The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new!!

Socrates

Most of the times, we feel frustrated with our children for not being the “good kids” like the old days (which we think, we were during our childhood). I mean, did we dare to talk back to our parents when we were kids. Most of us would agree, we couldn’t. But look at our kids, they can argue at the silliest thing not just with parents but other elders too. And then there is issue of lack of responsibility and motivation. We have to push them for everything. And when we ponder over the reasons, many blame technology, smart phones, broken homes and even working mothers!! Well, it’s true that we can’t pinpoint a single reason as there have been many major changes in the society which contributed to the changes in today’s children.

As discussed by Jane Nelsen, in her book, one major change in the society is that adults no longer give children an example or model of submissiveness and obedience. In earlier generations, there used to be one authoritative figure or family head of each family, and everyone used to obey that person. Outside homes also, the system trained us to obey or submit to authority figures such as boss, teachers and so on, sometimes on the basis of social status, knowledge, age or position. But now the tables have turned, no one is ready to accept a submissive role in life (of course it’s not completely wrong and let’s not get into the argument of right or wrong as every coin has two sides) and children are following the adults around. They also want to be treated with dignity and respect.

Another change is that in the society we live in today, the children don’t get many opportunities to be responsible and motivated. Instead, we as parents believe that it’s our duty to protect our children from all the disappointments, difficulties they encounter as a part of life. This results in an entitlement attitude in children wherein they believe that world owes them something and they always deserve special treatment. This attitude robs them off opportunity to develop capacity to handle the ups and downs of life.

It is important to understand that our kids don’t develop responsibility when parents and teachers are too strict nor do children tend to be responsible when they are too lenient. This is where the kind and firm attitude comes into picture. We will be discussing about how we can achieve this in the upcoming posts.

Small changes eventually add up to huge results.