Lori Gottlieb, the author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough has an interesting piece in the Atlantic entitled “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy.” Apparently, in today’s society, parent’s obsession with their kids’ happiness is likely to bring a lifetime of adult misery:
The irony is that measures of self-esteem are poor predictors of how content a person will be, especially if the self-esteem comes from constant accommodation and praise rather than earned accomplishment. According to Jean Twenge, research shows that much better predictors of life fulfillment and success are perseverance, resiliency, and reality-testing—qualities that people need so they can navigate the day-to-day.
Earlier this year, I met with a preschool teacher who told me that in her observation, many kids aren’t learning these skills anymore. She declined to be named, for fear of alienating parents who expect teachers to agree with their child-rearing philosophy, so I’ll call her Jane.
Jean Twenge is the co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement and in the article says that kids never really learn how to fail anymore. They are all told they are terrific and everything they do is great.
So where would kids learn perseverance, resilience and reality testing? Even our government officials show few of these traits, particularly the latter.
I have come around to an 80-20 genetic/environment split on most behaviors, and thus in conservative circles am likely to have to defend the genetic-loading ideas against hosts who insist that their narrow data-set – their own families and cherry-picked anecdotes from their social circle and popular culture – are the heavey determinants of behavior.
Yet I do give some weight to environmental influences. (Why else would we have adopted?) It is true that the parents who teach self-discipline are likely those who also have self-discipline, so whether they transmitted this genetically or environmentally is unclear. But on personality traits, I think there is some incentive to push. We have more than one trait vying for dominance in our personalities. There may only be a hundred unchangeable records in the jukebox, but we can strive to make sure that certain ones get played more often. It is a long and slow process, and I think routine is a better teacher than explanation here. Children don’t really understand the abstract homilies we give them. Far better to build in habits that make them look like they are self-disciplined and hope that record is in the stack.
It is the long slow road, not our wise sayings, that will teach them about realistic expectations, the difference between happiness and joy, and such uncomfortable virtues as courage, duty, and personal generosity.
Though I agree with a lot of what you said, I’m not with you on the 80-20 split. I think the genetic side is much lower than that and would site USMC training as an example of extreme environmental influence to tear down and rebuild an individual’s behaviors. I would put the influences much closer to 50-50.
An intriguing thought. But I wrote my comment even though I have an adopted son who went into the USMC. I’m still saying 80-20
We had 1 child and adopted 5 and completely agree with the 80-20 split. Thought the split was more like 50-50 when we adopted due to the Social Workers and parenting books we read, but they were all wrong. Our adopted kids did not adopted our strengths/faults as their own and fight the demons of their birth parents despite never being in contact with them. Our birth child has both our strengths/faults and she fights our demons despite our attempt to temper them in our own lives. All the kids were raised in the same home from infancy.
The danger of genetic determination is that in a wealthy society those that would otherwise perish from their genetic shortcomings in character, courage, diligence, self-sacrifice, stamina, wisdom, or common sense or their genetic surplus of narcissism, selfishness, indulgence, sloth, cowardice, etc. are able to reproduce until they overload the system. Just as a peasant/warrior population produces greater percentages of people with physical hardiness and a population of business/professional people produces a greater percentage of people with intellectual gifts, so a population of entitlement, indulgence, leisure, and license produces a greater percentage of people not only incapable of being good citizens but highly prone to pursue not only their own self-implosion but that of society. Is it nature or nuture? Does it matter? The cause and effect are the same. When society is governed by those whose only gifts are self-defeat and persuasion, sooner or later the establishment sells its gifts to foreign enemies. Just as Rome crumbled in the face of the Goths so is the West today crumbling in the face of China and the Muslims. These things are hastened by birth control which serves to serves to prevents girls from being raised to struggle, sacrifice, and endure and the absence of universal military conscription which serves to prevents boys from being raised to struggle, sacrifice, and endure. Enter the Liberal/Progressive/Socialists who trade in decline and profit taxation/borrowing/wealth redistribution/treason. No one mentions that the Chinese or the Muslims will be brutal masters as our current leaders expect to convert to the conqueror’s creed at the last moment. At the height of the Roman Republic, its legions of conscripted citizens numbered at 600,000. At the decline of the Empire, its legions numbered volunteers of slaves and Goths numbered at 300,000. When the Goths turned against Rome, the slaves followed and there was no one to fight them. All of the Aristocracies of modern Europe are descended from Goths, Franks, and Vikings. The decendants of the Romans suffered through centuries of serfdom and starvation. In the territories of the Western Roman Empire conquered by the Goths, Franks, and Vikings, the conquerors embraced the relatively humane religion of the vanquished from which the greatness of Western Europe grew. In the territories of the Eastern Roman Empire conquered by the Arabs and Turks, the conquerors forced the vanquished to embrace the relatively inhumane religion of the Islam from which the darkness of the Wahhabis, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the Muslim Brotherhood grew. Our Liberal/Progressive/Socialists leaders fall all over themselves in a competition to see who can be the first to surrender to the Muslims.
80-20 genetic/environment split on most behaviors
I’d agree for personality traits, but not actual behavior. Knowing about the genetics make one less likely to worry about trivia like doofy school teachers or parenting mistakes.
So where would kids learn perseverance, resilience and reality testing?
If they don’t have to learn those things, why should they?
And if, or most likely when, they have to learn, they will.
“So where would kids learn perseverance, resilience and reality testing?”
At least for boys, the Boy Scouts of America often still does a good job with this, despite the creeping feminization of the organization.
Boo,
I heartily agree with you. I have spent the last week at scout camp with 30 boys aged 11-14. My son is in the 14 year old cohort. I have see the development of boys when they are placed in an environment that stresses perseverance, team work and honesty. And can anyone name one other organization that places a premium on personal honor? I greatly admire the boy scout model and it’s ability to build men who are “physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.” Perhaps this is “cherry picked” data, but the boys I have seen in scouts are more mature than their non-scouting classmates. They also learn the value of “home made fun”, that being skits, songs, jokes and other means of self initiated entertainment. The boys I know, although mostly ethnically white, come from a mixture of economic and family back grounds. Also, a surprising number have suffered the death of a parent. But scouts seeks to teach resilience and perseverance. Because if you don’t have control of yourself then you don’t have control over anything.
The U.S. Armed Forces does a great job of this as well.
As does competitive sports.
The DeMolay youth groups are often very good for teens.
“They are all told they are terrific and everything they do is great.”
The Chinese Tiger Mother begs to differ.
BFD. She would never know if her kid had a talent for the oboe or long-distance running. The Tiger Mom is just an Asian face on the old phrase, “That’s mighty white of you.”
Mrs. Chua (aka “Tiger Mom”) is mentioned in the Atlantic piece. The author rather cleverly weaves her goals into the same trend: nothing is too good for junior. Her methods, needless to say, differ from the helicopter types but the theory is that Chua is just saying what they won’t — oh, and making a mint off it because those buying her book fundamentally agree with her.
From my anecdotal evidence, it’s not a bad theory.
Angela Duckworth & Martin Seligman reported that measures of self-discipline are more important than IQ in predicting outcomes such as grades, hours spent doing homework, school attendance,and high school selected (Psychological Science, 16 (12), 2005). Self-discipline is probably also important because it can lead you to the adaptive response to failure – learning from that failure.
There are people out there making the case that failure is opportunity (ironically, I tried and failed to put the Amazon links in here):
Carol Dweck – Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Alina Tugend – Better by Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong
Tim Hartford – Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
Stanford’s Dr. Dweck, in particular, emphasizes the important of how we respond to children’s attempts to do something. Praise their effort rather than their ability. Show them that the learning happens when they make mistakes, so mistakes are opportunities to get better.
Agreed, but I would say that there is considerable overlap of self-discipline with IQ (and both have some heritability). I recommend Steve Sailer’s blog for these discussions.
After being an early believer in the self-esteem nonsense, I quickly realized it was a lot of bunk. What I tell people is that I want my kids to DO things that are worthy of esteem. That is how they will feel good about themselves. On the other hand, if they screw up, they SHOULD feel bad about themselves in proportion to the screw up.
Kids can feel shame or feel bad about themselves for screw-ups when they know their families love them unconditionally. This was implicit in your statement, but deserves saying out loud.
I agree. One important thing though, is they should be criticised for what they did, but not who they are. So they know they did a stupid thing, but should never beleive they are a stupid person. If their stupid actions are very frequent, they might even be told they are a person that is doing a lot of stupid things, but they should also always know that you beleive they are capable of doing better, if they try, and you should praise them when they finally do do better. Mind you, it might seen stupid to praise a kid for not getting into trouble for 2 weeks, but if it has been 6 months since that happened, then it might be a real accomplishment.
One way to legidimately build self esteem is to look for areas or skills where that kid is legidimately better than others, and praise them for those accomplishments. So if you have a kid that is lousy at academics, but good at sports or music, you can still praise them in the areas they are good at. This approach is honest, and should also always work, since even really stupid and unskilled kids are generally good at something, however hard you may have to look for it. The key though is a kid should only be praised if it is a real accom;lishment, and required real skill or work on their part. Kids can detect BS praise pretty quick, and learn to disbeleive anybody who dishes it out.
I ran a chess club for kids once, and it was great for self esteem. There were some kids there that had academic or disclipline trouble, but were pretty good chess players, and got a real boost to their confidence in their inteligence, and their ability to work and solve problems. Even the kids that weren’t that good at chess got an occasional boost when they got lucky, and won a game from one of the top kids. And to get better at chess, you had to do some real work and long term study, and the feedback was totally objective. You didn’t have to please a possibly biased teacher that didn’t like you, you just had to win your games.
My eighth grade step-son went through some of the usual eighth grade problems, fights and minor misbehavior. One night he came in and plopped down on the sofa so hard that it knocked my wife’s drink off the end table. She yelled at him and he took offense and left and did not come back for two days. When he did come back, we put him in therapy, not because he needed it but for punishment. Therapy is a shame and punishment for any man who has any self respect. It worked. He never misbehaved in that way again. He has a PHD from Harvard and is teaching at Yale.
Quoth Ken: “Therapy is a shame and punishment for any man who has any self respect.”
Who can name the logical fallacy in this facile comment?
Sincerely,
Dr. C. (A highly educated and successful man with a good deal of self-respect who has (quite unashamedly) spent several years seeing a therapist.)
I’ll add music to the good suggestions above. Unlike most other arts, it provides an objective reality check. It has many tiers of success and all of them require perseverance.
This Scientific American article is relevant:
“Many people assume that superior intelligence or ability is a key to success. But more than three decades of research shows that an overemphasis on intellect or talent—and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed—leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.
“Teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, produces high achievers in school and in life.”
There was an interesting study done, that measured toddlers ability to defer immediate gratification, for better rewards later. They presented a toddler with a piece of candy, and told them that they could eat it now, but if they waited a few minutes, until a researcher came back, they could then eat it, and get 5 more peices. Then they monitored the kids for the next 20 yrs. The ones that were able to wait for the larger reward had successful, responsible lives, while the ones that could not wait, usually ended up with big problems like crime and substance abuse.
This is pretty strong support for genetics, although environment could also play a part, since the toddlers that waited, could have also had parents that kept ther promisses on defered rewards, while the ones that did not wait could have learned from experience not to trust adults that promissed deferred rewards. In any event, it appears that traits like patience, and long term thinking, are formed pretty early.
One can tear down a child by incessant criticism. Probably what the original cult of self esteem was meant to combat.