I needn’t cite all the concepts, premises, and techniques that the education establishment has concocted and parents copy in the name of improving self-esteem. If it’s being done to improve self-esteem, odds are great it is wrong. (For example, grades and trophies given for participation rather than accomplishments and adequacies rather than excellence.)
Parents and teachers misunderstand self-esteem and self-image, and it leads to much adult wrongheadedness. They try to improve the self-esteem of kids, but they can’t. (It tampers with self-image, and they don’t know it. See #735.)
Adults try to make kids feel good by gifting and praising for good intentions or just trying. Immediate feel-goods are not the same as inflating self-esteem. When it doesn’t produce the desired results, the adults try harder to no avail.
· They seek to provide incentive for greater effort by the child next time. But they teach that immediate gratification follows effort alone, which produces an unsatisfied adult in the business world.
· Indulging children to improve their self-esteem goes beyond ineffectiveness, it goes against human nature.
· Rewards or praise for trying sells the idea that good intentions are good enough. It sells parents the idea that they are doing all that is required of them, plus the success of their giving rewards them. They easily convince themselves that they do the right thing.
· Providing unearned gifts and praise does not uplift a child’s self-esteem, which is hardwired and unchangeable. On the contrary, it leads to a boy’s disrespect for givers, and a boy’s love rises from respect. For girls, such symbols ultimately become stressful in their relationship with givers.
· Unearned gifts and praise produce cognitive dissonance aka mental noise that confuses the child. Its conscious mind works to clear opposing beliefs. The simplest way concludes that the well-intentioned adults are wrong, which means respect for adults declines.
· In the end, the only benefits accrue to the adults. They make themselves feel good by recognizing, giving, and pleasing.
All done with good intentions, but the outcomes damage the immature psyche, worsen life for adults, and weaken society for all. That’s because the well-intended things they do slow or prevent development of self-image (#735).
7 Comments
11/07/2009 at 11:50 am
Great post Guy. The toughest teachers in school are often the most respected. If their toughness and disciplinary methods push the students to excel more than the students believed they could, the respected teacher becomes a very loved teacher!
11/08/2009 at 12:21 am
Outstanding post! It should be required reading for all parents. Benjamin Spock did us no favor by his revolutionary approach to child-rearing.
Thank you, Doc.
We followed Spock’s teachings with first child. Fortunately, we transitioned by questioning and dropping Spock with the second boy. Then, we did alright with the third boy. Our adult family relationships firmly attest to the stupidity of Spock’s methods.
Guy
11/08/2009 at 12:02 pm
Spock lost me at his advice to let babies “cry it out”. I ignored Spock, carried my babies everywhere, they wore me ragged and I love almost every minute of it.
Spock says, when they’re babies, let them cry their sweet little hearts out when they are lonely at bedtime, then when they get older, give them fake praise to show your love and train them-as if the kid’s going to believe you love them, at that point! It makes no sense at all.
11/08/2009 at 9:52 pm
I wonder if Spock was hired by the inventor of Public Relations to help mother assist in tearing down the family unit………
Hmmmm I’ll see if there is any association between Spock and Frueds late cousin who helped develop Propoganda………
11/08/2009 at 11:32 pm
Some might say Spock was an agent for the illuminati…but…that’s another website.
11/15/2009 at 4:50 pm
… Is it really thought Rita? Feminism is also sponsored by the illuminati……. it’s all connected in an intricate web woven in throughout the social fabric of America.
11/15/2009 at 5:07 pm
I agree. I’m glad I listened to my heart (and God) when my kids were little. My own mother thought I should leave my kids in their cribs more and let them cry and wondered why I didn’t buy a play PEN for them so I could pen them in while I did housework etc. I had to defend my wish to stay home, breastfeed them and mother them even to their own father. I have paid a high price financially and relationally to do what I did, but I wouldn’t change a thing except maybe to have prayed more and read my bible more so I would have had more strength.