Wasn’t there a song once, “Parents don’t let your kids grow up to be cowboys”? Is that because cowboys do whatever they want? Because they grow up rebellious?
They used to be rebelling against over-controlling or absentee parents. Researchers call it authoritarian (high control, low nurture) and neglectful (low control, low nurture) parenting. The last one can be parents who are there but not engaged. Often because they weren’t taught how to engage. Both types were coming from what was given them, they just didn’t know how to parent and didn’t know how to get help. Often men say, “Well, I turned out ok, so they will too.” When their kids and wives are saying to themselves Uh, you are not ok!
Those are the two most undesirable forms of parenting. The other two are the most desirable. Best is authoritative–High control, high nurture, second best is permissive–low control, high nurture, according to the study done by the University of Minnesota, (one of the leaders in education).
It’s hard to look at ourselves, but it is really important. How are you inside? We are all products of where we came from; no, you won’t be perfect, but you could be interested, communicating, present and strong enough to set limits and hold them.
I’ve said before that boundaries make a kid secure. They constitute fences that the child or teen can push against and know they won’t move. It makes the child feel loved. Someone cares enough to stand up and fight with me and for me–my true self. That means a parent has to be strong.
What has inspired this blog on parenting, yet again, is kids programming. The shows that I see movie trailers and previews for are scary for values. They are rude and crude, not to mention they move too fast and are too loud and too bright. That was my experience of kids TV with my grandsons a couple of years ago. Nickelodeon, and another I don’t remember now, were really bad for that. After watching it for 2 hours in a motel room with them I felt like I had ADD or ADHD–way over-stimulated, exhausted and a little crazy. But the rudeness in all the shows was really objectionable and supposed to be funny. It wasn’t funny at all.
I was telling my daughter about it and she said that is why she never lets them watch those. I was glad to hear it.
This week my husband and I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy just for something fun. Someone had told me it was light and fun, and her value system is pretty close to mine, so we went for a fun date. It was pretty much like kids programming–loud and flamboyant, rude and crude. It took me a while to figure out what the values encased in it were. Here’s what I came out with: the galaxy is full of a bunch of bad dudes of various colors and ugliness, all fighting each other, and Ego describes himself as “a god little g” who seems to be good but ends up wanting to make everything like him, and so has to be destroyed, and the bad guys turn out to be good guys in the end–that was a little troubling. Their saving grace was caring about others. So not terrible, but there wasn’t much value on life. One of the “good” characters says, Let’s go see if he’s for real and if not, we’ll just kill him.” Some of the dialogue is pretty rough and a lot of killing. And at first I thought they were saying evil is good and good is evil, but then decided it was–not everything is what it seems.
I wonder how I will feel if my grandsons went to see it and liked it. I guess I would want to know what they liked about it. The guardians of the Galaxy certainly aren’t someone I would want as role models for them! As I said last week, it seems our country is getting a lot more rude and crude.