What do you do when a child is behaving meanly, obnoxiously, and selfishly far too much? Of course, we all wrestle with this dilemma to varying degrees every day, so I want to share two points on this question–both of which came up on Saturday night, when my wife and I and another couple were kicking back at a Russian café on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach. (What else do parent-friends have to talk about during such rare moments of food, wine, and a gorgeous oceanside sunset?)
One point is my admiration for parents who are honest with themselves about their kid’s behavior and make a committed effort to do something about it. I come at this from seeing the results of the opposite path. My daughter is 12 now. Since her days in nursery school, I can think of a few examples of girls and boys who were, in varying ways, skilled and precocious trouble-makers. Other parents bemoaned it, but no one would ever talk to the children’s parents about it—because of the awkwardness and the sense that it would fall of deaf ears. (The parents were characteristically dismissive when teachers went there.) I wish they had done more; I wish they’d do more. Their kids could still use the guidance.
Kids say and do lots of things that appall us. How we engage them is, of course, the art of being a parent. The other bit of wisdom that percolated in my conversation on Saturday night is how important it is to deal with bad behavior in a way that doesn’t make your child feel like he or she is intrinsically a bad person. Chances are, you’re not raising a criminal. Just someone who needs your help and guidance and boundaries and love–like those two eight-year-old repeat offenders, who, while their parents solved the world’s problems, kept jumping off the boardwalk on to the beach, despite their parents’ halfhearted admonitions.
–Eric Messinger
