Rude
Kids
The Fruits of
Overdeveloped Self-Esteem
May 21,
2009
A recent report on
MSNBC suggested that parents’ pre-occupation with their kids’ self-esteem may
have produced “rude” children who lack compassion for
others.
According to MSNBC,
“many experts say today’s kids are ruder than ever.” The word “rude” encompasses
a variety of behaviors, from selfishness to deliberate malice. In one example, a
pre-schooler deliberately tripped a woman in a crowded restaurant and then
bragged to her mother about it. In another, a child continuously insults his
mother in front of his mortified grandmother.
In both cases, the
parent neither says nor does anything.
Apparently, these
aren’t isolated instances: a 2005 Yale University study found that “preschool
students are expelled at a rate more than three times that of children in grades
K-12 because of behavioral problems.”
It isn’t only
preschoolers. The media has documented the behavior in the workplace of those
born between 1980 and 1996. Words used to describe the behavior of the so-called
“Generation Y” include “self-centered” and “arrogant.” As one management
professor put it, “They don’t know when to shut up.” And having grown up
questioning their parents, they now question their
bosses.
Whether or not
today’s kids are actually “ruder than ever,” the article and others like it
reflect the sense that something has gone wrong in the way we raise our
children. Specifically, it has to do with “popular parenting movements focusing
on self-esteem.”
These movements
produce parents who “[respond] with hostility to anyone they perceive as getting
in the child’s way.” By “getting in the child’s way,” they mean doing anything
that might make the child feel less-than-wonderful about him or herself—in the
classroom, among their peers, or on the playing
field.
So today we have a
generation of children who believe that the world revolves around them and that
they are entitled to feel good about themselves. (my underline)
Expecting children
raised this way to be compassionate or even polite betrays a profound ignorance
of human nature—the same ignorance that led to the “popular parenting movements”
that created the mess in the first place.
These movements were
inspired by the ideas of Romantic Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. According to Rousseau, “There is no original perversity in the human
heart.” So, he says, “when children’s wills are not spoiled by our fault,
children [desire] nothing uselessly.” So parents and teachers should strive to
produce children who are “authentic, self-sufficient, and
autonomous.”
According to E.D.
Hirsch, this Romantic ideal that “each person has a natural and uniquely divine
spark, which, if nurtured, cannot go wrong,” is behind the emphasis on
self-esteem. The problem, as Hirsch points out, is that there is no proven
connection between high self-esteem and actual
achievement.
In other words,
feeling good about yourself isn’t enough to make you good. You have to be taught
right from wrong and made to feel bad when you deserve it. As the Scripture
says, true parental devotion includes the willingness to correct our
children.
The alternative
isn’t “authenticity”—it’s spoiling their wills in the worst possible
way.