Beaten into submission

We have a very peaceful home life here in the Lewis household.

Oh sure, we have our moments of drama, stress, and concerns. The cows escape their fences (drama). The gas tank is empty and we have to scramble to find a way to fill it (stress). Some customers are waiting for their tankards, which we haven’t finished making yet (concerns).

But those are the ordinary everyday things that everyone faces in their own way. You may not have cows, but perhaps you have a long commute. And gas prices and deadlines are universal issues.

So what makes our life so peaceful? It has to do with our family relations. In that regard, we have NO drama, stress, or concerns.

My dear English atheist reader Quedula made a passing remark on my recent Simplicity rant: “I find the term ‘well-disciplined’ applied to children rather ominous. Horses, maybe. I expect as usual I am the odd one out with this comment.”

She probably IS the odd one out (at least among readers on this blog), but nonetheless I thought it was good time to address this issue. I won’t presume to put words into Quedula’s mouth, but the unspoken implication so many people have when they see our well-disciplined children is that we must beat them into submission in order to get them to behave with the respect and self-control we expect. Sadly this presumption frequently applies to homeschooling parents, since of course we must be homeschooling to hide the bruises.

The best – the very best – book on child raising I’ve ever read was recommended to me by my friend Enola Gay, whose own five children (ranging from 21 to 3) are exemplary illustrations of beautifully disciplined kids. It’s called To Train Up a Child. Don’t bother reading it if you don’t have a religious suasion since this book is biblically-based. It is strongly influenced by the Amish methods of raising children, and I think everyone will admit that the Amish aren’t known for their snarky undisciplined kids. Nor are they known for beating their children into submission.

The title of the book, of course, stems from the famous verse Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” To quote from the book: “Train up – not beat up. Train up – not discipline up. Train up – not educate up. Train up – not ‘positive affirmation’ up. Training is the most often missed element in child rearing. A child needs more than ‘obedience training,’ but without first training him, discipline is insufficient.”

I didn’t know about this book when our girls were born, but by the grace of God and with the unity of a supportive spouse (probably the biggest factor), Don and I applied the principles of this book in the training of our girls. And now we are reaping the rewards of that early training in spades. With two teens in the house, conditions are ripe for drama and angst of the highest order – and yet we have none of it.

Oh sure, the kids have their moments – so do Don and I – but we have NO disrespect, backtalking, flouting of rules, or any other “typical” teen behavior. And it goes without saying we have NO issues with the more serious problems that afflict so many teens such as drugs, drinking, smoking, sex, etc.

Instead we have two charming, cheerful, happy young ladies who add greatly to our home’s peaceful atmosphere. The extent of their adolescent rebellion is when they grumble about their math schoolwork.

This training goes back to their earliest years. I recall an incident that happened when Older Daughter was about two years old. Don and I had gone into a store that sold, among other things, beads. This meant strings and strings of pretty shiny colorful beads were hanging from hooks, many of them right at eye level to a toddler. Concerned that she would start grabbing, I hitched Older Daughter up on my hip and let her gently touch the beads in a controlled fashion.

“Don’t let her touch them,” Don said. “She could damage them, and even if she doesn’t, it’s making the store owners nervous.”

“I’ll make sure she won’t hurt them,” I replied.

But Don stopped me from even doing that. “Let’s not be one of those types of parents,” he warned gravely.

What he meant was, let’s not allow our children to be the kind that cause shop owners to regard us with anxiety lest our undisciplined brats wreak havoc with the merchandise. You know the kind I mean. We’ve all met those types of parents, the kinds who trot ineffectually in their child’s wake of destruction, pleading “Johnny don’t, Johnny leave that alone, Johnny come back here…”

So I pointed out the pretty colorful beads to Older Daughter, but whenever she reached out a hand to touch, I gently pushed her hand down and reminded her, “No, don’t touch. These aren’t ours.” She didn’t touch, and because of that she got to look at the beads for a longer period of time.

And, not incidentally, the shop owner was able to smile at us as we left.

We decided this was not a bad thing to do on a regular basis – take our children into stores and show them how to look without touching, how to act respectfully while inside a place of business, and how to control their toddler and preschool urge to grab things. We would often reward them with a treat for their good behavior, such as ice cream or a small toy.

By this method we trained our girls to exercise self-control.

I remember when a friend once called with a question about her toddler. The girl was in the habit of climbing the kitchen chairs and onto the kitchen table. My friend’s solution was to place the chairs far enough away from the table so the baby couldn’t reach the table top. Her husband’s solution was to sternly tell the child “No!” and remove her from the chair whenever she tried to climb onto the table. My friend asked whose method was correct.

“Tim’s, of course,” I answered. “With your technique, you’re merely removing temptation. With Tim’s technique, he’s teaching her to control herself.”

See? It’s training. There’s no need to beat kids into submission. Training makes all the difference. I believe training includes an occasion swat on the bottom for particularly grave misbehavior, but it doesn’t have to go beyond that.

One of the biggest things Don and I insisted upon when the girls were young is respect for us, their parents. Once again this takes training. One illustrative incident happened when Younger Daughter was about five years old.

The girls had friends over, and in an effort to show off, Younger Daughter did something inappropriate (I don’t quite remember what – I think she backtalked me). Whatever the offense, I sent her to her room for a few minutes (their bedroom was right off the living room). In a high temper she stomped into her room and disappeared from view for a second or two. Then she stomped back to the open doorway, stuck out her tongue at me in an act of blatant and utter defiance, and once more disappeared from view.

Quite literally – and I do mean literally – I vaulted furniture and shoved other kids aside in an effort to reach the door. I roared into the bedroom and swatted that child on the tush. Then I took her by the shoulders, got right in her face, and told her in no uncertain terms that she will never disrespect me like that ever again.

And she never has.

We laugh over the incident now, but this was something the kids understood at a very young age: parents are the authority figures in their lives and, just as parents respect and obey God (OUR authority figure), so they must respect and obey US.

The book points out that the secret to training anything (toddlers, dogs, whatever) is – are you ready for this? – consistency. It does no good whatsoever to do something once and then never enforce it again. It merely teaches the child that he can ignore you without repercussions. Everyone knows parents who are like this – parents who do not act with consistency and so have out-of-control kids. (In fact, please write down your experiences and post them in the comments section for everyone to read.)

I remember an incident about two years ago when I was visiting my friend Enola Gay. We were chatting over tea. Master Calvin (who was a year old at the time and barely walking) was in a fussy mood and kept wandering over to his mother and wanting to be held. Each time she told him, “I won’t pick you up until you stop the whining.” The third or fourth time this happened, he stood in front of her and hushed his whining. Enola then rewarded him by picking him up and cuddling him. I remember being amazed anew by how so young a child can learn to control his own behavior.

Constrast this with a woman I know who is raising thugs.

Training is as different from discipline as night is from day. With discipline, you force your children to bend to your will. With training, you teach children to control themselves in a way that is acceptable to you.

This has the happy side-effect of children who behave well in public. If a child gets out of hand, a quiet reprimand from you is enough to bring him back into line. If he doesn’t, some additional training is necessary in that particular area when you return home.

The funny thing is, once this concept is instilled in children at a young and tender age, they never depart from it. We didn’t have to beat the girls into submission in order to train them to behave properly. We trained them.  As they mature, we allow them more freedom and independence, and because we (the parents) know how disciplined and self-controlled they are, we aren’t worried that they’ll “lose it” when they become independent adults. They won’t descend into a hedonistic and destructive lifestyle because they’ll be mature enough to understand the ramifications of it. It’s a wonderful thing to think that a couple of years of firmness and consistency as young children will quite literally last them a lifetime.

Jails are full of undisciplined adults who no doubt started life as undisciplined children. We don't want to follow that road.

I could write endlessly on this subject, but you get my drift. We don’t beat our children into submission. We train them up in the way they should go. And when they are adults and walking their own road in life, we confidently expect they will not depart from it.

Giving homeschooling a bad name

As everyone knows, homeschoolers are commonly dismissed by detractors [(waving) Hi Robert!] as crackpots and religious fanatics who (presumably) keep their children locked up in boxes in the basement and only trot them out long enough to memorize pi to the 30th decimal place and spout history dates to impress visiting CPS workers.

But it is a myth that all homeschooling is the same. And it's also untrue that homeschoolers uniformly approve and support all homeschooling techniques.

One of the controversial techniques is "unschooling," and ABC recently wrote a piece about it.

While I applaud parents' efforts to tailor children's education toward their specific needs, aptitudes, and abilities, there is a difference between tailoring and laziness. I have never met any unschoolers so I can't vouch for its long-term efficacy (unlike the long-term efficacy of homeschooling, which is well documented)... but if this article is anything to go by, I cannot praise unschooling.

Some of the red flags I saw in this article included:

Her [the mother] hands-off approach extends to other areas of the children's lives. The kids are allowed to eat whatever they want -- even pasta with peanut butter sauce -- as long as it is in the house... What's more, they make their own decisions, and don't have chores or rules. "Because we don't punish, we don't use the term rules," Martin said.

Sounds like the kids rule the roost and the parents just want to be "friends."

Martin said she has "such a present-based mind-set" that she doesn't think about her kids' futures, and that she just wants them to be happy.

Uh, as difficult a concept as it is to grasp, there is a future. Having a "present-based mind-set" and admitting you don't want to think about your kids' futures sounds like the old Grass Roots song, "Let's Live for Today." And just wanting your kids to "be happy" in no way prepares them for instances where they're not happy. Duh.

"Algebra is not something that everybody needs to know. This life is about honoring the fact that we are not all put on the earth to do the same thing in life. ... It is such an individualized education as opposed to a cookie cutter education where kids are kind of, this bucket of knowledge that you pour into kids and they may or may not learn it."

Obviously we are not all put on the earth to do the same thing, but to presume that such basic knowledge as algebra is unnecessary is wrong. That's kind of like saying it's not necessary to teach your child how to calculate the area of a triangle or to memorize the multiplication tables.

In the kitchen, a sticky issue came up: What to do when your child wants to eat the whole bag of cookies. Martin encouraged Berg to let her kids have it their way... "When you set up things with limits, you're setting up a scenario of kids sneaking things," Martin said.

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Children need boundaries to learn respect, self-control, manners, and to realize the whole world doesn't center around them.

Martin said her children have picked up adequate reading and math skills without formal instruction. But when we asked Devin [her son] a basic multiplication question, he stumbled.

Okay, I admit it irks me when strangers spring quizzes on my homeschooled kids to prove how unejikated they are. Kids learn things at different paces, and what they're learning in 6th grade in public school may not correlate to what my 6th grader is learning at home. Nor do I know what "basic multiplication question" the interviewer asked Devon (age 11).

But the attitude presented by these unschooling parents do not - repeat, do not - represent the attitudes of all homeschooling parents. I am hoping not all "unschoolers" fall into this line of thinking, because I've seen too many instances where parents with a "hippie" mentality and who impose no boundaries or discipline on their children end up raising out-of-control thugs. Children need to learn respect, discipline, and self-control in order to become stable functioning adults.

This opinion is not necessarily shared by the Home School Legal Defense Association, who is willing to give unschoolers the benefit of the doubt until such time as unschoolers are proven wrong.

But to my way of thinking, these types of "unschoolers" give homeschoolers a black eye. Just my $0.02.

Raising thugs

Something’s been bugging me lately, and I figure it’s cathartic to write it down. This is a long post, so grab a cup of tea or a glass of wine and make yourself comfortable.

When we lived in Oregon, we spent years attending a homeschool playgroup run by a woman (I’ll call her Janet) with two young sons. All the families involved with this group had young children ranging from six years old downward. We got together once a week.

Janet, who ran the playgroup, had studied child psychology in college, had once run a daycare, and wrote a weekly newspaper column on parenting. By all accounts she was an expert on raising kids. Right?

During the times we associated with this family, I had my private concerns about the way Janet’s boys were being raised. The mother was dominant, the father completely emasculated and relegated to the background. (In fact for the first several months of our acquaintance I thought Janet was divorced because no mention of the father was ever made. I found out later this was a common misconception because no one had ever heard about her husband, much less seen him.) Janet would literally forbid the father from disciplining “her” boys. He provided money, she provided the raising and education for the children.

But my concern stemmed from the utter and complete lack of discipline in these boys’ lives. An early example of this occurred one day at our playgroup when the youngest boy (who was four at the time) wanted to nurse (Janet believed in unlimited breastfeeding until the children chose to wean themselves). A bunch of us mothers were sitting around chatting while our children played when the four-year-old came up to Janet and plunged a hand down her shirt, squeezing her breast. “Nurse,” he demanded.

“Not now, dear,” Janet replied, trying to extract his hand. “I’m talking.”

“NURSE!” the boy shouted, and he wrenched her breast so hard she screamed.

“Okay, okay!” Janet settled her son on her lap and let him breastfeed.

We mothers sat around in horrified silence. Not horrified that she was breastfeeding – we had all breastfed our kids – but because Janet had actually given in to her son’s blatant and abusive demands. She let him have his way despite the violence of his approach.

It was a portent of things to come.

After a few years, people started drifting away from the group. Their children had been subject to just a little too much bullying by Janet’s boys. None of us wanted to offend her or criticize her parenting skills (though we privately loathed them) so, rather than confront her, one by one we stopped coming. My “excuse” to stop attending the playgroup was to move to Idaho.

Janet believed in involving her boys in as many extracurricular activities as possible including acting lessons, art lessons, sports, and other functions. In nearly every case, the boys were eventually asked to leave because of misbehavior.

Let’s take the art lessons for example. I know about these incidents because my friend Linda’s daughter (who used to attend the playgroup until she got fed up with the boys’ bullying) was in the same art classes as Janet’s boys.

The boys were disruptive and destructive in class. They would actually tease and taunt a handicapped student. The mother of the handicapped boy, unable to stop the harassment, finally threatened to withdraw her four children from art class unless the teacher expelled Janet’s sons, which is what happened. Janet was annoyed because – I’m not kidding – she felt her boys were just naturally exuberant.

Since Linda lived in the same town as Janet, she would sometimes bump into this family on the street. Janet’s boys would scream – yes, scream – foul language at her daughter, right there in broad daylight on the sidewalk. This would happen, I hasten to add, in the company of Janet, who never restrained their language or behavior.

The bad behavior of Janet’s sons escalated when they got older, after we had already left for Idaho. As the years passed I sometimes wondered how they were doing. The once-a-year Christmas newsletter from Janet gave no indication of problems, of course. But then I already knew she was capable of the most amazing mental gymnastics to keep seeing her boys in a pure light.

Fast forward to last week when my friend Linda was in a store and saw two teenagers in long Columbine-style trench coats with greased-back hair and slouching posture. Linda rounded a corner just in time to hear the oldest boy tell his mother to “SHUT THE F*** UP.” Linda stopped dead in her tracks, recognizing Janet’s two kids who were now 15 and 13 and looked, in her words, skanky beyond belief.

So here is the perfect example of how to raise a couple of thugs. Linda reported that Janet looked “less arrogant” than before (she was always vocal in her opinions on how to properly raise children – after all, unlike the rest of us, she was the expert). But here my friend had caught the boys in the act of verbally abusing their mother in public. The jig was up.

I hardly know what to say. The original members of the playgroup had seen this coming for years. Most of us have stayed in touch and I’ve heard similar incidences from others. It makes me feel sad to think of the despair Janet must be feeling as she starts to reap what she sowed. I liked Janet well enough during our acquaintance, even while I didn’t approve of her parenting methods, and it saddens me to see the two proto-thugs she is launching upon society.

While brings me to the concept of modern parenting ideas. Parental techniques have changed over the years, of course, but have you ever noticed that those who live by the traditional methods – firm and loving discipline, a strong father, parental authority, etc. – produce the most stable, happy, productive children who grow into adults who parent their own children in the same way? Why are people constantly trying to reinvent the wheel when the wheel works so damn well already?

I have great faith and belief that many of the old ways of raising kids worked just fine, and we shouldn’t mess with success…especially in matters of human nature. Under ideal circumstances, I believe children do best in an intact two-parent home with firm “alpha” parents who are unified in their love and parenting style, and apply consistent and strong discipline to their kids. Children, as the saying goes, are born liberal, and it’s up to the parents to raise them “right."

Janet is raising her boys “left.” The results are two proto-thugs on the threshold of being launched into society.

Oh joy.