Comments are welcome. I expect that I may get some agreement from older readers and that I'll get pie in the face from the younger ones, who will no doubt see this as yet another example of the traditional geezer complaint that the younger generation is going to hell in a handbasket.
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Rich Turner (The Curmudgeon Himself)

I'm reluctant to admit it, but I saw similar tendencies among my grandchildren when they accompanied us on our vacation (that's partly what prompted me to write the article). Naturally, I feel that my grandchildren are better behaved than most kids are. Since we often get comments in restaurants at how well behaved these three boys are (even when I think they have not been especially good), there may be some objective basis for this feeling. However, sometimes I think that they are "good" only in comparison to the phartlings who run rampant in public with no discipline whatsoever.

I do think that our daughter and son-in-law try very hard to exercise control and enforce discipline. Our daughter wasn't raised to get her own way all the time. She still vividly remembers how she was forcibly removed by us from a restaurant the first time she had a tantrum in a public place. She wasn't wacked or yelled at, just picked up, carried out, and indelibly impressed with the fact that she had ruined a special occasion for everyone. She never did it again. Her husband, too, can be strict, partly because, as a middle-school teacher, he gets a steady dose of fallout from other parents' unruly kids. He knows firsthand how lack of discipline in the home affects kids' opportunity to learn in school.

Nevertheless, I see some tendencies among our three grandsons that concern me, and I'm in a tough spot. Grandpa doesn't want to come across as the bad guy, and it certainly doesn't contribute to family harmony when I try to tell my kid how to raise her kids. Still, sometimes enough is enough. At one point during the vacation, I had utterly had it with the way the boys butted in on every adult conversation. When I mentioned it, the oldest of the three would say, "Sorry" – but three minutes later he was doing the same thing again.

I eventually initiated a family discussion of the problem. I think that our daughter and son-in-law saw, sort of, what my point was, but I came away with the impression that they were as frustrated as I was with this ongoing habit of butting in. Part of it is caused by sibling rivalry (vying for attention), and I couldn't say anything useful there because our daughter was raised as an only child. However, it is worth noting that neither I nor my wife was raised as an only child, and our parents somehow taught us that children must not do this.

I can explain my parents' success in conveying this message (and my own child's inability to do the same) partly on the basis one difference: social standards. I think that my wife and I learned how to zip our lips not only because our parents taught us that but also because our peers learned the same thing from their parents. As I say in my article, it was the way things were. If my grandchildren's peers aren't learning self-restraint from their parents (my daughter's and son-in-law's peers), it has to be tough for my daughter and son-in-law to impose rules that no other kids seem to be following. As the saying goes, it takes a village – but the village rule-makers nowadays are apparently unruly children. Something is definitely wrong when the village "elders" are the kids.
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Rich Turner (The Curmudgeon Himself)

When we'd start tapping on her, my mom was usually talking with my dad or another adult or maybe was on the phone. The tapping was our only way to alert her that we had something "important" to say. Too often that important thing was "I want another cookie" or "Where's my other shoe?" and not "The house is on fire" or "I think I just broke my arm. Is that a bone sticking out?"

I'm sure the relentless tapping annoyed her as much as it annoyed me years later. In lieu of the tapping, and since I had been a teacher, I taught my two children to raise a hand if they had something to say while I was talking with other adults and raise both hands if what they had to say was Very Important. It worked.

I am surprised every time a near-teen holds a door for me. And amazed when a teen does it. It does happen, occasionally. Some parents chide their children for using their "outdoor voices" inside the library, telling them to use their "indoor voices" instead; others don't. Many children under three feet tall run everywhere, even in buffet restaurants that offer soup, and their parents do not make the children stay at the table, let alone insist that the children sit down.

Not just "around here," Pogo – everywhere! This self-esteem balderdash has become a mantra of the educationists, and it drives me raving nuts. It may be reinforced by parents who don't want their little darlings to be criticized for anything, lest the criticism damage their fragile egos, but it is almost an article of faith in the educational establishment that one must never say anything negative to a student or about a student's work because that destroys his or her self-esteem.

Johnny acts up in the classroom, but the worst than can happen to him is that he is told (gently, of course) to go to what one school I know of calls the AAC (Attitude Adjustment Center), where he is greeted with smiles and cajolery and can hang out with other hooligans. To punish him by sending him to detention and make him suffer a bit by doing homework (or at least being quiet for an hour) would supposedly shatter his ego. Jane is failing every subject, but she must be promoted to the next grade at the end of the year because doing otherwise would separate her from all her friends and thus irreparably damage her self-esteem.

Could anyone remind parents and educators alike that there is such a thing as healthy self-esteem and false self-esteem? Healthy self-esteem is a belief in one's capabilities, based on real accomplishments. Unhealthy self-esteem is the belief that one is entitled to praise (and should never be criticized) simply because one has blessed the world with one's presence. The latter leads to feelings of entitlement, the conviction that one should be rewarded no matter what one does or does not do.

I know what happens to students in my college class who are brimming with false self-esteem: they fail. They so stridently believe in their own false image of their abilities that they don't work. When they are constructively criticized, they take instant umbrage and feel that they are being picked on, rather than examine whether any of the criticism is justfied and, if so, do something about it. They do not learn anything at all, and their failure reflects this fact. On the other hand, those who are most self-critical do very well. Among these, some are actually too hard on themselves; they underestimate their abilities and achievements. These are the students who need encouragement and an occasional shot of self-esteem, but one does no favors to the false self-esteem crowd by reinforcing their faulty image and passing them.

Parents and teachers do not help kids by inflating their egos. They set them up for failure later on.
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Rich Turner (The Curmudgeon Himself)

I was a child before, in Mudge terms, things started going to hell in a handbasket, and clearly (very clearly!) remember that when I was taken aside and administered an Ivy League job (a strap across the butt) it was humiliating. But I knew I had that humiliation coming because I had acted in some anti-social manner which, by the way, involved lack of true self-esteem. It left neither emotional nor physical scars, but made me reflect on the error of my way and what would happen to my “self-esteem” again should I be recidivistic. I could ignore advice, but couldn’t ignore momentary pain and embarrassment. When I heeded what was taught in the first place, there was no harsh consequence. So I paid attention, one way or the other, and learned how properly to get along in human society. Now I can say I have real self-esteem. I observed at the same time that some other kids, who were given much and controlled little, wound up with serious and lasting situations that I didn’t experience. It always seemed to me that much of our current state began when the Depression and WWII ended and so many people said, “I want my children to have all the things I didn’t have, and now I can give them everything.” And they often did end up with a lot of things the parents didn’t have: the problems mentioned in the first paragraph.

There was a strong statement on the first page of the book in an ethics course, “People are animals and must learn to behave like animals.” Some of the class answered the T or F quiz on that incorrectly back then, and I’m sure most would now. The sentence contains in its meaning the fact that we are not some extraterrestrial beings who come with a completely developed and unfailing sort of intelligence. We need training. We don’t start out life with sense enough to just naturally be little angels. I wonder whether a wildlife videographer might think that some other animals do a better job of child rearing.

Younger adults don’t have the experience to realize how far down American society has gone in fifty years because of diminished parental and school control and the resultant decline in self-discipline and respect. Paul Harvey has often said, “Self-government won’t work without self-discipline,” and our personal freedoms, independence, principles, backbone, and quality of life have gradually been replaced with “rights” without corresponding responsibilities, in an environment of antisocial behavior leading to disorder, stress, excessive government, mistrust, paranoia, and fear. Libraries were once quiet and orderly, and the area around a hospital was a “Quiet Zone.” Public buildings were clean and neat. I visited my old alma mater and was aghast at the mess in a hall carpet caused by people spitting gum and slopping drinks on it while waiting at an elevator. Restaurants didn’t used to be turned into hog lots by the customers. A lot of folks never locked their doors and wouldn’t have had “security” lights if they had been invented. There was no such term as “road rage.” People hitchhiked, or picked up hitchhikers at low risk. There was alcohol and tobacco but drugs were only read about. Most schoolboys proudly carried pocket knives, having trouble only if they were switchblades. If one miscreant had his knife taken away for carving his desk, no one else suffered. Now we see that a kid can be expelled for picking up a plastic knife found on the school ground. I personally know a man who was marched to the airport security office because he had the image of a gun on his belt buckle. Paranoia. Overreaction to fear, because everyone is a suspect for misbehavior. Yet one never knows what a real emergency some fool will cause in the airplane over some dissatisfaction. I recall a classmate in grade school bringing for show and tell an old revolver his father had found hidden in a wall. No problem! It was just interesting! No SWAT team! No media guineas! And I personally carried a handgun to a college speech class for use in a talk on safety with impunity, because students never threatened or shot anyone. Maybe things were bad in some inner cities, but not in most of America. I used to walk in a larger city at night. I hesitate to drive a car there now! No one can feel safe anywhere, and may get into serious trouble for injuring a criminal while defending himself. I could go on, but have said enough. There’s more to our troubles than just kids being brats.

(P.S.: Mudge, I never walked 5 miles to school in bad weather, but I surely walked home that way when I missed the bus while doing time after school because of being a slow learner in the behavioral area. Made time for reflection.)

Rather than challenging the flock to "study to show yourself approved" it's "how to be richer, happier, more self-fullfilled, etc. etc." It seems that the prevailing attitude is to eschew anything that requires mental exercise. Some of the material I read is difficult even to the point of being tedious. But I've learned that at some point it clicks and I find myself greating enriched by what I've waded through. It's not "Mc-theology" and I'm afraid that's what many of the younger adults, and consequently their offspring, want.