VIII. Points for discussion.

1. Do you agree that children would be less unruly if they let the steam

off on the playgrounds and in the parks?

2. Can surroundings and upbringing explain why certain people from the

same family develop in very different ways? Can you explain why it

happens?

3. Do many children use behavioural disorder as a cover for their

misconduct?

4. Why does Miss Nomer use rude language when she shares her

impressions about problem kids?

5. Is it accidental that the number of children with an autistic spectrum

disorder is on the increase?

6. What is the journalist’s point in writing this article?

Permissiveness: “a beautiful idea that didn’t work?”

Recent fads in childcare are on the way out as parents reassert their control over offspring. Results, many families find, are gratifying.

At the Thermally Institute in Chicago, a small child from a “permissive” home was gently but firmly admonished by an adult for misbehaving. The youngest soberly conceded the point without a whimper – and her parents, watching behind a one-way window from the next room, were amazed. “I can’t believe it,” the father said, shaking his head. “My kid is learning to behave without kicking and screaming in the process.” It was a typical session at the institute, which is teaching about 400 children a year to overcome the effects of too much permissiveness at home.

A nationwide revival of interest in parental authority and responsibility is only one of many developments that underline the growing worry over the health and future of the American family. Sociologists, psychiatrists and other scholars are warning that a return to stability in national life cannot be achieved without a strong family base. More and more, too, critics are zeroing in on the home – not society – as the source of troublesome youngsters.

Parents of juvenile criminals are sometimes finding themselves on the receiving end of multimillion-dollar damage suits brought by the families of the victims. Some communities are experimenting with the idea of holding parents responsible for paying the costs of vandalism committed by their children.

Recently the president of the National Education Association announced that educators are tired of taking the blame for declining achievement in classrooms, when much of the root cause is lack of support and motivation in the home. He said: “we must ask: Why are we seeing more of such students? And what is happening to families and homes in this era of increased mobility and single-parent split homes?”

Alarming statistics reinforce skepticism about the way the American family is functioning. One out of every six American children is living with only one or neither. Half the mothers of school age children are in the work force. Between 1970 and 1975, about 41 per cent of all Americans aged five and changed residency, often moving to another neighborhood or city.

Beyond the statistical data are other factors that many see as putting new strains on family solidarity and stability. Among them the intrusion of alien values into the home through television, and-as much as anything else- the rise of permissive theory of child rearing that became popular in recent decades through the writings of Dr. Benjamin Spock and others. This theory was critical of punishment in any room, or denial of rewards to disobedient children. Parents, instead, were encouraged to discuss problems with their youngsters, relying on persuasion rather than punishment.

Some family and child specialists retain their faith in the “liberated child” philosophy. For instance, Dr. E. Gerald D., head of the child and adolescent outpatient clinic at New York Hospital, says young people are “no longer in the dark as they were50 years ago.” “He adds: “they know what goes on, I think they are great – exciting and stimulating. One of the reasons that adults don’t like them is that they don’t know their place’ as they did 100 years ago, or even 20 years ago.”

Now many family advisers are to downgrade enthusiasm for other popular trends such as raising children in communes or with one parent only.

Dr. Dennis G. of the outpatient clinic at the University of Chicago Medical School says: “A child needs two loving parents. When one parent is absent, physically or emotionally the child can develop grate difficulties.”

The renewed emphasis on old methods has created many problems for parents attuned to philosophy of the recent past in some cases, a whole program of re-education has been necessary.

At Chicago’s Theraplay Institute, parents are encouraged to learn from the work of professional therapists. Ann J., director of Therapla, advocate that children should be raised with definite rules and limits in the household, or they may become confused and unhappy, unable to set controls on themselves. “A family is not a democracy,” she adds. “Children need a time to be babied, a time to be told how to live, and a time to be loved physically before they are ready to behave as adults.”

Her recommendation: that» parents are the meanest mom and dad on the block with rules, and the most loving mom and dad on the block with playful physical activity”

That advice is echoed by many other counselors and scholars, some of whom condone occasional resort to “paddling” the recalcitrant child when all else fails. Many children, themselves, seem to be that permissiveness is not the sole culprit in parental shortcomings. Many parents often are found to be too strict with their children, imposing harsh rules without much thought to a particular youngster’s needs. Power-income parents, harassed by outside pressures, and to give low priority to time spent playing with their youngsters or simply listening to them. Nor is a return to authoritative households seen as likely, by it, to solve the disarray in today’s families.

What is needed, counselors say, are broad-scale adjustments in social and economic institutions to provide support for family stability. As more and more parents place their toddlers in day care centers or nursery schools, such agencies are being called on to provide for parental participation on a regular basis to keep each child’s family in the picture. Day-care centers provide by employers for children of working mothers have not taken hold in America as rapidly as in Europe.

Even so, counselors say, children can benefit visibly from visits to the offices or factors where their parents work. Understanding more about their elders’ activities is described as an effective way of bridging the gaps that exist between the two generations.

Another major effort involves better preparation of teenagers and young adults for parental responsibilities and children’s needs. One approach: the home and family classes for high-school student, now being offered increasingly by school system across the country.

Some experts say that help may be coming from another factor – the tendency of today’s young people to marry and bear children at later ages than in the past. This, the reasoning goes, could produce parents who are more mature and better able to meet the responsibilities of child rearing than their parents were.

Even so, some scholars warn, changes within the family cannot achieve the needed stability and effectiveness in child rearing without support from outside institutions.

In the past, some critics feel, schools, courts and institutions were all too willing to take on responsibilities once those of the family, as evidenced by the growth of counseling, psychiatric programs and nursery schools.

Now, they believe, the time has come for outside institutions to search for ways to support the family in carrying out its functions, not take them over. Says Sam L., a youth co-ordinator for the probate court in Pontiac, Mich.: “what we’re seeing is a recognition that the courts, and perhaps the schools, have accepted a lot more responsibility for raising youngsters than they should have. Now we’re moving back from that.”

SET WORK

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