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Jewish World Review March 12, 2008 / 5 Adar II 5768 When it comes to obedience, mom nails it By Marybeth Hicks
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
There I sat in the nail salon, wondering just exactly what my nail technician and her co-workers were chatting about in their native Vietnamese (assuming, neurotically, it was me) when I saw something I haven't seen in a long time.
I saw an exhibition of great parenting. It was a simple thing, really, but one that has become remarkably rare.
A young mom was seated across from my spot at the U-shaped manicure bar. Her little girl — a preschooler of about 4 — had been waiting patiently for her mom to be finished. After a while, she wandered across the salon to the pedicure chairs and started rolling empty seats to and fro.
The young mom called quietly, "Lindsay, come back here." Lindsay didn't come. In fact, she looked right at her mom and then rolled a chair even farther.
Right now you're probably thinking, "Here comes the negotiation." That's what I was thinking, anyway. It's what typically comes next — mom repeats her request, daughter escalates her noncompliance, mom makes a ridiculous idle threat that her child doesn't believe ("Come back here before they make you wash all the chairs with a toothbrush"), the child still doesn't respond, mom threatens to get out of her seat, the child still doesn't respond ... you can imagine the scene, I'm sure. We've all seen it a thousand times.
Get ready, though, because you won't believe what actually happened next. That young mom did something I haven't seen in a while.
She got up.
Up.
As in, out of her seat.
I kid you not.
That mom didn't call across the room and ask a second time for compliance. She didn't beg, bribe or plead. She didn't make an idle threat. She didn't even shoot the child a menacing glance.
She just got up out of her seat.
It was a thing of beauty. I'm getting emotional just recalling the moment.
That mom is teaching her daughter an old-fashioned behavior standard, one that has gotten a bad rap for a long time: obedience. Not just obedience, but first-time obedience.
In our culture, obedience has come to suggest a strident, militaristic parenting style. Someone somewhere decided that expecting children to obey smacks of a Stepford existence. Children should be allowed to make choices (lots of them, in fact) and among those should be the choice to cooperate with a parent's request. Rather than demand obedience, we have been encouraged by parenting experts to employ creative parenting strategies to get our children to cooperate.
Cooperation is a lovely notion, but it puts the power squarely in the hands of a child. When children have the power to decide whether to comply with our requests, some very important folks have no power: the adults asking children make their beds or pick up their rooms or be home before midnight.
This is why we have a nation of children who believe they don't have to do what they're told unless it suits them. Just ask any schoolteacher how she feels about the ramifications of this doozie of a "creative parenting strategy."
I would like obedience to make a comeback. Obedience is a good thing. It doesn't make for huffy, unloving families — quite the opposite. A household in which children obey their parents is one where affection and fun abound because families don't spend all their time trying to manipulate each other.
Nail Salon Mom obviously gets this, and because she does, she'll raise a daughter who is both safer and better behaved than most of the children she knows.
Nail Salon Mom also gets that the only way to extract obedience from a 4-year-old is to exert some effort. It didn't take anger, exasperation, frustration or a "creative parenting strategy." It just took her commitment to be the best mom she could be and to expect the best from her daughter.
I would have applauded that mom right then and there if it wouldn't have smudged my nails.
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JWR contributor Marybeth Hicks, a wife of 20 years and mother of four children, lives in the Midwest. She uses her column to share her perspective on issues and experiences that shape families nationwide. To comment, please click here.
© 2008, Marybeth Hicks | |||||||||||||
