How America Messed Up Its Kids

[Dave]

How America Messed Up Its Kids... And How We Can Fix Them

Mark Goulston, M.D.

Within the next 10 to 20 years, those children (from China, India and elsewhere) will become your child's boss, and they won't bail out or accept your child's excuses. Instead, they will fire your children.


In today's world of blame and finger-pointing, we're teaching our kids that accountability and responsibility are slippery slopes that don't mean what they used to. For example, have you witnessed a parent-teen conversation that went anything like this:

Teenager: "Please, Mom and Dad, just let me do this, and I promise that I will take full responsibility for it."

Parent: "Do you realize that taking full responsibility means that if it backfires and goes wrong, you will own up to it, pay back whatever it takes to make up for it going wrong and learn from it so that it doesn't happen again?"

Teenager: "I didn't agree to that."

Parent: "Well, then what do you think taking full responsibility means?"

Teenager: "That if it goes wrong, I will say, 'I'm sorry.'"

If you have witnessed such a conversation, do you agree with the following?

Among our main roles and responsibility as parents is to teach, coach, guide and pass on to our children the character (and I do mean character) traits of self-reliance, resourcefulness, initiative, taking responsibility for one's actions and learning from one's mistakes (see "How to Raise a Self-Confident Child").

If at age 18 they are lacking these, they are going to find success, happiness and life in general a challenge and even overwhelming.

To bring it into sharper focus, consider that at the exact moment that you as a parent bail out your child from facing the consequences of their screw-ups and taking full responsibility for them, literally millions of children in this world the same age as your child are taking full responsibility for their actions and becoming smarter, stronger and wiser. Within the next 10 to 20 years, those children (from China, India and elsewhere) will become your child's boss, and they won't bail out or accept your child's excuses. Instead, they will fire your children.

How Did America Mess Up Its Kids?

CONTINUED:

www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-goulston-md/how-america-messed-up-its_b_802137.html