Lefty Parent » respect for children

Looking Back on My Youth

Cooper Zale — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 20:37:01 +0000

I’ve been focused lately on education issues in my blogging, but I feel like giving it a rest and getting back to the main thrust of my passion and advocacy. That thrust is encouraging human development, and particularly the “rules of engagement” in that regard between adults and youth.

I say “youth” rather than “children”, because I think the “C-word” has become a derogatory term in our culture, implying either complete dependence or inability as in “you’re behaving like children!” In my opinion it is that inquisitiveness of a young person and willingness to ignore conventional wisdom that has empowered adults like Steve Jobs and earlier Bill Gates to revolutionize our use of information technology.

Given that prevailing connotation of the C-word, I can barely recall a time in my own remembrance of my youngest years when I felt either dependent or unable, except perhaps at times when I got caught up in the machinations of the schools I attended and the adults in those institutions that I ceded my native self-direction to. It seems like most of the memories from my thousands of hours sitting behind a school desk have faded due to the irrelevance to who I really was then and am today.

Instead I recall the times from age five on as I mostly directed my own life, including…

* Along with my younger brother Peter, creating my own versions of the real and imagined narratives of history and science fiction (I had experienced in a book, in a movie or on TV) playing with toy figures and building materials in the unfinished basement or the back yard of my family’s small house

* Continuing that sort of play with my best friend who lived across the street and happened to be of the other gender, which I found interesting in terms of differences in our naked bodies, but otherwise pretty insignificant

* Playing baseball or “soldiers” with my neighborhood friends in the park across the street from our house, learning how to compete and collaborate and playing out some of the compelling narratives of sports and war (that tended to create mythology among male people in our culture) that abounded in the adult culture around us

* Taking off on my bicycle across town to the toy store, library, or a friend’s house to do additional “R&D”

* Enjoying being invited to sit in the “way back” seat of our old family station wagon with my brother as our dad just seemed to head out in some random direction on weekend day trips, yet another venue for imaginative journeying in this or even an alien world

* Joining or even starting secret clubs and societies with other kids my age, or spying on or even infiltrating the “other” club or society

* Reading the rules for and playing complicated board games simulating historical conflicts, either with others or solitaire, trying to grasp the strategies, tactics and logistics while coming to grips and some times indulging the fantasized megalomania of the conqueror or the more virtuous courage of the underdog

* Participating in every aspect of mounting theatrical productions with a large group of other youth (with minimal oversight and direction by adults), including adapting the famous and provocative novel, Lord of the Flies, to the stage

In all this I did not feel so much like I was preparing for being a full-blown adult person, for a life to come, but rather just leading my life, already a person with my own interests and objectives. And increasingly, as I grew older as a youth, I had to wrestle with the responsibilities of that personhood in terms of supporting particularly my younger brother and my mom as my mom and dad went through divorce, my dad moving out of the house and eventually out of town, and my mom spiraled into depression and even thoughts of ending her life, but finally recovering and reinventing herself and discovering her full agency as an artist and activist.

Certainly in my youth I had a fair amount of naiveté, particularly in not really appreciating how remarkable my parents’ “libertarian” approach to parenting really was. I recall my mom’s parenting mantra, “Bright kids will tell you what they need!” but I did not appreciate how radical that thinking was, given the prevailing paradigm of kids “behaving like children”.

It is through that lens of my own mostly self-directed youth that I witnessed my own kids charting their development, in school and out, and wrestled with my own role as their parent, either facilitating or retarding that development. It was the bias of my own experience, after our son increasingly seemed diminished and even harmed by being required to go to school, that contributed so much to his mom and I becoming comfortable with pulling him out of school and letting him just live his life instead. (And then later giving that same option to our younger daughter.)

Now over fifty myself, and looking back at the decades of my youth and witnessing the decades of my kids’ youth, I realize how much our culture still discounts the capabilities of our young people to direct their own lives. That said, I acknowledge the privilege of being white and male, and (though growing up in a family of modest means) not having to live in poverty or within a dangerous and kid-unfriendly neighborhood. And that said, I will continue to advocate for an approach to parenting and broader “rules of engagement” between youth and adults that includes more mutual respect while we play our legitimate roles of being of assistance to each other.

Thoughts on Self-Esteem and Respect for Children

Cooper Zale — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:11:49 +0000

A recurring theme in my writing is the quest for self-esteem, particularly by youth, and the positive benefits to individual (and societal) development that flow from achieving and maintaining that self-esteem. There has been a lot of effort in recent decades to focus parenting and educational practice on promoting self-esteem in youth, which I think is a good thing, but is still controversial. Critics of efforts to encourage self-esteem in youth, rightly point out that there have been misguided efforts as well, such as simply telling kids that everything they do is wonderful (which even the kids know is not true), which in my mind encourages narcissism rather than self-esteem. Other critics say that too much self-esteem is a bad thing, turning otherwise respectful kids into insensitive brats.

So is self-esteem a good thing and can you have too much of it? And how does it differ from narcissism?

According to Wikipedia, “narcissism” describes the trait of excessive self-love, based on self-image or ego, derived from the Greek mythology of Narcissus, a handsome Greek youth who rejected the advances of the nymph Echo, and as punishment, was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. In modern usage the term often denotes vanity, conceit, egotism or simple selfishness, or applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.

Again from Wikipedia, they describe several definitions for “self-esteem” including one attributed to social learning theorist Morris Rosenberg that was used in research circles in the mid 1960s that focused simply on a sense of personal worth, which could be indistinguishable from narcissism.

But they also cite another definition, from psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden in 1969, “…the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of happiness”, that is a basic human need that is indispensable to normal and healthy self-development.

This is amplified by American psychologist Abraham Maslow, who described two different forms of esteem, respect from others (including recognition, acceptance, status, and appreciation) and self-respect. According to Maslow, individuals lacking self-esteem will be driven to seek it and unable to grow and obtain self-actualization, that is becoming everything one is capable of becoming.

One of the great challenges I believe each of us faces in modern American society is to rise above the alienation and anonymity that is an undesirable byproduct of many of us:

• Living in large cities where we don’t have a sense of community, and don’t know, or even fear, our neighbors

• Participating in large bureaucratic institutions where who we are as individuals often doesn’t seem to matter

• Being subject to massive social-engineering efforts (within those institutions), including advertising and standardized education, that are designed to improve abstract aggregate metrics of human behavior but may not in fact address our individual needs

In my mind, self-actualization (as the old US Army ad said, being “all that you can be”) is the key to not only rising above this alienation and anonymity but also working, even if only in a small way, to build community where it is currently lacking, humanize institutions, or challenge one-size-fits-all social-engineering efforts. And as Maslow points out, achieving self-actualization requires self-esteem based on self-respect and the respect of others.

As a youth in contemporary society, it is particularly difficult to acquire self-respect or a sense of self-worth, because you have such a limited skill set and limited opportunities to be of value to others. In the agrarian American society of the 18th Century, children were valuable as an extra pair of hands doing chores on the farm, and could derive self-worth and self-respect from that work.

In our contemporary urban society, children contribute nothing economically to society as such, are seldom in a position of being of service to the community, but require a huge expenditure of time and other resources, by family and the larger community, to maintain and develop. It is only if they can navigate their way to adulthood, while developing useful skills along the way, that they can then be a net plus to society. This is not a recipe for self-worth during the pre-adult childhood and adolescence periods.

Add to that a prevailing Calvinist thread in our culture that sees everyone as inherently depraved and in need of developing the humility and respect for God and their “betters”. This cultural thread impacts particularly hard on children who are viewed as the most depraved because they have not yet had the opportunity to develop that humility and respect. So consistent with that cultural thread, the vice-principal at my daughter’s school would say to the students, “You should automatically respect your teachers. You on the other hand need to earn their respect.” This maybe subtle and persistent Calvinism is also not a recipe for kids developing self-worth, self-respect and self-esteem.

So the way I see it, it makes sense that we adults, particularly we politically progressive adults, try to mitigate these things by treating children with respect, whether they have earned it or not, and also give them every opportunity to develop self-respect by contributing to their community and contribute to the institutions, like schools, designed to nurture and bring them into contributory adulthood.

In fact, to isolate our youth from the adult community in schools, which may well reinforce their sense of not having a current (though still perhaps a potential) value to society, seems problematic to me. Isolated as they are from the ability to contribute to others, we compound the problem by requiring them to focus almost solely on their own development, which may be more of a recipe for narcissism than real self-esteem. Then we dole out bits of conditional respect and esteem only if they achieve good grades and exhibit compliant or cooperative behavior, rather than acknowledging their inherent worth and dignity and not applying this crude behavior modification.

I think it is critical that we adults treat our children and youth with respect, based first of all on our belief (Calvin be damned!) in the inherent worth and dignity of every individual, and secondly that our children are the future of our society and culture. What self-respecting adult that is not consumed by narcissism, and believes in helping others, and in promoting the larger human community, would not want to give respect to the next generation?

So what about the Golden Rule, to treat others as you would have them treat you? Was my daughter’s vice-principal applying the Golden Rule when he said that the students are only entitled to respect after they demonstrate respect for their teachers, behave well and demonstrate that they are working hard? It sounds to me more like give me the respect I am due and then you will have the possibility of earning respect yourself.