In the recent film “Parental Guidance,” Artie Decker (Billy Crystal) is a cranky, old-school grandfather with no use for modern parenting. He feels kids today are spoiled and he bickers with his daughter, who believes parents can never go too far when it comes to protecting children, their fragile bodies and their even more fragile self-esteem.
The movie deftly taps into the frustration many grandparents (and quite a few parents) feel these days. They argue that modern parenting is creating a generation of softies, more in touch with their feelings than the often harsh realities of 21st century life.
My own grandmother, who raised five kids in 1950s Passaic, had a phrase that Artie Decker might have liked. She believed children, from time to time, needed to be left alone to fend for themselves — what she called “benign neglect.”
My grandmother was no scholar, but it turns out that she — as well as Artie Decker — might have had a point.
A new wave of provocative research — call it “the new old-school” — suggests we may need to be tougher on our kids. Two new best-selling books, for example, explore the benefits of potentially dangerous behavior and even — gasp! — failure.
Author Paul Tough (Artie Decker would certainly love that name) touched a nerve in 2011 when he published an article in the New York Times Magazine titled: “What if the secret to success is failure?” He argued that a generation of American children has never learned to cope with failure and, thus, lack practical yet essential survival skills.
Tough has since incorporated his research into a much-discussed book, “How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Tough writes that from local classrooms to the federal Education Department, too much emphasis has been placed on standardized test scores, at the expense of “non-cognitive skills.” These skills include endurance and perseverance, and cannot be acquired by answering multiple-choice questions.
One educator told Tough: “People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SATs, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed.”
Tough himself has said: “What I think is important on the road to success is learning to deal with failure, to manage adversity.”
Of course, it’s one thing to acknowledge the benefits of facing adversity. It’s quite another to actually watch your child fail.
Or, for that matter, hurt themselves physically.
If that prospect upsets you, then you might not want to look at Jared Diamond’s new book, “The World Until Yesterday” (Viking Adult). The best-selling author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” Diamond now poses the question (to use his subtitle): “What can we learn from traditional societies?”
Diamond writes: “Individual autonomy, even of children, is a more cherished ideal in hunter-gatherer (societies).” He discusses the Piraha Indians, who don’t believe children need “coddling or special protection.” The children grow up more confident and self-reliant.
One observer adds: “This style of parenting has the result of producing very tough and resilient adults who do not believe that anyone owes them anything.”
No wonder one headline about Diamond’s book declared: “Let your kids play with matches.”
But this toughness comes with a price. A tribe in New Guinea, for example, is filled with adults bearing scars from fires that burned them as children. Others were injured playing with knives and other sharp objects, because parents allowed them the freedom to explore.
Diamond, of course, is not encouraging readers to go out and purchase a set of Ginsu knives for the playpen. Nor are we likely to see play dates suddenly transformed into, say, “failure outings,” in an effort to build “character.”
But what should parents do? Once again, “experts” seem to be sending out mixed messages. Yesterday’s exemplary child-rearing (aka helicopter parenting … self-esteem-building) turns out to be flawed today (let them fail … they’ll thank you for it).
In the end, most parents with their heads screwed on right (which, yes, can seem like a rare breed at times) understand that you need to blend old-school and new-school tactics, regardless of the flavor-of-the-month theories experts might be pushing. There are times when a child’s ego needs to be massaged, but there are also times when only harsh truths and strict guidance will do.
The real challenge is figuring out which, on any given day, is the most effective tactic. And it’s also important to note that if failure is good for kids, it can also be constructive — not to mention inevitable — for parents.
This is probably something my old-school grandmother from Passaic understood decades ago. Too bad no one ever asked her to write a book.
Tom Deignan (tdeignan.blogspot.com) is a writer and teacher who lives in Woodbridge. He is a regular contributor to The Star-Ledger.