Wild Things by James Stephen Thomas David S

Author:James, Stephen,Thomas, David S.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9781414332826
Publisher: Tyndale House (eBook)
Published: 2010-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Military Parents

As these boys grow into men and have families of their own, we see them trying to compensate for their perceived shortcomings. Having never learned to cope with their own sense of disappointment in life, they feel ill-equipped to teach their children how to cope. So, instead, they try to cushion the blow for the next generation. We’ve seen parents go to great lengths to help their kids avoid experiencing pain or having to struggle. Parents generally do this in one of two ways: either by rescuing their children or by controlling them. Unfortunately, both methods teach kids to operate on the basis of fear and shame. Foster Cline and Jim Fay, authors of Parenting with Love and Logic, call these parents Helicopter parents and Drill Sergeant parents.

Helicopter parents “hover” over their children and rescue them from “the hostile world in which they live.”1 Some Helicopter parents take their vigilance one step further, crossing the line from excessive involvement to fraudulent behavior such as doing their kids’ homework, writing their college admission essays, and calling professors and deans when they see grades they don’t like. These overly aggressive and protective parents are called “Black Hawks,” after the U.S. Army’s military-attack helicopter. Another term for these parents is “tether parents,” according to Patrick Heaton, director of the freshman orientation program at Florida State University. “It’s like a leash. Students are afraid to make decisions about classes or anything without calling home.”2 The parents generally pay very close attention to their children and swoop down to stop any harm, heartache, or failure from happening.

Another way in which parents do a disservice to their children is by being Drill Sergeants. These parents command and direct their children’s lives. They make lots of demands and have high expectations about responsibility. They dictate to their children how they should handle responsibility, how they should feel, what decisions to make, and when things should be completed. Drill Sergeants most often use emotional or physical pain, along with humiliation, to motivate their children’s behavior and control their attitudes. They use verbal outbursts to intimidate, but they don’t always see it that way. As one father said about his son, “I’m just trying to raise him like a man.”

Though Helicopter parents and Drill Sergeant parents may go about parenting in different ways, they often produce the same kind of child. Neither approach—hovering or controlling—allows kids to learn from their failures. The Helicopter parents rescue their children before they can fail (or they shield them from the natural consequences), and Drill Sergeant parents simply don’t tolerate failure. Thus, we now have an entire culture built around the avoidance of pain and disappointment. Unfortunately, our efforts to avoid pain and make life easier for our kids may very well backfire on us, because teaching our kids how to cope with pain and failure is an important part of preparing them well for life.

In our fast-food, instant-messaging society, we’ve eliminated waiting as much as possible, and we’re working hard to eliminate pain and disappointment as well.

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