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"It was one of those rare nights when both our daughters had sleepovers at friends&amp;#039; houses. My husband, Steve, and I got dressed up and went out to dinner. The restaurant, a pricey local Italian spot with intimate tables, wasn&amp;#039;t exactly family friendly. And yet the party at the table next to ours included a girl, about 6, and a boy who was maybe 8. This gave me pause, but ever optimistic, I settled in and began the important work of deciding between wine and a cocktail. Steve looked handsome across the table. I rubbed his ankle with my toe. This could turn out to be a very good night, I thought happily. My hopes were soon pierced by the boy next to us. He was screeching because his beautiful pasta didn&amp;#039;t taste like Chef Boyardee. The girl meanwhile pli\u00E9d in the tiny space between our tables. The mother cooed, &amp;quot;Sweetie, would you like to sit down now? Honey?&amp;quot; The girl ignored her and then, incredibly, reached into our bread basket and took a roll. The mom shrugged, as if to say, &amp;quot;Gosh-darned kids!&amp;quot; She seemed shocked when, instead of offering a sympathetic smile, I glared at her with rank disgust. Why, I asked myself, would parents take children to this restaurant in the first place? And why would they then sit back as their little darlings proceeded to eat off a stranger&amp;#039;s plate? Who exactly was in charge in that family? If this had been an isolated instance, I wouldn&amp;#039;t be so indignant. But weak-willed, indulgent parents seem to be a national epidemic. Their rotten kids are throwing unchecked tantrums in the supermarket and saying, &amp;quot;What do you mean, you don&amp;#039;t have apple juice?&amp;quot; on playdates. Disney has tapped into the zeitgeist, giving us Hannah Montana, a show that glorifies the star&amp;#039;s brattiness and her doofy father&amp;#039;s permissiveness. I believe most parents recognize that there&amp;#039;s a problem \u2014 and are hungry for solutions. Otherwise, Nanny 911 and Supernanny wouldn&amp;#039;t be such popular shows.  If I were to create my own TV show to teach parents how to wrest back control and raise respectful, self-reliant kids, it would be called You&amp;#039;re Their Parent, Not Their Friend. As long as parents aspire to be &amp;quot;liked&amp;quot; by their kids \u2014 and, consequently, let them off the hook on chores, shrug off bad behavior (ahem, the purloined dinner roll), and shovel unearned praise mountain-high, bratty kids will rule the roost \u2014 and, not incidentally, be ill prepared for real life. Instead of being popular with your kids, it&amp;#039;s time to focus on being respected by them and getting them to do stuff that may not be fun but will benefit them in the long run.  A child&amp;#039;s reaction to this kind of parenting may not be pretty. I speak from experience: I know my daughters \u2014 Maggie, 14, and Lucy, 10 \u2014 love me. But do they like me? When we&amp;#039;re all reveling in Ben Stiller&amp;#039;s comic genius, of course they do. When I force them to redo their homework, wash dishes, and scoop cat litter, I&amp;#039;m sure they think I&amp;#039;m the biggest loser alive. Do I care that they sometimes dislike me or even &amp;quot;hate&amp;quot; me (as Maggie, in the full flower of teenage angst, has stated)? Of course I care. It means I&amp;#039;m doing something right.  Sure, it&amp;#039;s tempting to focus on your kid&amp;#039;s happiness. &amp;quot;A lot of today&amp;#039;s parents feel cheated by their own emotionally distant parents. They aspire to have a closer relationship with their kids,&amp;quot; explains Harvard psychologist Richard Weissbourd, Ed.D., author of The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children&amp;#039;s Moral and Emotional Development. &amp;quot;But you don&amp;#039;t want to overcompensate. The best parenting is loving and close, but also requires that you know when to discipline, create high moral standards, and take responsibility.&amp;quot;  Chore Wars  This style of parenting can bring on more cries of &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re so mean!&amp;quot; than you&amp;#039;re currently used to. Hang tough, says Lynn Schlesinger, a family therapist for 25 years in Summit, NJ: &amp;quot;As the parent, you have to establish codes of behavior and play the bad guy when necessary. For small kids, that means establishing bedtime and table manners. For older kids, it&amp;#039;s homework and chores.&amp;quot;  I&amp;#039;m a big fan of chores and admit to some selfish motivation for making the kids cook and clean like wee Cinderellas. The fact that they benefit from chores is gravy (which, by the way, Maggie can make from scratch). Chores also make a kid appreciative of what she has. If she weren&amp;#039;t making the bed, would she value the cute linens upon it? If she weren&amp;#039;t chopping potatoes, would her dinner taste as satisfying? Many parents I know wouldn&amp;#039;t dream of letting their kids come within 50 feet of a vegetable peeler. To them, that would be like asking dinner guests to devein the shrimp. Friends don&amp;#039;t expect friends to do housework. But parents should expect their children to contribute. One mother told me she thought kids&amp;#039; cleaning their rooms was a waste of time they could better spend cultivating their talents. From what I&amp;#039;ve seen of her kids, their talent is to sulkily click around Facebook. I can think of only one reason BFF parents don&amp;#039;t make their little pals work: Chores don&amp;#039;t make kids happy, and friends are supposed to boost one&amp;#039;s spirits. Forgive me for being a buzzkill but, according to Weissbourd, &amp;quot;Many parents are so focused on their children&amp;#039;s happiness and self-esteem and believe that if a child feels good about herself, she&amp;#039;ll have more to give others. That&amp;#039;s the modern idea, but it&amp;#039;s often not true. Our kids&amp;#039; happiness is clearly important, but if we place that above their respecting us, caring about others, and appreciating what they have, children are less likely to internalize our moral standards, learn empathy, or be grateful. They may grow up thinking their happiness is the priority.&amp;quot; In fact, Weissbourd goes as far as to say, &amp;quot;Chores can be a very helpful aspect of a child&amp;#039;s moral development.&amp;quot; You can point that out while teaching your kid to make her own bed.  The Respect Requirement  Beyond not pulling their own weight, kids today (at least, those in my unscientific sample) have the nasty habit of being rude to their parents. One girl I&amp;#039;m thinking of routinely disses her mom at school events, telling her to &amp;quot;shut up&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;go away.&amp;quot; She once held up an empty cup and said to her mom, &amp;quot;Hello? Refill!&amp;quot; The mom laughed it off, as if her insufferable child was a professional comedian. When this spitfire comes over for a playdate and tries to tell me what to do (&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m hungry. Make me Bagel Bites&amp;quot;), I say to her, &amp;quot;You can pull that crap with your mother, but not with me,&amp;quot; and she starts behaving like a decent kid. The second her mom picks her up? She turns right back into Veruca Salt, of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fame. All the while, Mom keeps laughing, as if she and her girl are snarky best friends. &amp;quot;It is important to let your children criticize you in appropriate ways, just as it&amp;#039;s important to listen to their feedback. But never let your kid be disrespectful to you or others,&amp;quot; advises Weissbourd. &amp;quot;Otherwise, you&amp;#039;re giving her permission to be rude and are failing to transmit your own moral standards.&amp;quot; Why wouldn&amp;#039;t a parent come down hard on a child who&amp;#039;s being bratty? My guess is \u2014 all together now \u2014 it&amp;#039;s the fear of not being liked by her kid. &amp;quot;The irony is that, by not insisting on politeness due to wanting a close, &amp;#039;friendly&amp;#039; relationship with a child, you&amp;#039;re not setting a good example for your child about how to have friendships,&amp;quot; says Weissbourd. Indeed, who wants a bud who says, &amp;quot;Hello? Refill!&amp;quot;? Friends almost never publicly call a pal on rudeness. But parents, if pushed, have to do the dirty work. &amp;quot;Kids need to be taught impulse control and to manage their difficult emotions,&amp;quot; says Weissbourd. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s why discipline is important. You have to punish bad behavior and keep it in check, even though you may be unnerved by your kids&amp;#039; negative emotions.&amp;quot;  My friend Rebecca, the mom of a 6-year-old, can relate: &amp;quot;A few months ago, I picked up Simon at school. I had to say no to a playdate he&amp;#039;d arranged, because he had a doctor&amp;#039;s appointment. He threw a huge tantrum in front of the other kids, parents, and babysitters. It culminated in Simon&amp;#039;s saying, &amp;#039;I hate you!&amp;#039; I said, &amp;#039;If you ever speak to me that way again in public, no candy for a week.&amp;#039; He looked at me in shock; I felt guilty. The whole experience was uncomfortable.&amp;quot;  Sometimes a little embarrassment can be great for child. &amp;quot;A kid should feel some appropriate shame when disciplined,&amp;quot; says Weissbourd. &amp;quot;Make the point that it&amp;#039;s the behavior, not the character of the child, you object to. Cite specific ways the child hasn&amp;#039;t acted well, and suggest a better way of behaving.&amp;quot; Rebecca found that holding her ground worked: &amp;quot;Simon hasn&amp;#039;t said, &amp;#039;I hate you,&amp;#039; or anything remotely close, since.&amp;quot; The Praise Patrol  While politeness matters, teaching self-reliance is, in my book, the ultimate goal of parenting. And the only way to learn this skill is by doing things for yourself, and then learning to improve on what you&amp;#039;ve done. So many parents seem to forget that and want to give their kids an easy way out. At a school science fair last spring, I couldn&amp;#039;t help but notice the disparity between the fourth graders who had made their own poster boards and those who&amp;#039;d had their parents do neat, perfectly spelled work for them. God knows it&amp;#039;s easier to zip through a kid&amp;#039;s biology project with him watching gratefully rather than suffer through the frustration of teaching him, step by agonizing step, how to label a DNA molecule. But while a friend does what&amp;#039;s easy, a parent does what&amp;#039;s right. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s essential to give a truthful appraisal of a child&amp;#039;s work and then step back,&amp;quot; says Susan Sherkow, M.D., a psychiatrist for children and adults in New York City. &amp;quot;Kids need to make the connection between putting in hard effort and receiving rewards. If a child hasn&amp;#039;t done a task well, let him know, and encourage him by saying, &amp;#039;Next time, you&amp;#039;ll do better; here&amp;#039;s how,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says Sherkow. Telling your kid that his so-so effort is a fabulous and amazing stroke of sheer genius (and then perhaps &amp;quot;tweaking&amp;quot; it before he hands it in) isn&amp;#039;t doing anyone any favors. Here&amp;#039;s how Judith Rich Harris, an expert in developmental psychology and author of The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, puts it: &amp;quot;Parents can tell a child she&amp;#039;s beautiful and brilliant, but if she later discovers that they are wrong \u2014 that people outside her family don&amp;#039;t think she&amp;#039;s beautiful, or that others are smarter than she is \u2014 her self-esteem will adjust to that reality.&amp;quot; In the meantime, your word loses value. And no one wants to be thought of as a liar, especially by her own kids. When you critique your kids&amp;#039; efforts or otherwise fail to gush, you may feel like you&amp;#039;re stomping on their self-esteem versus shoring it up. Fear not, says Weissbourd: &amp;quot;Corrupt CEOs and dictators can have plenty of self-esteem. But do they have high moral standards? Are they empathetic? The self-esteem movement is taking us in the wrong direction. Feeling good about yourself is often not what leads to doing good.&amp;quot;  I was raised in the 1970s by a largely absent father and a neurotic mom who, in her ferocious plotting to get me to lose weight (&amp;quot;to feel better about yourself,&amp;quot; she said), all but called me fat and lazy. She eroded my self-esteem to a raw nub. And yet here I sit, emotionally stable and quite confident about my morals and abilities. It&amp;#039;s not easy to accept or believe, but some experts claim parents have no long-term effects on a child&amp;#039;s self-esteem. No matter how much praise you heap on a child, one day he will be tested by the world and will have to assess his own worth based on his accomplishments. As a mother, I see the truth in this: When Maggie makes honor roll, she knows it was all her doing. When Lucy takes the lead and &amp;quot;talks it out&amp;quot; with a difficult classmate, she&amp;#039;s proud of herself for fixing a problem.  Some of my friends may think I should sugarcoat life a bit more for my kids; I&amp;#039;m not about to change. Schlesinger warms my heart when she says, &amp;quot;It can be a challenge, day to day, to make and enforce unpopular decisions. But you have to think long-term. Parenting isn&amp;#039;t a sprint. It&amp;#039;s a marathon. Some days are fun and games; others are discipline and chores. Respect has to be the constant.&amp;quot; That sounds just right to me: I know in my core that my style of parenting will teach the girls the life skills they need, especially the ability to find self-esteem from within, to treat other people with respect \u2014 and to do their own laundry. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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