ROOKE: Raising The Next Generation … To Be Disabled

Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss how parents are actively making their children’s lives worse.

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I think the hardest pill for parents to swallow is the reality that their children’s behavior is directly connected to their parenting choices. At the most basic level, their views on morality, modesty, and human dignity all come from your example. But it’s more than that.

Jo Frost, aka Supernanny, released a video warning parents that they are disabling their children’s independence.

“We are slowly disabling our children, and I don’t say that lightly. I say that because I work with families continuously every day, and I am seeing a pattern that is growing. Children who are capable but not being taught,” Frost said.

“We are pushing children along on bikes instead of teaching them how to ride them. We’re keeping children in strollers, who should be walking, climbing, building strength. We’ve got four-year-olds still using dummies [pacifiers], when that was only ever meant to be a short-term aid. Seven-year-olds who can’t brush their teeth properly without an electric toothbrush. Eight-year-olds who can’t sit at the table and use a knife and fork. Nine-year-olds who don’t understand basic bathroom hygiene. And I find myself asking, when did we stop teaching these life skills?”

Frost said that she understands that our modern world makes it hard to slow down and parent correctly, but that if parents don’t get back to basics, an entire generation will be lost.

Probably the most important thing Frost said in this warning is that parents don’t have to do this “perfectly, but consistently.” That’s the key. Consistency makes the biggest difference in successful parenting.

Take potty training, for example. It can be the most frustrating experience for a new parent because it requires devoted time and effort, which most of us don’t have the bandwidth for. When my oldest was a baby, one of my sisters gave me a book on how to potty-train a toddler in three days. One of the warnings said you have to clear your schedule for three days because you have to be devoted to taking your child to the toilet the entire time.

When it was time, I loaded up the water bottle, cleared my schedule, and got the extra sheets out. I was surprised how well the method worked. It wasn’t that the girls were completely trained by the third day, but they understood what they needed to do. After that, the accidents were few and far between. They’d let me know it was time, and I’d take them. But the only reason it worked is that I was consistent.

It’s our responsibility as parents to guide our children through every stage of their lives. We are passing little pieces of ourselves onto the next generation every time we teach them how to brush their teeth, bathe, or pick up after themselves.

Independence is a crucial part of becoming an adult, and parents have a finite amount of time to teach their children how to live a successful life on their own. Every once in a while, I’ll see the same conversation around childhood chores enter the online discussion. There are always two sides fighting over whether having your children help with things like laundry, cleaning, and cooking is considered good parenting. I’m sure you can guess which side of the battle I’m on, but in case you are new here, I think it’s borderline neglect not to have your children do chores.

Not only is it important at baseline for your children to “help out” around the house, but I would be ashamed if my girls went off to college not knowing how to take care of themselves as well as I do.

Our oldest daughter told me the other day she remembered the moment I began teaching them how to do the laundry. She said I was carrying a basket of clean laundry up the stairs and slipped. Apparently (because, funny enough, I don’t remember this), I hurt myself, and in my frustration, I told the girls to line up at the table so I could teach them how to fold.

I do remember starting them off slow. At first, it was just folding the easy things like shirts, shorts, and socks. Once they mastered that, I had them learn how to properly hang clothes, followed by putting them away. Now the girls know how to sort the laundry by colors, delicates, and heavy loads. They can independently do the laundry without my help. Every day they come home from school, they are required to gather their school clothes and any sportswear they used that day into the washing machine.

I remember going off to college craving a home-cooked meal. Luckily, I had a basic understanding of how to cook the meals that graced my table as a child. But I wanted more than that for our girls. So, similar to laundry, I started them with breakfast and worked my way up to dinner. The other night, I had to run one of my daughters to basketball practice, which meant I would be out until 8:00 pm. But this didn’t stress me out like it would have five years ago, because now I can tell one of my daughters I need her to have dinner ready when we get home. I chose the protein, but let her decide the rest of the menu. Not only was it a balanced meal, but it was delicious.

I don’t say any of this to brag, but to show that it is possible.

Parents would do well to remember that their children are capable of doing hard things. They aren’t born with the knowledge; that has to come from us. But they can do it. And once they learn this independence, your home life is so much more peaceful than you could ever imagine.

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