it’s just part of my job description. I started having lengthy discussions with my boys about how people are supposed to treat each other, with kindness and compassion. Even kids. Especially kids! We talked about Jesus, and how he was kind to everyone, and why.2 We talked and talked, but it didn’t change the fact that a few of their friends can be arrogant jerks. And it didn’t change the fact that my boys still wanted to be friends with them. I suppose this is the epitome of parenting. We lead our kids down the right path, to a lovely garden with fresh clean spring water and delicious ripe fruit. And then we prepare for the likelihood that they would prefer to sit in a dirty movie theater, eating Twinkies with jerks.
I still have a goal to squelch that arrogance in my boys. It’s a sizable goal, because my boys are loaded with smart remarks and an apparent feeling of entitlement. Of course I want them to be confident and secure, but I also strive to instill humility and a respectable work ethic. I've told my kids they are not allowed to address an adult by their first name, they must always precede names with Mr., Ms. or Mrs. I remind them often to use Sir or Ma’am. Of course they complain, “But no one else does! We look stupid!” We could not care less what everyone else does, we want polite kids. (And if that makes them look stupid, then they’re with the wrong crowd anyway.) I tell my boys to say please, thank you and sorry so often, they probably mumble it in their sleep.
I've also drawn on an abyss of patience in order to have my kids chip in with chores. Sure, I could have unloaded the dishwasher twice as fast as the kids, but they need to learn to help out. When I'm washing windows, I certainly could get them cleaner faster by myself, but then what would the kids learn? Vacuuming, dusting, making beds , pulling weeds - women’s work? I don’t think so! We intend to put these boys to work. Honestly though, we have it pretty easy. What about the families with two working parents, whose kids are in daycare and after school care? What if that family hires a housekeeper and lawn service, and doesn't have time to instill a work ethic in their kids? It's a huge problem for those kids, I hate to say. I think they are missing out. Not having a job to do while growing up translates to not finding a job when grown. It’s absolutely essential that kids do daily chores, and work a low wage job in high school and college. They’ll gain priceless ambition from busing those dishes, just like many of us did when we were growing up.
On to the final fear about our boys: apathy toward reading. Do my boys like to read? Sure they do. We have loads of books from the library, and locating every book we have on loan sometimes feels like a never-ending treasure hunt. But let’s talk about what they are reading, because that’s where it gets dicey. Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Calvin and Hobbes comic books do not make a well-read kid. But what if those books are all a boy is interested in reading? What if we as parents don’t have the time to sit down and read books by Roald Dahl or Charles Dickens to our kids? Then what? I bet you have a little time. Make the time to read classics to your kids. Really, if you have time to watch Real Housewives of Obnoxious Hell, or if you have time to go golfing, you have time to read decent books to your kids. Start with just an hour a week, as if their future depends on it. If the boys are too old to be read to, it’s time for some serious slashing of video game time. Those video games are a powerful bargaining tool, so use them to make those darn boys read.
I believe we can turn this around for our kids. It just takes a little work, and a comparatively small time investment. Tell your kids, "what you say matters, what you do matters, who you are matters."3 But if this downtrend continues, the backup plan at our house is to take our boys and our fishing poles to Montana and never come back. I sure hope it doesn’t come to that, because cleaning fish is even more miserable than reading Steinbeck to my kids.
Endnotes
1 Bloom also wrote a book about the current perilous situation of our girls! I know the anticipation is killing you. She published in 2011: Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World. I intend to address the cases she made therein very soon. Here is a short sample of Bloom’s cited data from an Oxygen network survey: “Twenty-five percent of young American women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Twenty-three percent would rather lose their ability to read than their figures." Good Lord, my skin is crawling again.
2 Yes – I played the religion card. Don’t get offended if it’s not your own. My point is that we need to use every means available in our knowledge arsenal to guide kids down the right path. If your religion is encouraging kids to do the right thing – it’s good by me. Lisa Bloom has great ideas, even thought she is a Reconstructionist Jew.
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