Kids & Culture Alert!

Welcome to Kids & Culture Alert! This bimonthly e-newsletter explores essential issues for parents and educators on the powerful influence of popular culture on children. Kids & Culture Alert! has two goals. Frist, to increase awareness and understanding, and provide strategies for parents and educators to help children resist the intense, unrelenting, and unhealthy impact of popular culture on their development. Second, to offer deep insights, useful information, and practical tools to raise value-driven, successful, and happy children.

Kids & Culture Alert! is adopted from Dr. Taylor’s books, Positive Pushing: How to Raise a Successful and Happy Child (learn more) and Your Children are Under Attack: How Popular Culture is Destroying Your Kids’ Values, and How You Can Protect Them (learn more).

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Previous Issues of Kids & Culture Alert!

Contingent vs. Independent Children

July, 2008

One of your most important goals as a parent is to raise children who become independent and self-reliant people. Certainly, in early development, your children count on you. As infants, they rely on you for nourishment, cleaning, and mobility. As your children grow, they become more self-reliant in these basic areas of living, but still depend on you for love, protection, guidance, and support. As your children reach adolescence and move toward adulthood, they become less reliant on you and gain greater independence in all aspects of their lives. This process of separation prepares your children for the demands of adulthood. But this progression toward adulthood is not inevitable and is often stymied by well-intentioned, but misguided, parents.

Contingent Children

Contingent children are dependent on others for how they feel about themselves. Some parents want to foster this dependence. These parents act on their own needs for power and use control and coercion to ensure that they remain the dominant forces in their child’s life. Contingent children can be recognized in the following ways:

• Depend on others to provide them with incentive to achieve.
• Depend on others for their happiness because they have no ownership of their lives and little responsibility for their own thoughts, emotions, and actions.
• Reinforced without appropriate rewards and limits, and regardless of their behavior.
• Poor decision makers because their parents hold the belief that they always know what is best and make decisions without soliciting their children’s.

Independent Children

Independent children differ from contingent children in several essential ways. If your children are independent, you have provided them with the belief that they are competent and capable of taking care of themselves. You offered them the guidance to find activities that are meaningful and satisfying. You gave your children the freedom to experience life fully and learn its many important lessons. Independent children can be recognized in the following ways:

• Intrinsically motivated because they are allowed to find their own reasons to achieve.
• Were given the opportunity and guidance to explore achievement activities of their own choosing.
• Parents who use extrinsic rewards appropriately and sparingly.
• Collaborative rather than a controlled relationship with their parents in which the children’s ideas and wishes are solicited and considered.
• Good decision makers because they were allowed to consider various options and, with the support and guidance of their parents, make their own decisions.

Parent and Children Responsibilities

At the heart of whether you will be raising a contingent or independent child is that you understand the essential responsibilities that you and your child need to accept. Taylor’s Law of Family Responsibilities states that if family members fulfill their own responsibilities and do not assume others’, then children develop into independent people and everyone is happy.

Your Responsibilities

Your responsibilities revolve primarily around providing your children with the opportunity, means, and support to pursue their goals. The psychological means include providing love, guidance, and encouragement in her efforts. The practical means include ensuring that your child has the materials needed, proper instruction, and transportation, among other logistical concerns.

Your Children’s Responsibilities

Your child’s responsibilities relate to doing what is necessary to maximize the opportunities that you give them. These responsibilities include giving their best effort, being responsible and disciplined, staying committed, and giving an achievement opportunity a realistic try, as well as, completing all tasks and exercises, getting the most out of instruction, being cooperative, and expressing appreciation and gratitude for others’ efforts.

Types of Contingent Children

I have been identified five types of contingent children. All of the them are created in similar ways. Children develop a particular contingent style depending on their temperament and that of their parents.

Pleasers

Pleasers will do everything they can to get the love and attention they crave. Pleasers may often be perceived as model children who are successful and exceptionally giving to others. Yet in pleasing others, they often neglect their own needs and, as a result, are unfulfilled and unhappy.

Disappointers

Disappointers are nonachievers who never live up to expectations. They are usually bright and demonstrate promise in a number of areas, for example, they often score highly on IQ and achievement tests, yet they rarely accomplish anything. Disappointers relieve the pressure they feel from their parents by simply not trying. Disappointers avoid their parents’ expectations by sabotaging themselves, for example, with lack of effort or avoidance of the achievement activity, or significant problem behavior such as drug use or criminal misconduct.

Reactors

Reactors do the exact opposite of whatever their parents want them to do. Parents often interpret this behavior as independence, but in actuality, Reactors are highly dependent on their parents, in a paradoxical way. Reactors feel controlled by their parents and feel powerless to directly assert themselves against their constraints. Reactors wait to see what their parents want them to do and then they choose the course that is in direct opposition to it. This reactive behavior usually emerges in the form of nonconformist dress, poor grades, “unacceptable” peer relations, and, possibly, alcohol and drug use.

Frustrators

Frustrators cause tremendous frustration in their parents. Frustrators are not “bad kids” and they rarely getting into trouble. They do fairly well in school and in other achievement settings, yet they are often viewed as underachievers who don’t perform up to their ability. For example, a Frustrator might get a B+ rather than putting in a little extra effort to get an A in a class, or be named as an alternate to perform in a musical recital, or lose a tightly contested sports competition.

Rejecters

Rejecters refuse their parents’ expectations, choosing a course of his own in spite of their parents’ objections. Rejecters do not simply react by choosing the opposite, but rather thoroughly discard whatever their parents have to offer. Rejecters may be viewed as the most healthy and adaptive of the five kinds of contingent children because they have separated from their parents and become autonomous and self-directed people. But Rejecters pay a price for their extreme disengagement by discarding even the positive contributions their parents made.

Raise Independent Children

Independence is not something that your children can gain on their own. They have neither the perspective, experience, or skills to develop independence separately from you. Rather, it is a gift you give your children that they will cherish and benefit from their entire lives. You can provide your child with several essential ingredients for gaining independence:

• Give your children love and respect.
• Show confidence in your child’s capabilities.
• Teach them that they have control over their lives.
• Provide guidance and then the freedom to make their own decisions.

Teach Responsibility

One of your tasks as the parent is to teach your children about responsibility. The best way to ensure that you and your children assume the appropriate responsibilities is for each of you to know what your responsibilities are. If you and your children have a clear understanding of what is expected of each of you, then it will be easier to stay within the confines of those responsibilities.

Make a list of what you as a parent will be doing to help your children succeed. Then, make a list of what your children’s responsibilities should be in their own efforts. Next, identify other individuals who will have responsibilities (and what they are) in your children’s achievement activity, such as teachers, instructors, or coaches.

There should also be consequences for not fulfilling responsibilities. The best consequences are those that remove something of importance to your children and give them the control to get it back by acting appropriately. This process provides absolute clarity to both you and your children about what your “jobs” are. It also allows for no confusion at a later point when either of you step over the line and assume the other’s responsibilities or neglects their own.

Demand Accountability

Many parts of our culture send a message to children that nothing is their fault. Whether rationalizing bad behavior, looking for scapegoats on which to blame misfortune, or faulting others for their failures, children are constantly told that they do not need to be responsible for their actions. Yet, the ability of children to hold themselves accountable for their actions is a critical part of becoming independent.

The reluctance of children to take responsibility for their actions is based on their desire to protect themselves from failure. By blaming outside factors, such as other people, bad luck, or unfairness, children can safeguard their egos from harm.

Encourage Exploration

Early in your children’s lives, you need to keep them on a fairly short “leash” to ensure their safety. This care builds your child’s sense of security by teaching them that they have a safe place to return to if they venture too far and that you are there to protect them when needed.
There is, however, a fine line between security and dependence. When your children have established their sense of security, you must then encourage them to explore the world beyond the safety net that you provide. This “push out of the nest” allows your children to test their own capabilities in the “real world” and to find a sense of security and independence within themselves.

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Three Pillars of Successful Achievers

May, 2008

Parents who want their children to achieve something called “success” may find that this goal conflicts with their desire for their children to also become happy. Achieving success, as frequently defined by our society, emphasizes wealth and social status, and is often at odds with experiencing meaning, satisfaction, and joy. A perusal of the psychology section of any bookstore shows that the goal of achieving success by itself is inadequate. As Dr. Jack Wetter, a Los Angeles clinical psychologist, observes, “On the one side, you’ve got books on how to raise achieving, successful children. And across from that, you’ve got books for adults on how to overcome your depression and increase your self-esteem.” So success is simply not enough.

Your goal should be to raise successful achievers. Successful achievers are distinguished from those who simply achieve success in that, in the former case, children can be very successful, but are also unhappy. In contrast, for successful achievers, parents view success and happiness as mutually inclusive; success without happiness is not success at all.

Implicit in the notion of successful achievers is that a necessary part of success and happiness is the internalization by children of universally-held values such as respect, responsibility, healthy perspectives on success and happiness, and compassion, among many other values. Children cannot become successful achievers unless they adopt and live by these and other essential life-enriching values.

The development of successful achievers comes from fostering the Three Pillars of Successful Achievers: self-esteem, ownership, and emotional mastery. These three areas provide the foundation for raising children who are successful, happy, and who possess life-affirming values.

First Pillar: Self-esteem

Self-esteem has been perhaps the most misunderstood and poorly used developmental area in recent generations. In the last few decades, parents were led to believe that self-esteem developed if a child felt loved and valued. This belief caused parents to shower their children with love, encouragement, and support regardless of what their children actually did.

Yet this “unconditional love” is only one half of the self-esteem equation. The second part is that children need to develop a sense of competence and mastery over their world. Most basically, children must learn that their actions matter, that their actions have consequences. Since the 1970’s, parents have often neglected to provide their children with this essential component of self-esteem.

Your children will develop high self-esteem from receiving appropriate love, encouragement, and support, but also from the sense of competence they develops from opportunities you give him to learn and use skills in the pursuit of achievement. High self-esteem also acts as the foundation for the other two pillars that form the essence of successful achievers.

Second Pillar: Ownership

Another mistake that parents can make in trying to develop high self-esteem in their children is to provide them with too much love, encouragement, and support. By investing so much of your own self-esteem in your children’s efforts, you can, in effect, assume ownership of their achievements. Though these efforts are often well-intentioned, the result is that children feel no sense of connectedness and responsibility for their own efforts. The children end up being unable to say, “This is mine and I’m doing it because I want to.”

Children need to gain a sense of ownership of their life’s interests, efforts, and achievements. This ownership means that they engage in an activity out of an enduring love for it, because they see its value, and, as a result, have an internally-derived motivation to do their best. This ownership also provides them with an immense source of gratification and pride from their efforts that further motivates them to strive higher in their achievement activities.

Third Pillar: Emotional Mastery

The third pillar of successful achievers, emotional mastery, is perhaps the most neglected aspect of  children’s development. Parents have been led to believe that letting their children experience negative emotions, such as frustration, anger, and sadness, will harm them. Based on this belief, parents have felt the need to protect their children from feeling bad. They rationalize failure, distract children from experiencing emotions deeply, try to placate negative emotions, and create artificial positive emotions.

Yet, parents who protect their children from their emotions are actually interfering with their children’s emotional growth. These children end up never learning how to deal effectively with their emotions and enter adulthood ill-equipped for its emotional demands. Only by being allowed to experience all emotions are children able to figure out what emotions they are feeling, what the emotions mean to them, and how they can express them in healthy ways.

This third pillar explains that you will want to give your children opportunities to experience emotions fully—both positive and negative—and provide them with guidance to understand and gain mastery over their emotional lives. Children who do not develop emotionally can still achieve success, but the price they pay is often discontentment and unhappiness in their successes. Emotional mastery enables children to not only become successful, but also to find satisfaction and joy in their efforts, in other words, to become successful achievers.

How to Raise Successful Achievers

To raise successful achievers, you must play a conscious and vigorous role in your children’s lives. This emphasis requires that you actively guide your child in ways that will encourage their positive development. This message means that you need to thoughtfully explore the values, beliefs, and attitudes that guide your life and make a deliberate decision about how you want to raise your children.

You can communicate this message effectively only if you do so in a positive, confident, loving, yet firm way. Your children need to sense that whatever you do—whether rewarding a job well done or punishing bad behavior—you are doing it out of love and the belief that it is best for them.

The ability of your children to become successful achievers will be grounded in essential beliefs that you must foster in them. Drs. Aubrey Fine and Michael Sachs, the authors of Total Sports Experience for Kids, offer a valuable summary of those beliefs (I have added numbers #1 and #7, and the parenthetical comments):

1. I am loved (sense of value),
2. I am capable (sense of competence),
3. It is important to try (value of effort),
4. I am responsible for my day (sense of ownership),
5. It is okay to make mistakes (accept failure),
6. I can handle things when they go wrong (response to adversity),
7. I enjoy what I do (value of passion and joy),
8. I can change (being a master).

Your goal is to instill these fundamental beliefs in your children. I encourage you to post these eight beliefs on your refrigerator as a constant reminder of what all of your parenting efforts are directed toward and what beliefs you most want to instill in your children. The philosophy and approach that I advocate are aimed at helping you fulfill three essential goals:

• Act in your children’s best interests,
• Promote their achievement, happiness, and healthy growth into value-driven, successful, and happy adults,
• Foster a strong and loving relationship between you and your children.

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Expectations of Success: Benefit or Burden

March, 2008

Setting expectations for your children is an essential responsibility of parenting. Expectations tell children what’s important to you and establish a standard toward which your children can strive. But expectations can be double-edged swords. They can be a tremendous benefit to your children’s development or they can be crushing burdens that hamper their growth, depending on what types of expectations you set for them. Unfortunately, the culture of success that permeates popular culture has convinced many parents to set the wrong kind of expectations for their children.

Unhealthy Expectations of Success

There are two types of expectations that you shouldn’t set for your children: ability and outcome expectations. Ability expectations are those in which children are expected to achieve a certain result because of their natural ability, “We expect you to get straight A’s because you’re so smart” or “We expect you to win because you’re the best athlete out there.” The problem with ability expectations is that children have no control over their ability. Children are born with a certain amount of ability and all they can do is maximize whatever ability they are given. The fact is that if your children aren’t meeting your ability expectations, you have no one to blame but yourself—you didn’t give them good enough genes. Another problem with ability expectations is that if children attribute their successes to their ability—“I won because I’m so talented”—they must attribute their failures to their lack of ability—“I’m failed because I’m stupid.” And you can’t change stupid!

Popular culture also emphasizes results over all else. As a consequence, parents often set outcome expectations in which their children are expected to produce a certain outcome—“We expect you to win this game” or “We know you’ll be the first-chair violin in the orchestra.” The problem is that, once again, children are asked to meet an expectation over which they may not have control. They might perform to the best of their ability but still not meet your outcome expectations because another child just happened to do better than they did. So they would have to consider themselves as having failed despite their good performance. Setting outcome expectations also communicates to your children that you value results over everything else, so they’ll come to judge themselves by the same standards. Contrary to what you may believe, ability and outcome expectations actually hinder your children’s achievement efforts.

Results Matter!

Now you might be thinking, “Wait a minute! I can’t push my kids to get good grades or do their best in school, sports, and other activities? No way I’m buying this one.” Before you jump all over me, give me some latitude to bring all these ideas back to the real world.

Here is a simple reality that we all recognize in our culture: results matter! No two ways about it, in most parts of our society, people are judged on the results they produce: grades, sales, victories, earnings. Though it would be great if everyone got paid for their good intentions or efforts, that is not the way the world works. Unfortunately, this societal focus can cause you as parents to place your desire for your children to succeed—as defined by popular culture—ahead of doing the right thing for your children.

I would recommend that you give up outcome expectations all together, but still give your children outcome “somethings.” Those somethings I refer to are outcome goals. Goals are very different from expectations. Outcome expectations are often set by parents and placed in front of their children without their consultation or “buy in,” and kids often feel dragged—sometimes kicking and screaming—toward those expectations. Children have no ownership of the expectation and little motivation, outside an implied threat from their parents, to fulfill the expectations. When I ask children about expectations, they usually grimace and say things like, “That’s when my parents get really serious and I know they’re gonna put pressure on me” or “They’re telling me what to do and I better do it or I’ll get into trouble.” Not exactly “feel-good” parenting! Outcome expectations are also black and white; your children either meet the expectation and succeed or they don’t and they fail. So there is very little opportunity for success and lots of room for failure.

Goals are very different. I believe that children are wired to respond to goals. One of the great joys in life is to set a goal, work toward a goal, and achieve a goal. Children want to set goals for themselves, with guidance from parents, teachers, and coaches, and they want to pursue those goals. And goals aren’t black and white, but about degree of attainment. Not every goal is achieved, but there will almost always be improvement toward a goal and that progress defines success. So, if children give their best effort,  there is little chance of failure and great opportunity for success. When I ask kids about goals, they respond much differently. Their faces perk up and they say things like, “It means I decide to do something and I really work hard to do it” or “I feel like my parents are really behind me and I’m psyched to do it.”

For example, a child’s parents established an outcome expectation of raising her math grade from an 80 to a 95 during the school year. If she only improved her grade to an 89, then she would have failed to meet the outcome expectation. But, if she set an outcome goal, even though the goal of a 95 wasn’t fully realized, she would still see the 89 as a success—as well she should.

Many parents believe that results at a young age are important, so they emphasize results and place outcome expectations on their children. Yet childhood is about learning, improving, developing, and gaining the values, attitudes, and skills necessary for later success. Using goals rather than expectations is one of the best ways to foster this growth.

But even outcome goals aren’t ideal. Many parents think that focusing on the outcome will increase the chances of that outcome occurring, but the opposite is actually true. Here’s why. When does the outcome of a performance occur (e.g., in an exam or a sports competition)? At the end, of course. And if children are focusing on the end of the performance, what are they not focusing on? Well, the process, obviously. Here’s the irony. By focusing on the process rather than the outcome, your children will more likely perform better and, if they perform better, they’re more likely to achieve the outcome you wanted in the first place. Also, why do children get nervous before a test, sporting event, or recital? Because they’re afraid of the outcome, more specifically, they’re afraid of failure. So by getting them focused on the outcome, they’re less likely to perform well and achieve the outcome you wanted for them.

So if you’re going to set outcome somethings, set outcome goals, but then immediately direct your children’s focus onto the process, that is, what they need to do to achieve the desired outcome.

Healthy Expectations of Success

If you want your children to be successful, instead of setting ability and outcome expectations, you should establish effort expectations, over which they have control and that actually encourage them to do what it takes to achieve the outcomes you want. These expectations are also within your children’s control. If your children feel that they have the tools to achieve their goals, they are much more likely to embrace and pursue them. Think about what your children need to do to become successful and create effort expectations that will lead to their success: commitment, hard work, discipline, patience, focus, persistence, perseverance, positive attitude. “Our family expects you to give your best effort” or “Our family expects you to make your studies a priority.” These expectations are worthwhile whether someone is striving to be a scientist, teacher, professional athlete, writer, musician, spouse, or parent. Regardless of the abilities they inherited from you or with whom they might be compared, children have the capacity to use effort expectations and the tools associated with them to be the best they can be in whatever area they choose to pursue.

Effort expectations should be established in collaboration with your children. This cooperative approach ensures that your children have ownership of the expectations rather than feeling that you have forced the expectations on them. You can talk to your children about the value of effort, how it will help them achieve their goals, and that they have complete control over their effort. You can share examples with your children of how notable people used the skills associated with effort to become successful. Most important, you want to help them make the connection between their efforts and success.

If your children meet your effort expectations, they will, in all likelihood, perform well, achieve some level of success (how successful they become will depend on what abilities they were born with), and gain satisfaction in their efforts. They will also reap the benefits of your approval, good grades, and improved performance in other achievement activities. If your children don’t meet the effort expectations, your children may not succeed and must face the consequences, including your disapproval, poor grades, etc. They will also be disappointed (they should be). But rather than being crushed by the failure, they will know that they have the power to fulfill the expectations in the future. Meeting their effort expectations will encourage your children to set even higher effort expectations.

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Take the Offensive Against Popular Culture

January, 2008

You alone as parents can’t change popular culture. The forces of popular culture are simply too numerous and strong. I know that sounds awfully pessimistic, but I think I’m just being realistic. What I am optimistic about is the power that you have to protect your children from popular culture. I’m optimistic that we can halt the unrelenting march of popular culture in its attempt to conquer our society. But it will take time. In the meantime, you don’t have the luxury of sitting back and playing defense against popular culture; it will inevitably overwhelm you. You need to take the offensive against popular culture to protect your children from its unhealthy messages.

Deconstruct Popular Culture

Popular culture is sophisticated in the ways of deception and manipulation. If you just look at the surface of popular culture’s messages, they can appear quite benign, filled with entertaining characters, fun music, and eye-catching images. If you look no deeper, you may conclude that those messages are harmless, but then you put your children at risk to the real dangers that lurch below the surface. Popular culture spends billions of dollars each year finding ways to lie, manipulate, and push you and children to the “dark side” without you even realizing it. To avoid this “grand seduction,” deconstruct popular culture by looking beneath the surface of the fun and entertainment and see the real messages it’s communicating to your children.

A great exercise is to watch a television show, play a video game, or listen to music in which your children are involved.

• Recognize what attracts your children to it. For example, television commercials for junk food present attractive and cool children having a great time while eating the advertised product.
• Identify how the ad is manipulating your children (i.e., every child wants to be popular and have fun).
• Identify the messages that lie below the surface (e.g., junk food is good, being cool is more important than your health).
• Compare these messages to those that you want to convey; are they consistent with or contrary to your messages?
• If the messages from popular culture are incompatible with yours, make a deliberate decision about whether you want to limit your children’s exposure.

You don’t have to openly endorse popular culture’s messages for your children to be influenced by it. By allowing your children to play violent video games, listen to explicit music lyrics, or eat fast food, you are conveying your tacit approval. Because you typically express displeasure with your children when you don’t like something they’re doing, when you don’t express it, they will assume that what they’re doing is okay. The lesson here is that when you ignore something your children are doing, that is as good as encouraging it.

Pick Your Battles

Decide how harmful different aspects of popular culture are to your children and realize that, given the power of popular culture, you can not fight and win every battle. So pick your battles carefully. It may be, for example, that you judge movies that have no commercial merchandising tie-ins to be okay for your children, but you don’t permit them to watch any television (because of the seemingly endless stream of commercials) or you limit their video-game play to nonviolent, educational games. You may decide that you can live with sometimes explicit music lyrics, but draw the line at provocative clothing. You might even accept an earring for your son or navel ring for your daughter knowing that children tend to outgrow them at some point. Whichever battles you decide to fight, commit yourself 100%, and don’t relent no matter how difficult it gets.

Be a Gatekeeper

One way to take the offensive is to become your children’s gatekeeper to popular culture. Do your research and educate yourself about popular culture’s role in your children’s lives. What are they watching, playing, listening to, and surfing? What messages are being communicated? Identify what is unhealthy and what is healthy. The fact is that you can’t prevent your children from using popular culture. What you can do is encourage popular culture that is both healthy, for example, educational television shows, video games, and websites, and entertaining—if it’s not engaging, your children will discard it quickly. You may need to assume some responsibility in which you spend more time actively sharing these healthier forms of popular culture to ensure that your children connect with them. You can also get them away from popular culture altogether by having them spend their time reading, exercising, or playing a sport or musical instrument.

As the gatekeeper, establish limits on how much time your children are allowed to spend and what they’re allowed to watch, play, listen to, and surf. For example, you may decide not to allow your children to watch more than one hour of television each day, play video games during the week, or use the telephone or Instant Messaging during dinner or homework.

If you introduce limits when there were few limits previously, your children will likely resist your efforts. For example, if your children are addicted to video games and you limit or remove them, they will be very unhappy. In this situation, you have to be firm and consistent in establishing limits, expectations, and consequences—follow-through is everything! When parents have followed my advice and thrown out their children’s video games or limited their television viewing, they have told me that their children complain—loudly and persistently!—for two to three months trying to wear them down. But when the parents stick to their principles, their children, in every case, finally gave up and accepted the change.

Raise Healthy Skeptics

Today’s children are often passive recipients of the messages from popular culture. You can help protect your children from this brainwashing by raising healthy skeptics. I want your children to find a healthy middle ground between naiveté (where they will believe everything) and cynicism (where they won’t believe anything). I want your children to be discerning observers and critical thinkers who don’t accept popular culture’s messages at face value. Healthy skepticism means that they ask tough questions about those messages:

• Why is the message so attractive?
• What is the real message?
• What does the messenger get out of it?
• Will the message help or hurt me?

You can foster this healthy skepticism by teaching your children to engage, rather than simply absorb, popular culture. Teach your children how to be skeptical consumers of popular culture. If, for example, there is a television show that your children like to watch—and that you’re not thrilled about, but you decide that this battle isn’t worth fighting—you should sit down and watch the show with them.

• What do they like about the show?
• What are the messages it is really communicating?
• If your children see the unhealthy messages, ask them about their purpose, for example, selling products?
• If they don’t see the messages, point them out as they arise, so they can see the messages more clearly.

This discussion will help your children gain a better understanding of what they’re really watching. They then can decide for themselves whether to accept the messages. At worst, your children may still watch the show because it’s entertaining, but now, because they’re healthy skeptics, they’ll recognize and reject the unhealthy messages it’s conveying. At best, your children will reject it all together by choosing to no longer watch the show.

Expand Your Army

It can be exhausting and discouraging when faced with having to battle an enemy the size and power of popular culture. It’s especially frustrating if you’re working so hard to convey healthy messages to your children, yet so many other influences are working against you. One of the best things you can do is to build an army against popular culture so that the immediate influences in your children’s lives are fighting with you rather than against you.

This army is an extension of your values because it shares your most fundamental beliefs, enveloping your children in a sort of value-powered force field that can repel much of popular culture when your children are outside your home. This shield acts to protect your children by keeping their immediate surroundings and interactions healthy even when the larger messages raining down on them from billboards, stores, movies, and magazines are unhealthy.

Building such a community means making deliberate choices about the world you want your family to live in outside of your home. Ask the following questions:

• Do your children’s friends and their parents share and extend your values?
• Does the community in which you live support your values?
• Do the schools your children attend reinforce your values?
• Do the activities—cultural, athletic, religious, entertainment—in which they participate encourage your values?
• Simply put, do the people and activities in your children’s world foster the healthy, life-affirming values that you want your children to develop?

If you answer “yes” to these questions, then you can feel confident that your children will have allies by their side when they leave the house. If you answer “no” to these questions, consider ways in which you can surround your children with healthier influences. Small changes can include finding a new sports league that emphasizes fun and participation over winning, a new piano teacher who is less demanding, or making the local mall off-limits to your children. Large-scale changes can include enrollment in a new school, attending a different house of worship, or not allowing your children to see friends who are bad influences on them.

Actively creating a supportive community has significant benefits for both you and your children. You’ll feel more supported as you face popular culture. Your children will be surrounded by a community that supports your values. When they leave your home, your children will know they are entering a world that is not quite as hostile and that is populated by like-minded people who will assist them in their daily battles with popular culture

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Raise a Human Being, Not a Human Doing

November, 2007

An harmful aspect of raising children in our high-pressure, “only A’s are good enough,” win-at-all-cost culture is that parents can inadvertently (or intentionally!) convey to their children that they are worthy of their love only if they live up to their parents’ expectations. These messages create children who are “human doings,” in which their self-esteem—how they feel about themselves—is overly connected with their accomplishments. This relationship between self-esteem and outcome becomes the basis for their own self-love as well. Having internalized their perceptions of being a human doing from their parents, children come to love themselves only when they are successful and experience nothing less than self-loathing when they fail. Unfortunately, human doings cannot be both successful and happy because, though they may attain some degree of success, their accomplishments bring them little satisfaction or joy.

This connection is so strong that human doings judge themselves not only on how they perform in important activities in their lives, but also on how they do in the most mundane tasks. They are so desperate for validation that they seek affirmation from the most trivial accomplishments (I had a client who judged herself on how well she brushed her teeth!). Human doings are often “list people” who wake up with a list of tasks and are not satisfied or happy until they have crossed every item off the list.

Children who base their self-esteem on what they do rather than who they are place themselves in a desperate and untenable position. Failure is a normal and inevitable part of life, yet, for these children, failure is absolutely unacceptable and a source of unimaginable pain. So whenever children who are human doings experience failure—as all children will at some point—they perceive it as an attack on their self-esteem, they feel worthless and undeserving of love. As a consequence, these children feel tremendous anxiety over the threat of not being loved and their primary motivation in life is to avoid failure and protect their self-esteem. These children live in a constant state of hypervigilance. They feel worthwhile only when they are doing something to validate their self-esteem. This ever-vigilant state that human doings are in causes them to feel as if they must be successful to be happy, yet, paradoxically, even when they are successful, they don’t feel happy.

Are You a Bottom-line Parent?

If you are a bottom-line parent, you are placing too great an emphasis on the outcome of your children’s achievement efforts. Bottom-line parents communicate this focus hoping to motivate their children, but often end up undermining their children’s achievements because the weight of success and failure becomes too great a burden to carry. In addition, children of bottom-line parents are profoundly unhappy because they rarely can live up to their parents’ expectations and, when they do, there is only a brief respite from the persistent fear of future failure.

Bottom-line parents treat their children like “little employees.” These parents expect their children to “produce” in the form of achievement and success. If the desired results do not occur, then these “bosses” show their displeasure and their children may perceive that their parents will “fire” them. Imagine how that feels to children!

Create a Human Being

Your goal is to raise your children to be “human beings.” Human beings believe that the kind of people they are—the values they hold, their efforts, how they treat people—determines their self-esteem and how they value themselves. Human beings gain satisfaction and validation not only from their efforts and accomplishments, but also from, among other things, being honest, considerate, and responsible.

Part of being a human being is accepting one’s basic humanity, which includes understanding that no one is perfect and that failure is a necessary and inevitable part of life. With this perspective, failure loses its power to harm self-esteem. As human beings, self-esteem is not overly connected their achievements and, as a result, is not threatened. Children who are human beings are not, thankfully, perfectionists, have no fear of failure, and don’t fear losing your love.

Being human beings doesn’t mean that your children will be self-satisfied and unmotivated, just being happy with themselves and not caring about achievement or success. To the contrary, it liberates them from the fears of achievement because success and failure are not so connected to their self-esteem. Ironically, the removal of this threat to self-esteem that comes from being a human doing will actually allow your children to pursue achievement from a position of strength rather than weakness, in which they pursue success with gusto and can accept and find lessons and motivation in their failures. Your children experience none of the obstacles that human doings experiences that may interfere with their becoming successful.

Success Comes From Being, Not Doing

Contrary to what many people think, success is not really about what children do. In school, the arts, sports, and other achievement pursuits, no one has the market cornered on strategies that foster success. Children do pretty much the same things with varying degrees of success. Rather, true success, namely success that brings meaning, satisfaction, and joy, comes from being—who children are, what they value, their work ethic, and their ability to connect and work with others.

But being isn’t sufficient to become successful; your children need to do to achieve their goals. But for your children to experience both success and happiness, their efforts—what they do—must come from their being, from who they are. Achieving as a human being is very different from achieving as a human doing; human beings efforts to achieve are imbued with who they are and what they value. Children who are human beings find meaning in their achievement efforts and they connect their passions and commitment to those efforts. In a sense, their achievement efforts are filtered through their being. The efforts that result are determined, confident, energized, and focused. And the successes that they experience are important to them and provide them with fulfillment and joy. Children who are human beings experience a sense of happiness in their achievement efforts because their efforts emerge from and affirm who they are. This connection between who children are and what they do is what separates children who achieve both success and happiness from those children who merely succeed or don’t succeed at all.

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Create a Family-value Culture

September, 2007

Everyone needs and wants to be part of a culture. Belonging to a culture offers people a sense of identity, feelings of connectedness, shared values, and support when faced with the challenges of life. Children will seek out a culture that is most present in their lives and that provides the most rewards. You can protect your children from popular culture by creating a “family-value culture” that has an equally powerful—but positive—influence on your children. A family-value culture that your children are raised in precedes the presence of popular culture and can fill the need for a culture in your children’s lives.

Simply talking about values is not enough. You must express your family-value culture in all of the ways that your children can learn healthy values. Most important, you must believe deeply in and be wholly committed to your family-value culture. Values can’t just be what you say, but rather you must be a walking, talking, feeling, acting, living expression of your family-value culture.

Values Are You: Make Sure You Walk the Walk on Values

For the duration of your children’s early years, you are their most powerful influence and role model. Everything you say, feel, and do, sends your children subtle, yet influential, messages about your values. You must ask yourself whether you are “walking the walk” on your values.

The question of conveying values to your children is further complicated by the fact what you think you are teaching them is not always what they are learning from you. This disconnect can occur because your actions may not always be clear to your children. This is why you should not only make sure you are living a life that expresses your values, but periodically ask yourself whether your actions clearly express the values or whether your children could misinterpret them. Also, ask your children what value messages they are getting from you, for example, you can ask them, “Why do you think Daddy (Mommy) works so hard?”

Values are Discussions: Talk to Your Children About Their Values

“Talk to your children” is perhaps the most commonly offered recommendation from parenting experts, yet it may also be the least adopted, particularly when it comes to values. Whether because of lack of clarity of what their values are or simply a lack of time and energy, many parents don’t sit down and have this all-important discussion about values.

Talking to your children about values can occur can in a spontaneous or structured way. Your family’s daily life is filled with value lessons waiting to be taught. Having your antenna up for these opportunities allows you to spot them immediately and use them to teach your children about values. You can also make value discussions a part of your family-value culture. For example, you might designate one dinner per week to the discussion of a particular value.

Talking with your children about values and your family-value culture communicates to them that values are important. It also gives them an opportunity to learn more about values. This “value education” provides children with the foundation from which they can further explore values.

Values Are Emotions: Let Your Children Feel Values

Emotions have a persuasive influence on whether children act in valued ways. Some experts believe that emotions, such as empathy and guilt, are inborn and serve an adaptive purpose by helping to ensure that people behave in ways that benefit themselves, their families, and their communities.

Some emotions restrain children from acting badly. Fear, for example, is a visceral deterrent that makes children uncomfortable when contemplating immoral behavior. Guilt causes feelings of regret and shame after children have violated a value. Because children don’t like to feel bad, they are less likely to act against their values again.

Other emotions encourage the expression of certain values. Emotions such as inspiration and pride motivate children to act in morally because they connect valued behavior with those “feel good” emotions. Following ethical behavior, children experience other emotions, such as satisfaction, contentment, and joy, which further reinforce their moral behavior.

Values Are Choices: Let Your Children Make Decisions about Values

Values provide the compass that children can follow in the choices they face and the decisions they make in their lives. When faced with competing options, for example, whether a child will lie or tell the truth to his parents, their values and the related emotions will dictate what value choice they make. Children who understand values and connect positive emotions with those values have a much better chance of making value-driven decisions—consider their options, weigh the benefits and costs, and make a choice that is consistent with their family-value culture—rather than ones based on self-interest or in response to the urgings from popular culture.

The notion that values are choices means that children must, in the end, choose the values by which they want to live. All of the ways to create a family-value culture I have discussed encourage your children to think critically about their values and to make decisions about the values they choose to adopt. Recognize that your children will periodically make bad choices and act counter to your values. Use these opportunities to help your children learn more about their values and to make better choices. For example, if you catch one of your children in a lie, you can ask several useful questions:

• Why did you lie?
• What were the benefits of lying?
• What were the costs and consequences of lying?
• What have you learned from being caught in a lie?

This discussion, accompanied by appropriate punishment, helps your children understand why they made a poor choice and see the consequences of the bad decision, and shows them why they should make better choices in the future.

Values Are Social: Let Your Children Interact with Values

Values are influenced by the reactions that children get from others in response to their behavior. Value-driven behavior that is rewarded with social praise and validation will be internalized. Actions that are in conflict with values which are punished socially will be discarded. A problem is that children are vulnerable to social influence from many sources, including those that are unhealthy. Peer pressure often interferes with children adopting healthy values. For example, in some schools, children who study hard and have educational goals are ostracized, and those who are “slackers” are admired. Popular culture exerts a similar influence. For instance, advertising, from fast-food and soft drinks to clothing and technology, convey the message that buying certain products will make children popular and winners, and if they don’t, they will be losers.

The pressure to conform and be accepted will grow substantially and your children may feel compelled to make choices based on their need for acceptance. Maintaining your influence in the face of increasing opposition from popular culture is one of your most difficult challenges. Your best defense against this social influence is instilling positive values at an early age, so your children will recognize bad influences and unhealthy values, and not feel the need to adopt values and act in certain ways just to be accepted.

Fortunately, you aren’t alone in your battle against harmful social influences. Siblings and extended family members, friends, teachers, coaches, and clergy can all have a significant influence over what your children come to value. To ensure that you maximize the influence of positive others on your children, I encourage you to actively create a “community-value culture” that supports your family-value culture.

Values Are Experiences: Let Your Children Encounter Values

The best way to instill values in your children is to immerse them in activities that reflect and express your family-value culture. For example, when your children participate in charitable work, the arts, athletics, you aren’t telling them that they will be learning about values. Instead, your children are experiencing your family’s values, interacting with others who share your values, accomplishing goals that are consistent with your values, and experiencing positive emotions connected to those values.

Value-driven experiences are most influential on children when they have to “get their hands dirty.” For example, although donating money to a charity can certainly teach the value of giving, children aren’t really able to connect with the meaning of those values because they can’t see the end result of their actions. In contrast, spending a day in a home for the elderly, for example, connects the value of giving with an immediate beneficial result and causes children to feel deep emotions—empathy and kindness—which lie at the heart of children “buying into” the values.

Values Are Life: Let Your Children Live Values

The real power of values is how they are expressed in the minutiae of your family’s daily lives. Anything value-related that you do with your children connects a particular value with some action with which they are familiar, for example, practicing the piano (hard work), getting dressed for school on time (cooperation), taking out the garbage (responsibility), or helping their little sister get dressed (kindness), are small but powerful messages that communicate your family-value culture to your children. You want to show them that these apparently small acts are actually significant deeds that reflect your family-value culture and are the stuff of which their lives are made.

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Values: The Life Blood of Your Family

July, 2007

Values have gotten a bad rap. When most people think of values these days, they think of hot-button topics and the divisive battle between so-called “red-state” and “blue-state” values. They think of politicians, media “talking heads,” and other groups using values to push their own agendas. As America’s discussion of values has focused on these divisions, we’ve lost sight of the essential reality that we share far more values than those on which we differ. Regardless of where we live or what are our political or religious beliefs, I am certain that just about all Americans believe in the values of respect, responsibility, opportunities for success and happiness, family, compassion, justice, tolerance, and many others; I call these “red-white-and-blue-state” values. These are the values on which our country was built and has thrived for over 230 years. These are the values that unite us, give our lives meaning, and make America strong. And, importantly, it’s these values that will protect your children from a popular culture that wants to teach them decidedly unhealthy values.

It’s not my place to tell you what you should value. I will nonetheless tell you that you should know what you value and make sure that your values are healthy for your family. Educating your children about values can begin as soon as they develop the ability to talk, listen, and to understand consequences. You want to introduce them to what values are, the role they play in their lives, and their importance to the family as early as possible so that they develop positive values before they are exposed to popular culture.

What are Values?

Give your children a clear definition of values and discuss with them how values affect their lives and those of others. Key issues that you should emphasize are that values:

• Are embraced by most of our society as a whole,
• Guide their lives,
• Establish priorities for what is important, and
• Act as a road map in determining the direction of their lives.

You should also highlight values that your children can understand and relate to. When your children act in ways that express a family value, you can point out what the value is and why what they are doing reflects the value:

• Cooperation and responsibility: when they bring their dishes to the sink after dinner.
• Commitment and hard work: when they devote considerable time to a project at school.
• Compassion: contributing to a favorite charity.

Asking your children to come up with practical examples of values in their own lives is another way to engage them and to make this process a dialogue rather than a lecture.

Why are Values Important?

You should then talk to your children about why values are important and how values benefit them and others. Key questions include:

• What do values offer your children as individuals?
• How do they affect your family?
• What role do values play in your community and society in general?

The answers to these questions will help your children recognize the essential importance of values and why they should adopt healthy values. Again give examples, such as generosity, accountability, and honesty, and show how these specific values affect your children’s lives. Recognize experiences that reflect values and connect them with your values for your children. For example, when your children are considerate of their siblings, show them how it benefits them (e.g., their siblings are nice to them) and the family as a whole (e.g., everyone gets along).

What are Unhealthy Values?

A useful way to teach your children values is to identify unhealthy values and help them see the differences between positive and negative values. Using examples such as greed, selfishness, and dishonesty can help you illustrate how these values hurt your children, your family, your community and our society as a whole. When your children express unhealthy values, show them how the values hurt them and your family. You can also point out examples of bad values in other people and from the media and describe why the values are unhealthy.

Expressing Values

Many people think that values are lofty ideals that have little connection with their daily lives, but values should be woven into the very fabric of your family’s lives. Show them how values are reflected in the activities in which they participate, who they interact with, and the choices they make. For example, finishing a school project on time, taking out the garbage, and reading with a younger sibling all express positive values of discipline, responsibility, and caring, respectively.

Again using contrasts as a learning tool, show your children how negative values are expressed, for example, how laziness, unkindness, and lying are conveyed. There is no better “classroom” for teaching about unhealthy values than in the popular media. Television, radio, video games, and magazines are rife with destructive values from which your children can learn. Use these opportunities to highlight healthy and unhealthy values by talking to them about the media messages and what underlying values are being communicated.

Setting Limits

One down-to-earth way values are expressed is in the rules, boundaries, and expectations that you establish in your family. Each of these prescriptions is based on the values that you hold and the messages you want your children to get about values, for example:

• Family chores.
• Helping others.
• Putting school first.
• Being physically active.

Unfortunately, many children simply see rules, boundaries, and expectations as limitations placed on their freedom by their parents without rationale or purpose. By explicitly linking your values with these directives, your children understand the reasoning behind your dictates and see their value. Don’t just simply “lay down the law,” but rather discuss how the limits you place on them are related to your values and how they benefit your children.

Consequences of Values

Perhaps the most powerful way to help children understand the importance of values is to discuss with them the consequences of healthy and unhealthy values. A valuable lesson for them is to learn that if they act in valued ways, good things will happen, and if they act according to bad values, bad things happen. Examples of this relationship can include good effort in school results in good grades, being compassionate to others causes others to respond in kind, and being caught stealing results in punishment and a loss of trust.

An unfortunate obstacle to teaching children about the consequences of living by one’s values is that acting on good values is not always rewarded and bad values are not punished in our society. To the contrary, popular culture often glorifies and rewards bad values. For example, domestic violence, drug use, and other bad behavior don’t prevent professional sports teams from paying talented athletes exorbitant salaries (e.g., Terrell Owens, Kobe Bryant). The recording industry persists in promoting hip-hop artists and rock stars despite rap sheets that continue to grow. And, sadly, young people continue to worship them. It is these conflicting messages that your children receive every day that make your job of teaching healthy values so much more difficult.

Value Dilemmas

A powerful way to foster your children’s understanding and appreciation of values is to talk to them about value dilemmas that they will face as they move through childhood and into young adulthood. For younger children, topics might include lying, selfishness, stealing, and cheating. Issues for older children can include sexual behavior and alcohol and drug use. You can also identify value breakdowns from popular culture, for example, the poor behavior of actors, athletes, musicians, and politicians, to help them understand that being rewarded for bad values not only doesn’t justify the values, it also has costs that may not be readily apparent to children, such as loss of self-respect and admiration from others, threats to health, and lost opportunities.

Value dilemmas arise every day in your children’s lives. Either they are faced with dilemmas themselves or there are examples of value dilemmas in popular media. You should have your “radar” attuned to these dilemmas and use them as opportunities to educate your children about these quandaries. With younger children, you will want to emphasize the tangible consequences of the choices presented in the dilemmas, for example, what trouble they would get in if they stole a piece of candy that they really wanted. With older children, you can have more sophisticated discussions about self-respect, dangers to themselves and others, and implications for their futures. For example, what are the personal, social, physical, and criminal, ramifications of drinking and driving?

In presenting these value violations, you can explore with them the benefits and costs of following and disregarding healthy values, the short- and long-term consequences of a breach of values, and the choices that they will have to make about values in the future. Children who are raised in a family that is immersed in values will be more likely to embrace healthy values and live their lives based on those values.

Recommendations for Teaching Values

• Make a list of your most important values.
• Consider which of your values are healthy and unhealthy (be honest with yourself).
• Determine whether you are living your life in accordance with your healthy values.
• Look for “value moments” in your family’s daily life to teach your children about values.
• Recognize the unhealthy values from popular culture to which your children are exposed.
• Actively resist the values promoted by popular culture.

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The Sad Misuse of Self-Esteem

May, 2007

Self-esteem is the most misunderstood and misused developmental factor of the past thirty years. Child-rearing experts in the early 1970s decided that all of the efforts of our society should be devoted to helping children build self-esteem. I couldn’t agree more. Children with high self-esteem have been found to perform better in school and sports, have better relationships, and have lower rates of problem behavior.

The Wrong Message About Self-Esteem

Unfortunately, these same experts told parents that the best way to develop self-esteem was to ensure that children always felt good about themselves. Parents were told to love and praise and reinforce and reward and encourage their children no matter what they did. Unfortunately, this approach created children who were selfish, spoiled, and entitled.

Parents were also led to believe that they had to be sure that their children never felt bad about themselves because it would hurt their self-esteem. So parents did everything they could to protect their children from anything that might create bad feelings. Parents didn’t scold their children when they misbehaved. Parents didn’t discipline their children when they didn’t give their best effort in school. In sum, parents didn’t hold their children accountable for their actions, particularly if they made mistakes or failed—“Gosh, that would just hurt my little one’s self-esteem!”

Schools and communities bought into this misguided attempt at building self-esteem by “protecting” children from feeling bad about themselves. For example, school grading systems were changed. I remember between sixth and seventh grade my middle school replaced F for failure with NI (Needs Improvement). God forbid I’d feel bad about myself for failing at something! Sports eliminated scoring, winners, and losers in the belief that losing would hurt children’s self-esteem. My four-year-old niece came home one day from a soccer tournament with a ribbon that said “#1-Winner” on it. When I asked her what she did to deserve such a wonderful prize, she said that everyone got one! Though Woody Allen once said that 90 percent of success is just showing up, it’s the last 10 percent—the part that requires hard work, discipline, patience, and perseverance—that true success is all about. Children are being led to believe that, like Woody Allen’s view, they can become successful and feel good about themselves just for showing up. But showing up is just not enough in today’s demanding society. By rewarding children just for showing up, they aren’t learning what it really takes to become successful and showing up definitely won’t build self-esteem.

The supposed benefit of this mentality is that children’s self-esteem is protected. If children aren’t responsible for all of the bad things that happen to them, then they can’t feel bad about themselves and their self-esteem won’t be hurt. This belief has been bolstered by the culture of victimization in which we live—“It’s not my fault, it’s not my kid’s fault. But someone has to be held responsible and we’re going to sue them.” In its poorly conceived attempt to protect children’s self-esteem, our society caused the very thing that it took such pains to prevent—children with low self-esteem, no sense of responsibility, and the emotional and behavioral problems that go with it.

Of course children need to feel loved and protected. This sense of security allows them to feel comfortable venturing out to explore their world. But we have gone way too far in protecting our children from life’s harsh realities. In fact, with this preoccupation with protecting our children, those so-called parenting experts neglected to tell parents about the other, equally important contributor to mature and healthy self-esteem.

The Missing Piece of Self-esteem

The second part of self-esteem that those parenting experts forgot to mention to parents is that children need to develop a sense of ownership of their actions, that their actions matter, that their actions have consequences; “If I do good things, good things happen, if I do bad things, bad things happen, and if I do nothing, nothing happens.” The antithesis of this approach is the spoiled child; whether they do good, bad, or nothing, they get what they want. Unfortunately, without this sense of ownership, children are thoroughly unprepared for the adulthood because in the real world our actions do have consequences.

This sense of ownership, and the self-esteem that accompanies it, is two sides of the same coin. If children don’t take ownership of their mistakes and failures, they can’t have ownership of their successes and achievements. And without that ownership, children can’t ever really feel good about themselves or experience the meaning, satisfaction, and joy of owning their efforts. Also, without the willingness to take ownership, children are truly victims; they’re powerless to change the bad things that might happen to them. With a sense of ownership, children learn that when things are not going well, they have the power to make changes in their lives for the better.

The goal is to raise children with both components of real self-esteem, in which they not only feel loved and valued, but also have that highly developed sense of ownership. Yes, they’re going to feel bad when they make mistakes and fail. But you want your children to feel bad when they screw up! How else are they going to learn what not to do and what they need to do to do better in the future? But, contrary to popular belief, these experiences will build, not hurt, their self-esteem. By allowing them to take ownership of their lives—achievements and missteps alike—your children gain the ability to change the bad experiences, and create and savor the good experiences.

Developing Real Self-esteem

Your challenge is to help your children understand how self-esteem develops. Much of your parenting should be devoted to helping your children develop this healthy self-esteem rather than the false self-esteem that is epidemic in our society. You must allow your children to experience this connection—both success and failure—in all areas of their lives, including school, sports, the performing arts, relationships, family responsibilities, and other activities. Your children’s essential need to have these experiences will require you to eschew the culture of victimization that pervades modern society. You must give your children the opportunity to develop real self-esteem so they can fully experience all aspects of life, including the failures and disappointments as well as the accomplishments and joys.

Recommendations for Building Self-esteem

• Love them regardless of how they perform.
• Give them opportunities to demonstrate their competence.
• Focus on areas over which they have control (e.g., their efforts rather than results).
• Encourage your children to take appropriate risks.
• Allow your children to experience failure and then help them learn its essential lessons.
• Set expectations for their behavior.
• Demand accountability.
• Have consequences for bad behavior.
• Include them in decision making.

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Know Your Children’s Enemy

March, 2007

You probably know that popular culture is a truly destructive force in your children’s lives. In a recent survey, three-fourths of parents believed that materialism and the negative influences from television, movies, and music were a “serious problem” in raising children. Over 85 percent of parents believe that marketing contributes to children being too materialistic, sexual content leads children to become sexually active at a younger age, and violent content increases aggressive behavior in children. Yet 66 percent of parents think they could do a better job of supervising their children’s media exposure.

But how do you help your children fight this battle against popular culture? It starts by knowing your children’s enemy.

What Is Popular Culture?

What is popular culture, you ask? It’s Paris Hilton, 50 Cent, Michaal Vick, McDonald’s, MySpace, Coca-Cola, and on and on. But this list only gives examples of popular culture. They are, if you will, some of the weapons that popular culture uses against your children. But they don’t really tell us what popular culture is.

One expert says that popular culture is a reflection of our society’s values, creating popular icons, heroes and heroines, and rituals, myths, and beliefs expressing those values. I say that popular culture used to reflect our values. No longer. Now it is a voracious beast of materialism, celebrity, and excess that shapes those values to meet its own greedy needs. Many heroes offered by popular culture are not heroic, many of its icons represent unhealthy values, and many of its rituals, myths, and beliefs are in its own best interests, not those of your children. Popular culture is also pervasive, dominating virtually every part of your children’s lives.

In Your Children’s Face

Popular culture is omnipresent, intense, and unrelenting in your children’s lives. Your children are exposed to hundreds of television channels. They have free and immediate access to an almost unlimited array of information through the Internet. They have free and immediate access to other people near and far through email, Instant Messaging, and YouTube. And when they’re not on the computer, DVDs, video games, television, magazines, advertising, and shopping malls fill your children’s lives. Research has shown that typical children between the ages of two and eighteen spend well over five hours each day consuming popular culture.

Not All Popular Culture Is Bad

Though I will probably come across as militantly against any and all forms of popular culture, I actually believe it can be a wonderful outlet for entertainment and escapism. Whether popular culture is dangerous or benign depends on the messages it’s sending and how you and your children respond to those messages. Popular culture that is simply entertainment has its place in our society. Whether film, music, theater, books, or sports, activities that transport us from our daily lives into temporary alternative realities can play healthy roles in our lives. These diversions act as brief respites from our otherwise busy lives. They give us a “time-out” that relieves stress, provides a small amount of escapism, creates pleasant vicarious emotions, and just plain entertains us. As long as the messages communicated in the media aren’t bad for children, who am I to say that Fellini is better than Spielberg or Beethoven is better than Snoop Dogg (though I could probably argue that point).

However, popular culture that instills in children bad values, attitudes, or beliefs, manipulates their needs and wants, sell goods and services that have no redeeming value, or impresses upon children anything that is unhealthy psychologically, emotionally, socially, spiritually, or physically is, by its very nature, destructive. Examples include advertising that connects certain toys, clothes, food, or drinks with being popular or cool, or music that encourages racism, sexism, drug use, or violence.

But let’s be clear here. Even “good” popular culture isn’t that good for children. Though there is certainly educational television, video games that encourage creativity and problem solving, and movies with positive messages, these media still teach children bad habits:

• Experience life vicariously instead of directly;
• Be sedentary rather than physically active;
• Have indirect social contact with others instead of real contact; and
• Prevent them from participating in activities that support their intellectual, emotional, cultural, spiritual, and physical development.

Popular Culture on the Attack

Few parents fully appreciate how popular culture affects their children’s lives. Even fewer realize how truly harmful it is to children, families, communities, and to our society as a whole. Popular culture attacks children at their most basic level, the values that guide their lives. It promotes the worst values and disguises them as entertainment. Reality TV, for example, has made the “seven deadly sins”—pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth—attributes to be admired. Throw in selfishness, deceit, spite, humiliation, cruelty, and vengeance—all qualities seen and revered in popular culture—and you have the personification of the worst kind of person.

Popular culture is like a network of saboteurs that infiltrate your family’s lives with stealth and deception, hiding behind entertaining characters, bright images, and fun music. You probably don’t notice half of the unhealthy messages being conveyed to your children. Popular culture is also an invading army that overwhelms your children with these destructive messages. It attempts to control every aspect of your children’s lives: their values, attitudes, and beliefs about themselves and the world that they live in; their thoughts, emotions, and behavior; their needs, wants, goals, hopes, and dreams; their interests and avocations; their choices and their decisions. With this control, popular culture can tell children what to eat and drink, what to wear, what to listen to and watch, and children have little ability to resist.

Two Lines of Attack

Popular culture relies on two primary avenues for communicating its messages and influencing your children. The first type of message is what I call “loudspeaker” messages, in which the messages are deafening, constant, and ever-present. The shrillness of these messages is heard, seen, tasted, or felt, and cannot be readily avoided. Examples of these loudspeaker messages are most kinds of popular culture, including movies, video games, television, and music, in addition to less obvious loudspeaker messages from billboards and magazine ads.

The second type of message that popular culture uses to seduce your children are what I call “stealth” messages. These messages are usually hidden behind entertaining characters, images, words, and music that are fun and engaging, but are designed to subtly tap into children’s unconscious needs and wishes. Messages that create positive emotional reactions, for example, dancing while drinking Pepsi, or winning a basketball game wearing a pair of Nikes, resonate at a deep level with children, causing them to want to feel that way too. Other stealth messages that tap into children’s fears and insecurities related to self-esteem, social acceptance, and physical attractiveness are particularly effective in manipulating children.

Your Children Know about the Danger

Having spoken to tens of thousands of children over the years, I have learned a surprising thing: most children aren’t fooled by popular culture. They know it’s bad. They know that all popular culture cares about is money. They know that the messages it communicates are unhealthy. Most children also know what good and bad values are and what is right and wrong. But they lack the experience, perspective, and tools to withstand the attraction: its bells and whistles, its bright lights and loud music, its beautiful people. Children have good values deep down—they may even be born with that capacity—but they lose touch with them because the contradicting messages from popular culture are so intense, invasive, and persistent; they are simply overwhelmed by the force of popular culture.

Know Your Children’s Enemy

An essential step in joining your children in the fight against popular culture is to know your children’s enemy. Study popular culture. Watch what your children watch on television, play their video games, listen to their music, visit the Web sites they surf, read the magazines they read. Then, understand the value messages they are getting from popular culture. Television, movies, and video games glamorize violence, sexuality, wealth, celebrity, and the use of alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes. Fashion and celebrity magazines affect how girls think about their bodies, the amount they diet and exercise, and the occurrence of eating disorders. The Internet gives your children limitless access to a universe of inappropriate information.

Only with this knowledge are you in a position to battle popular culture with your children. With this information, you gain the power to protect your children from popular culture and prepare them to combat popular culture when you’re not with them. You can use this power by being positive, conscious, and active forces in your children’s lives.

Recommendations

• Don’t be seduced by popular culture’s messages (you’re vulnerable too!).
• Make informed decisions about what your children watch, play, listen to, and surf.
• Talk to your children about the unhealthy influence of popular culture.
• Set limits.
• Say “NO” to popular culture.

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Respect Starts at Home

January, 2007

NFL star Terrell Owens doing his outrageous touchdown dances. American Idol’s Simon Cowell humiliating well-intentioned—if untalented—singers. Hip-hop artists who demean women in their music. There is no shortage of forces in popular culture that resist your efforts to teach your children the value of respect. It can sometimes feel like you’re being overwhelmed by an onslaught of disrespect.

Many parents I hear from feel that they are losing this battle for respect and, with it, their ability to positively influence their children. Many children I talk to don’t feel that their parents are relevant anymore. Well, let me say this loud and clear: You better be relevant in this toxic culture in which we live or your children are doomed. However discouraged you may feel, you must continue to fight the good fight for the sake of your children. And this battle begins with respect!

The reality is that you have a much greater impact on your children than you think, but only if you maintain their respect. For example, a recent study reported that teenagers are less likely to begin smoking if their parents express disapproval. Additionally, the disapproval diminished the effect that peer pressure had on whether they took up smoking. Similar findings were found on the influence of parents on teenagers’ use of alcohol and drugs.

Thankfully, you’re not alone. Schools and houses of worship, among others, also aim to instill respect in your children. But, like most of child rearing, respect starts at home. If you can teach your children to respect you, themselves, and others when they are young, they’re likely to carry that value with them as they enter the real world and use it to become successful, happy, and contributing adults.

Respect For You, Respect For Themselves

When you earn your children’s respect, they also learn to respect themselves. Respect is so important because, without it, children can’t value themselves or others. Children who don’t respect themselves are more likely to drink alcohol, take drugs, have sex, and treat others badly. Children who lack self-respect simply don’t care about themselves or anyone else.

Children who have self-respect treat themselves well. They’re less likely to do harmful things, they make good choices, and they tend to act in ways that are in their own best interests. The benefits of teaching the value of respect early include children who:

• Are happier, more successful, and have healthier relationships.
• Are unselfish, considerate, caring, and generous.
• Respect you and other influential adults.
• Honor reasonable boundaries placed on them.
• Are more likely to trust you and abide by your directives.

Contrary to the assertions of popular culture, when you act like parents you engender healthy respect, encourage caring relationships, and foster their positive development.

Be the Parent

Popular culture tells you that to be a good parent, you should be friends with your children. You should hang out with them, tell them anything, and treat them as equals. But when you’re friends with your children, you actually detract from the strength of your relationship and surrender your influence over them. When you become friends with your children, you give up your unique relationship with them because they have many friends, but they have only two (hopefully) parents.

Let me make this very clear: being you child’s friend is NOT YOUR JOB! You cannot and should not be friends with your children. If you’re friends with your children, you are hurting them.

Why, you ask, is it such a bad thing to be friends with your children? It’s simple. Friends have equal power with their peers, yet parents and children should not share power. Parents have to do things that friends wouldn’t do. Friends don’t tell friends to do their homework and friends don’t tell friends when it’s time to go to bed.

How many times have you said, “Which part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” Well, apparently many children in America don’t understand any part of “no.” A recent survey by the Center for a New American Dream reports that when parents say no to a request, 60 percent of children keep nagging, on average, nine times after being told no. Ten percent of 12- and 13-year-olds even said that they nag their parents over 50 times. Even more troubling, 55 percent of the children surveyed said that their parents usually gave in. When you’re friends with your children, they won’t respect your power to say “No!” and mean it.

Your children don’t want to be friends with you. When I ask children how they feel about being friends with their parents, they look at me as if I’m from another planet. It’s just not in their mindset to be friends with their parents. You’re their parents! Parents aren’t supposed to be cool, phat, or hip (and if you use any of those words, you’re definitely not). When you try to act like your children’s friends, you come across, as one girl once told me, “Oh so 20th century! Acting cool makes them look so dorky and desperate.” And despite their frequent protestations, your children want you to be their parents. So remember, being friends was definitely not your children’s idea.

Your children also need you to be their parents. Though children in the 21st century often look, dress, act, and talk like adults long before they actually are, the reality is that until they reach their teens, they are still children in many ways—inexperienced, unskilled, immature—and living in a world that has never been more threatening. Your children need someone in their lives—YOU!—who is more powerful than they and who can protect them from the big, scary world (of course, they would never admit that to you!). When children are the most powerful people in their families, they live in a constant state of fear because they’re not ready to take on the world alone. When you’re the parent, you can provide them with a safe haven—with direction, support, and boundaries—from which to explore the world. You show your children that you’re there to protect them when needed.

When parents want to be friends with their children, they aren’t doing it because it’s best for their children. These parents are often unfulfilled in their own lives, lonely, and aren’t getting their needs met from adults. They share inappropriate information with their children (e.g., about their relationship with their spouse) and place the onus of their happiness on their children’s shoulders. Because of their love for their parents, most children will accept this role because they feel guilty if they didn’t give their parents that support. Lacking the experience and maturity to handle this responsibility, however, children slowly crumble under its weight. In time, their love, empathy, and compassion for their parents can turn to anger and resentment at having to assume a role that they neither asked for nor are capable of handling.

Here’s a simple rule: parents should have adult friendships and children should have peer friendships. If your needs for intimacy and support are appropriately satisfied by other adults, you won’t need to turn to your children to have those needs met. Similarly, your children should have age-appropriate relationships with peers, with whom they can share and gain support from. Freedom from the responsibility of being friends enables you to fulfill your real parental responsibilities and allows your children to be children.

Here are some keys to earning respect and maintaining healthy boundaries:

• Be aware of what your needs are and by whom they are being met.
• Be careful that your children aren’t being forced to unreasonably sacrifice time with peers to be with you.
• Never use guilt to force them to choose you over their friends.
• Monitor what you talk to them about and be sure the content of your conversations is appropriate for an adult speaking to a child.

Gaining your children’s respect doesn’t mean that you have to be a harsh, restrictive ogre. You can be loving, fun, and supportive. But it also means being tough, though being tough doesn’t mean being unkind, angry, or controlling. Being tough means knowing what is best for your children and doing what is in their best interests—whether they like it or not. Being their parent also doesn’t mean that they won’t care for you any less. In fact, they will love and respect you more because you are doing what is best for them.

Not being your children’s friend when they’re young doesn’t preclude you from ever being their friend. Once your children become adults, then you can be friends with them. At that point, you’ll want to be friends with your children because you’ll want to live with them when you get old!

Maintain Power

The depictions of parent-child relationships in popular culture aim to undermine respect. Think about how Bart Simpson treated his father, Homer, on The Simpsons. Or how Ed Bundy was treated by his children on Married with Children. Many of the situation comedies on network television portray fathers in particular as buffoons who are unworthy of respect and easily manipulated by their children.

Teaching your children respect involves maintaining power over them. It means being firm and adhering to your values in the face of popular culture’s persistent attempts to sway you. It also means being consistent. You must send clear messages about respect, your expectations, and the limits you set for your children. If you give in to nagging or adjust your message when it’s convenient, you’re detracting from your ability to earn their respect and exert influence over them.

Maintaining power communicates to your children that you’re in charge and asking for respect, that you expect them to live by your family’s values, and that you’re ready to enforce the expectations and limits you set for them. Maintaining power doesn’t mean being utterly dictatorial, particularly as your children move into adolescence. It means striking a balance between being completely permissive and overly strict. Parents who strike this balance allow their children to contribute to family decisions about limits, but ultimately decide for themselves what limits are reasonable. They establish unambiguous expectations and make clear to their children the consequences of transgressions. Finally, these parents follow through firmly and consistently when their children violate the limits.

Maintaining power also involves being flexible, which communicates your respect for your children. You can foster this flexibility by talking to your children about your expectations and why you set limits you on them. Engaging them in a discussion of your resolve also gives them the opportunity to convince you to be more flexible. Flexibility doesn’t mean giving in to your children. It means being open to changing the expectations and limits you place on them. If your children can persuade you through their words or actions that they deserve more latitude, you should show flexibility and give them more rein. Of course, you have to make sure that they act responsibly with the new-found respect. If they do, you may consider giving them more independence as a reward for your earned respect for them.

If they violate your respect you’ve given them, they must pay for it in a way that will help them clearly see the connection between the respect you showed them and how they broke your trust. Your children need to understand that with earned respect comes responsibility and that without being responsible, the respect—and the independence—will be lost. Invariably, your children will abuse your trust periodically; that’s just part of being young. What’s important is that they learn from these experiences so they don’t continue to abuse the freedom you give them and misuse the respect they have earned.

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Raise Compassionate Children

November, 2006

Because of the messages of selfishness and disregard for others that popular culture communicates these days, your children aren’t likely to learn compassion on their own. You must nurture the ability to care about others in their early years. If the value of compassion isn’t evident in your daily lives, your children are less likely to develop compassion and will ultimately become emotionally and socially disconnected from the larger world in which they live. Only when children are immersed in a compassionate world will they come to see the value of compassion and embrace it as their own.

Compassion is a word that is bandied around often these days as a “value du jour” in our big-talk, little-action culture of values. Yet, as with most values that are co-opted for a particular agenda, compassion has lost its fundamental meaning and value to people. Thus, the importance of compassion in our lives is not fully appreciated nor is it often expressed in our daily lives.

The Value of Compassion

Developing compassion starts with the recognition that we are not isolated creatures, but rather individuals who are a part of many groups—communities, races, religions, nationalities, and citizens of planet Earth—that must coexist to survive. This realization leads to an awareness of others; who they are, the culture in which they live, what they believe, how they live their lives, and the challenges that they face. Compassion provides us with a context in which we realize that people are more alike than they are different. We all want to be healthy and happy, safe and secure, and feel connected; we work, we play, we raise families. Compassion enables us to feel empathy for others and to put others’ needs ahead of our own when necessary.

Consider the alternatives to compassion: hatred and indifference. A person with hatred wishes the worst for others and lacks empathy or concern for others. A person who is indifferent doesn’t care about another person or group and won’t reach out to help others. A hateful or indifferent person is truly disconnected from humanity—both their own and others’.

At the heart of compassion is a thought (“I am not alone in this world.”), an emotion (“I feel for others and others feel for me.”), and an action (“How can I help others?”) that propel us to want to give of ourselves to others. Your challenge is to encourage the value of compassion and to provoke in your children those thoughts, emotions, and actions that bring compassion into their lives.

Live a Compassionate Life

If you lead a compassionate life, your children will naturally see its importance to you and will assume its importance for themselves. Leading a compassionate life is communicated to your children in both obvious and subtle ways. Your children, particularly when they’re young, will most notice the larger acts of compassion in which you engage, for example, volunteering your time for worthy causes or traveling a long distance to support a family member in need. As your children get older and begin to grasp the concept of compassion, they will also see the smaller expressions of compassion, such as comforting them when they scrape their knees, assuming dinner duties when your spouse is stressed out from work, or helping a neighbor with a home project. A meaningful lesson from these examples is that compassion doesn’t discriminate; acts of compassion can be small or large, empathic or substantial, or given to friends or strangers.

Talk to Your Children about Compassion

Encourage the value of compassion by talking to your children about it. Tell them what compassion is and why it is important to your family and the world as a whole. Because compassion is, at its core, an emotion, you should describe what compassion feels like (an urge to do good for someone else) and how it feels to act compassionately (satisfying, joyful, and inspiring).

To help show your children why compassion is so important, you can talk to them about the consequences of compassion: connectedness and meaning, or the lack of compassion: hatred and indifference. The way to really make this discussion hit home is to give your children examples of compassion in the world at large, as well as examples of lack of compassion. Point out ways in which your children can express compassion in your family, for example, being kind to their siblings. You can also highlight ways they can show compassion toward their community, such as donating old clothes to charity. To give them a much broader perspective on compassion in the larger world, you can show them events in the news, such as relief efforts in a poor country. Finally, you want to establish expectations about compassion in your family. These expectations should clarify what compassionate behavior you expect and attach appropriate consequences for violations of the expectations.

Explore Compassion

Educating your children about the value of compassion is not a one-time discussion. Rather, it’s an ongoing dialogue in which you regularly engage your children about compassion and weave compassion into the fabric of your family life. A quality newspaper, magazine, or website will offer many examples each day of compassion—and hatred and indifference—occurring throughout the world. You can further engage your children with more extensive resources, for example, books, films, and lectures, that describe acts of compassion that give your children the opportunity to more fully appreciate all sides of compassion. The important part of exploring compassion is to evoke in your children the positive emotions associated with compassion (love, empathy, kindness, pride), the painful emotions connected to hatred (anger, fear, sadness), and the complete absence of emotions related to indifference.

Surround Yourself with Compassionate People

You are not, of course, the only influence in your children’s lives. Extended family, peers, teachers, coaches, and others affect your children on a daily basis, as does popular culture. Though you can’t maintain complete control your children’s social lives, you can exert a considerable influence over the critical mass of people around them. Making deliberate decisions about who you surround your family with can help ensure that your children get messages of compassion from others in their immediate world.

As your children become increasingly immersed in popular culture and more vulnerable to peer pressure, assuming an active role in shaping your children’s early social environment is particularly important. By surrounding your children with compassionate people, you increase the chances that peer influence and other social forces later in childhood support the value of compassion.

Engage Your Children in Compassionate Activities

As your children gain an understanding of the value of compassion, you can further deepen their connection by having them engage in compassionate activities. These endeavors can include:

• Encouraging acts of compassion within your family, for example, helping a sibling frustrated with her homework or being extra loving when you come home from a hard day at work.
• Sharing activities outside the home that help others, such as participating in a food drive during the holidays or tutoring younger children.
• Discussions about the experiences, sharing stories about what each member of your family did, who they met, how they might have helped someone, and what emotions it evoked in them, all help to clarify and deepen the meaning of compassion in your family’s lives.

Compassion is Contagious

Compassion fosters other essential values that will not only serve your children in their later lives, but, more basically, helps them become just plain decent people. Popular culture, unfortunately, doesn’t hold decency in particularly high regard. It associated decency with being a wimp, loser, pushover, or sucker. More often than not, so-called “bad boys,” such as the basketball player, Latrell Sprewell (who attacked his coach, but still plays and makes millions of dollars) and the hip-hop artist, Snoop Dogg (who has gained fame and wealth despite gang involvement, drug dealing, and jail time), are lionized by popular culture and idolized by impressionable young people. Popular culture tells your children that these bad boys get the money, celebrity, and “bling” and the decent folks are left scraping for whatever’s left over.

Yet raising your children to be decent will not make them soft or easy. To the contrary, decent people are strong, independent, and willful, but these qualities are reflected in acts of compassion and goodness rather than attitude and aggressiveness. What separates the good from the bad is not their power, but rather the values underlying that power and how that power is exerted. The bad guys use it for selfish, greedy, and, often, destructive purposes. Decent people use those values for positive, life-affirming ends.

Two other values that emerge from compassion are kindness and generosity. Kind children are gentle, considerate, and sympathetic. They’re responsive to others’ needs, helpful, and motivated to do good. Compassionate children are also generous and willing to give of themselves to others. What makes compassion, decency, kindness, and generosity so wonderful is that they are returned many times over, so that both the giver and the recipient benefit.

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Stop That Runaway Train!

September, 2006

You’re under tremendous pressure these days to give your children every opportunity and advantage. Whether piano lessons at age four or being a part of a traveling soccer team at age eight, you feel compelled by popular culture to get your kids on the fast track as soon as possible, otherwise they’re going to be left behind and you will permanently stunt their development. Unfortunately, being seduced by these messages only makes everyone in your family miserable. You feel like you’ve lost control of your family. Both you and your kids are overscheduled and stressed out. You feel terrible because you’re not being the “perfect parent.” And your family has no time to enjoy each other.

Despite feeling like your life is out of control, you actually can stop that train if you want. Your challenge is to recognize how this runaway train called family life is hurting your family. You need to examine and reconnect with your values (or change them!). You must then make deliberate choices about the kind of family life you want to have (even if popular culture is telling you otherwise).

Regain Perspective

There are so many examples of parents losing perspective with their children, most notably in sports.

• The tragic and fatal beating of a hockey father by another father in Massachusetts.
• In Houston, parents of a young baseball player sued his school district because his coaches weren’t playing him enough to give him a chance at a college scholarship.
• And just so you don’t think that women are immune, two mothers assaulted another mother after a youth baseball game in Salt Lake City.

The first step to stopping the runaway train is to not buy into popular culture’s messages of fame and fortune through your children’s achievements and maintain perspective on why your children are involved in sports and the arts. Despite the Lindsay Lohans and LeBron Jameses out there, I would encourage you to go under the following assumption: Your children will never be superstars in anything! They won’t be the next Tiger Woods, Sarah Chang, or Stephen Hawking.

Here’s are some interesting statistics. Only one in 10,000 kids get college athletic scholarships. I don’t mean just major-college scholarships that are stepping stones to the pros; I mean Division II, III, and junior college. Of those athletes, only six in 10,000 make it to the pros. That means that your children have a six in 1,000,000 chance of becoming professional athletes. And the average career span of a professional athlete is only three to four years. All of a sudden, pursuit of such lofty dreams doesn’t seem so attractive, does it? Here’s another painful statistic. Between the ages of seven and thirteen, 70% of children drop out of organized sports. The main reason: It’s no longer fun.

Your expectations for your children with regard to their achievement activities should include:

• Having fun;
• Fostering their healthy development;
• Love of a lifetime activity;
• Appreciation for physical health (if it’s a physical activity);
• The developmen