Finding Parental Balance

I wonder frequently how it came to pass that the role of parenting ceased to be one of guidance and discipline and became one of permissiveness and cheerleading children making adult decisions. In truth, I think that we have been somewhat trained by the psychologists of the 70’s and 80’s whose studies led to discover that the culprit for all evil doings of teenagers and young adults was based on levels of low self-esteem that was generated from harsh forms of discipline like spanking or demeaning put downs, etc.  I’m not denying that these facts are true.  A child of the 60’s, I still fight the mental voices that tell me that I should have learned to type and become a secretary and someone’s wife (one of the messages presented by my parents) even as I exist powerfully and successfully putting out the multiple fires of my very full life of raising teenage girls as a single mom, working, scuplting, writing.  It would have been so easy to have gone that route and wow, would I have been bored!   So it appears that perhaps the parenting paradigm swung a little too far perhaps to the other end of the spectrum and parents became too wishy-washy and easy going, permissive folks simply erring on the side of love and making sure their little ones felt valued and important.  And in some cases, it appears that they seem to believe that they are too important.  I see it frequently as the omnipotent terrors take over restaurants with obnoxious behaviour, ruining the meals of all the patrons.  Their parents seem so ineffective, smiling as they say “Oh Johnny, would you please sit at the table and have one of these lovely french fries….mmmmm?” in a begging tone while dangling the fry as bait.  Who’s in charge in that household, I wonder…the three year old?  I imagine a quick straight-faced “Stop now or we will have to leave” might have more impact.  On those occasions, I have thought to myself that I should bring my bill over to the parents and tell them to cover it since their kids screaming and running around entirely defeated the purpose of relaxation in going out for a meal.