For Parents and Government, ‘No’ Is Often the Best Answer
My five-year-old daughter and I were out Christmas shopping the other day, and it wasn’t long before I heard the inevitable words, “Mommy, can I have this?” I know she will utter this phrase over and over any time I take her shopping with me, yet I never tire of hearing it. Each time she asks, an opportunity opens up for me to teach her important lessons about wants versus needs, price versus value, and self-control over impulsive buying. Although she does not fully grasp most of these concepts, I know that over time she will gain understanding and carry those valuable principles throughout her life. However, regardless of whether or not I seize that learning opportunity, the usual first answer to her question is “no.”
The simple answer “no” did not work so well when she was in her “terrible twos.” But “no” has always meant “no” and I have never changed my “no” to a “yes.” With consistency, she eventually figured out that continuing to ask was futile and screaming in the store would only result in undesirable consequences.
“No” is a word I heard often as a child. We certainly weren’t poor, but if my parents had given in to every request of all five of their children, we would have been. I learned quickly that I was not going to get everything I wanted. But I was lucky to always have everything I needed — and my parents helped teach me the difference.
I grew up in a family where life did not revolve around me; it revolved around the family. That’s not to say my parents did not sacrifice a lot for their children; they did. Their sacrifices were largely what taught me to sacrifice for my children. I can sacrifice designer clothes if it means my daughter can participate in gymnastics and art classes. I can sacrifice another year without a new car if it means I can drop her off at school without anxiety because I trust her teachers and the curriculum they teach. I have often marveled at the ease with which sacrificing comes for the good of my family — how naturally prioritizing occurs. For many of my peers, it is much more difficult. Such difficulties have led many of them to plummet into thousands of dollars of credit card debt. And many of them are still dependent on their parents for help paying bills.
As a child, I did not realize how lucky I was to hear the word “no.” Based on the spending habits and massive debt amassed by those of my generation (those in their late twenties and early thirties), I know that many of them suffered the misfortune of too many yeses. In families where the world revolves around the child, the inevitable is that the child grows up with a sense of entitlement. We are now witnessing the fruits of raising children that way. We are suffering the fiscal irresponsibility of the “me” generation who expect everything to be handed to them. What parents can’t provide, and what these grown children do not provide for themselves, is passed along as an expectation for the government to provide.
Unsurprisingly, a recent study by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Investor Education Foundation found that younger generations have lower financial literacy than their predecessors. According to the foundation’s 2009 National Financial Capability Study, only 25% of participating adults were happy with their current financial conditions and 15% of respondents did not even have a checking account. And only 41% of respondents with dependent children had set aside money for college education expenses. Instead of saving for their children’s educations, many parents just cry out to the Obama administration to make more government money available for students to attend college.
Whenever one of these studies comes out, the question parents should ask is what they can do to make sure their children are not among those statistics. Instead, the first question that pops into many American minds is “how is the federal government going to fix this?” In light of these findings, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced their new campaign to improve high school financial literacy.
It’s even worse than you say. Imagine if the kids were screaming at the parents not to spend any more money on toys and the parent just keeps buying them. That’s where the American people are with this government. We’re screaming “stop” and they just keep spending on things that we don’t want or need like government run healthcare. Of course it’s all ok because after spending at record deficits,Obama will say we have to be fiscally responsible. Then the media reports what he says and some people actually believe he is fiscally responsible.
Sarah , please go over to Breitbart .com and look at the Katie Couric interview . This is what happens when you do alot of drugs.
We’re NOT the party of no!
We ARE the party of no!
Stay the course!
It’s NEVER been stay the course!
Tell you what, get back to us when you develop a spine.
How noble. Where was this sentiment when it was time to have a war with no taxes? Do you think they’re free?
Precisely- liberalism is the mindset of a child.
N&T: Sometimes ‘no pasaran’ is precisely the right position.
5. Bohemond:
Conservatism is the mindset of the dead.
“How noble. Where was this sentiment when it was time to have a war with no taxes? Do you think they’re free?”
I would say, to have a war without slashing Federal spending elsewhere. GWB was no conservative.
N&T: Boy, that was weak. In fact, downright childish. Try again.
Last night, I heard an interviewer on Fox say that we need to distinguish between good and bad earmarks. Actually, I don’t agree. If the administration wants to spend some money on a project, then there is an existing mechanism: appropriate it just like it says in the Constitution. Have an up or down vote on it. In other words, do the job as you swore you would, congressman.
7. Bohemond:
Clearly, it had the desired effect. Better yet . . . it’s true! And therein I find my reward. Oh, Hosannah!
Dad of 5 is correct. Having the present government as parent is like having a drug addict or unrepentant gambler as parent, spending more money this year than we could possibly make in a lifetime. When people voted for professor utopia as president, I doubt they believed they were getting an out of control trophy wife. The dems are spending twenty years of revenues this year. Blaming Bush does not change this fact. “So what if you caught me robbing a bank, the previous guy stole a twenty!” is no defense.
Voters want something (other people’s money) for nothing (votes to put politicians onto the public trough). Politicians give something (other people’s, i.e. the taxpayers’s money) for nothing (power and porks for themselves and their buddies). The taxpayers (those who actually pay taxes) are getting nothing (aggravations) for giving their something(hard earned money).
That is: there are always something for something, depending on who is talking. Further illumination: voters are not the same as taxpayers.
I think there are some other things conservatives should say not to. Enjoy this list, and congratulations, you’re ahead 3:1 in the numbers. Talk about awaking the sleeping giant.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/23/the-12-most-shocking-poli_n_401609.html?slidenumber=bmDUxFyb67w%3D&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow&slideshow
Happy Merry Days
“No” is not a platform. The Right needs to get out of its cloistered enclaves and explain that “we prefer something else.” And what that “something else” is.
(1), re-take control of the teaching of history in grades 1-12. Explain WHY we don’t do things, what we prefer, and why past governments came to ruin by over indulgence); (2), get some books out that explain this too-the hsitory of Rome, Britain and France provide great examples for kids and can be taught well–of course we insist now that they spend weeks on Mesopatomia, Islam, Africa and they wind up not having the slightest idea why the US has prospered, kept its freedom etc. Indeed, they are made to feel ashamed of the US a bit. The Right has let this happen.
(2) Kids gradutate knowing Islam is a rleigion of peace, that the Us was mean to indians,I’m sorry–native americans), that capitalism was mean to workers, that….but they never learn why it makes sense that everyone pays some tax; why government conrol of business is dangerous; to be contemptuous of idle people; to avoid debt, etc. Its just not taught. Why not?
Its not “no.” That is what the left paints the right as being–the party of “no.” Its not “no” at all. Its a preference for other things that are never explained. Freedom from a encroaching government. Freedom from high interest payments. Freedom to say what you want without offending a creditor. Freedom of the industrious to do well and the slothful to do as they will, but not at your expense.
There a lot of things that are on a point-of-no-return so long as the modern world, umm, remains modern. Lack of restraint in saying, No, and meaning it, is only one. There is no helping the masses in this regard, I believe. Consider the best writers of today, or artists. They work on computers where they can cut and paste, save (with a matter of clicks), switch wording or previous work with great ease, and much more. This seems like a boon for saving time and energy, but what is it doing to how our brains organize and relay information?
How brains are developing when they don’t have to be able to lay it all down in one or two or three attempts. How many times do you go back and insert a sentence, a word, into something as insignificant as an internet post? Sometimes, quite a few, and every time is a new draft. How valuable is one word? Or how valuable is being able to see an almost complete work before you create it? We’ve lost something, but I’m not sure what it is.
I admit this is an assumption, but it seems pretty fair. I also am assuming that it is a significant loss.
You can hear the difference in say, Abraham Lincoln’s words, and Barack Obama. Barack sounds like a high school class president compared to Lincoln. All of the Founding Fathers have an elegance that doesn’t exist anymore. You can hear it when you talk to kids! I refuse to believe kids were always this dumb. At least not the majority. Just look at how slang is embraced, and by all. Also, profanity. We’re all lazy, and we’re actually thinking less, because we are not considering greatly enough the paths that we are choosing. It’s just easier to say, Yes, and when the consequences for failure just aren’t there why shouldn’t we?
The biggest government expense – bar none- is entitlements.
Good luck with saying NO to that …
Well said #13 No!
“4. Alice Nolin:
How noble. Where was this sentiment when it was time to have a war with no taxes?”
You know, the only thing worse than a Chicken hawk, is a Chicken shite. That is someone who uses the freedoms we paid for .. taxes in blood, to spout off their beserkely BS. They have to be the lowest form of life on this planet. I have more respect for Osama Bin Laden then them.
So yes, let us completely fund every war (putting aside that fdr’s war was not fully funded) with a Chicken Shite.. Er liberal tax. Like on San Fransicko and Beserkely. They do not pay the blood tax, surely they should pay the silver.
17. Yup, silver, not gold. Silver is the metal of redemption, and it has sterilizing properties. Quite an appropriate choice, whether you intended it or not.
Now and Then is a child. He thinks he is smart and he is too young to know better. Plus, the real giveaway, he plays on the blogs all time.
19 Jim Baker
“Now and Then is a child. He thinks he is smart and he is too young to know better. Plus, the real giveaway, he plays on the blogs all time.”
You wanna talk “real giveaway? Jim “The Christian Condo King” Baker wrote that at 2:40 pm on Christmas Day.
More than once I’ve heard someone else’s child ask that immutable question, “Can I have this?” Usually, it is followed by the word “no,” followed by a tantrum of crying, and suddenly “no” changes to “yes.” I suppose the mother believes it’s easier that way. In an age with so many working mothers, no mother wants what little time she has with her child to be spent arguing. But what she should know is that if she sticks to her guns and endures a few tantrums, she’ll reap the long-term benefits of gaining her child’s respect. Eventually, the response to “no” will taper down as the child gains the understanding taught through parental consistency.
Here is where Sarah unwittingly shows why her parent/child analogy doesn’t work with our system of government. When a parent says no to his or her child, a tantrum by the child is pretty much the worst that can happen as a result. The parent is in no danger of getting kicked out of his/her parenting role by the child in favor of some other, more permissive would-be parent after two, four or six years, as the case may be.
Meanwhile the long-term benefits of saying no are all fine and dandy, but they mean little, if anything to most elected officials next to the overriding imperative of keeping their jobs beyond the current election cycle. In an environment where saying no is (at least perceived as) tantamount to career suicide, it’s no wonder our politicians find it so hard to do so.
Wrong again Now and Then. Blinded, as usual, by your own childish prejudices! But then, I still bet you are a child.