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March 8, 2006 |
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Generation gaps. Not
hair, not music — OK, maybe it’s a little bit about locks, hip-hop and tats
— but when it comes to the geezer generation’s inability to understand what
in the world is going on with the under-40 set, start with the
timeout-school-of-child-discipline currently in vogue with today’s parents. As some learned philosopher pointed out years ago, there is no easier job in the world than raising someone else’s kids. It’s also true today’s dads are light years ahead of my generation when it comes to husbandly responsibility in child rearing. Hard as it is for us granddads to believe, today’s husbands are involved in bath time, reading bedtime stories and heating formula even during the most exciting moments of ESPN programming. Even more shocking is today’s husbands actually seem accustomed to changing dirty diapers without throwing a fit. The concept of timeout in the disciplinary schooling of today’s toddlers could not be more foreign to those of us who thought we had become enlightened by forgoing spanking. Child discipline of today seems more about negotiation. “Either stop or you’re going into timeout. Now I’m going to count to three, are you listening? Three, two, I said are you listening? Now, unless you want to go into time-out, you’d better listen. I’m counting, three, two, did you hear me?” The whole drill has more countdown interruptions than a Cape Canaveral space shot. Being Example A of the males in my generation, I profess no insight into a better way of child discipline than the timeout. What did I ever know about child discipline? In the midst of a three-year-old’s meltdown I once offered up the bromide, “If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about!” My wife, in the usual quiet, understated manner wives possess, responded, “Not to start an argument by stating the obvious, but for all appearances, one would assume she feels she already has something to cry about.” Like you can argue with that? I did what nearly any red-blooded American male would do and turned up the volume on the basketball game. Cranking up the sound during emotional distress, it should be noted, is not a good way to ensure marital harmony. Whether the theories of generations past from Dr. Spock, T. Berry Brazelton or Rudolph Dreikurs and his “Children the Challenge” were better or worse than today’s timeout school of thought is highly debatable. The child-rearing guru of the moment seems to be the “Super Nanny,” she of the “naughty step.” The “Super Nanny,” aka Jo Frost, has boiled effective parenting down to 10 rules made up of 11 words. Most would agree the world of rearing toddlers is a bit more complex than that. A few years back on a flight from Dallas to Denver, a Texas mom said to her screaming, out-of-control 3-year-old, “Jimmy, if you don’t quiet down you’re going into timeout just as soon as we get back home from our ski trip next week.” And somewhere over Amarillo she started counting, “Three, two, Jimmy, are you listening?” By the time we touched down at DIA, it was everybody else on the plane who needed a timeout, not Jimmy. There was also a lot of rethinking going on about the spanking issue. At least where little Jimmy was concerned. |
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