by Bob Ditter
Dear Bob,
Last summer we had a camper who refused to listen to his counselor. He
would not help out during clean-up and consistently pushed his dirty clothes
under his bed. Getting him out of his cabin to activities was always a
challenge, as was getting him back to the cabin or to meals afterwards.
He wandered and "visited" boys in other bunks and when confronted
by most any counselor, the boy, a rising fifth grader, would retort, "You're
not the boss of me!" His own counselor was very patient, had several
"chats" with him and tried many incentives, but the boy's
behavior did not change. When we called the parents, they suspected it
was something at camp, like other boys secretly teasing him or counselors
mistreating him. When we reassured them this was not the case, they continued
to make excuses for him.
Am I missing something? It seems to me parents find every reason to
exempt their kids from responsibility, insisting always that there must
be some problem we have as yet "not uncovered." When we told
them that camp was about helping their son grow up, their response was,
"We don't care about that, we just want him to be happy."
What do you say to this, Bob? And what, short of sending the boy home,
can we do with such a rude and disrespectful camper?
— Frustrated Director
Dear Frustrated,
You have a lot of company. I hear from camp professionals and teachers
around the country that children are increasingly rude, disrespectful,
and inappropriate with adults. I truly believe we have a serious "epidemic
of disrespect" among young people that is the result of three different,
but related factors.
The first is the overselling of children. In her new book, Born to Buy
(Scribner 2004), Juliet Schor presents convincing evidence that youth
who get caught up in the values of consumerism, expecting "the latest
toy or gadget" to provide them with status and self-confidence that
ultimately never materializes, become problem kids — restless, rude,
miserable, and lacking inner confidence. Marketing to children now involves
focus groups with children that develop products that appeal directly
to their whims, with advertisements that have infiltrated every aspect
of daily life. Children wear their parents down (or buy the products themselves,
without their parents' participation or approval) to get what they
think they want, only to discover that great feeling of owning the "newest,
latest" doesn't last. A cartoon in the December 13, 2004,
New Yorker Magazine shows two children chasing after their mother in a
store with one child carrying a box he presumably wants his mother to
buy, saying to the other child, "She'll buy it for us. We
just have to stay on message."
The problem, as Schor so well documents, is that increased consumption
by children only leads to disappointment, distractibility, and even depression.
With so much concern on the part of parents about the threat of drugs,
violence, and bullies, it is ironic that one of the most menacing dangers
to our young people may be the consumerism in which they are enmeshed.
Consuming simply doesn't instill in children the values of respect,
grace, and gratitude. Furthermore, it suggests that the sources of strength
and meaning lie outside themselves rather than within.
The second factor is the influence of the media on children, including
television, the Internet, video games, and DVDs. The phrase your fifth
grade camper shouted to his counselors, "You're not the boss
of me!" comes directly from a popular TV show. It has become the
national refrain for rude children in camps and schools throughout the
country. My answer, by the way, is, "And it's clear that you
are not the boss of you, either! Because you're certainly not running
you, your feelings are!"
Children are grossly over-stimulated. They see and hear so much sexually
explicit, violent, and inappropriate behavior they have come to regard
as "normal," that they carry it to school, camp, and just
about everywhere else they travel. One teacher at a school here in Boston
told me that when she went to set a limit on some inappropriate classroom
behavior by a third grader, the child mocked her in front of the other
students, ran into the hallway and called back to her defiantly, "Who's
your daddy!" Phrased as a question, it is shouted as a statement
asserting that, he, indeed, is her boss. Left uncorrected, what will this
behavior look like at sixteen?
The Internet, though a blessing in many ways, has made its own contribution
to the scene. One fifteen-year-old young man that I see in therapy told
me that IM-ing is a totally different way of communicating, where kids
will say or ask provocative things to one another online that they would
never dare say to one another face-to-face. Casual sexual "hookups"
are frequently arranged through Instant Messages that could never be set
up in person. (For more on this, see "Teen Romance," in The
New York Times Magazine, May 30, 2004). The overall effect is that the
sense of what is appropriate and respectful is eroding.
The third and crowning factor in this flu of disrespect afflicting so
many youth has to do with parents. Themselves skeptical of authority that
may have been abusive, rigid, harsh, or uninvolved, many parents have
done a fantastic job of educating their children about feelings without
providing any sense of valid authority. As the father of one of my patients
once said to me, "I don't want to be the boss!" His experience
with his own alcoholic father had been so distasteful that he renounced
authority in general, throwing out its essential positive effects in the
process of abdicating his position as a head of the house. He and his
wife replaced authority with involvement, becoming overly involved in
their children's lives. As a result, his children were unruly, demanding,
and miserable. They complained constantly, even to the point of being
ungrateful. They were exquisitely in touch with their feelings and could
recite numerous reasons why they should be able to do something or not
be made to do something, having become "little lawyers." To
this complaining, resisting, demanding behavior this father and his wife
tried talking, cajoling, and persuading, all to little or no avail.
Sound familiar? In her recent book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee (Penguin
Books 2001), one of the best books I have read in the last year, Wendy
Mogel, a psychologist from Los Angeles, describes how parents have instilled
precious little valid authority in their children's lives —
resulting in chaos, lack of internal discipline, and all the attendant
problems that come with it — being self-absorbed; having low frustration
tolerance; possessing little ability to rebound from a setback; and having
difficulty in managing strong emotions, disappointment, and so on. Written
from a Jewish perspective, this book is relevant to everyone who works
with children, regardless of your religious views. Want to truly give
your parents a gift? Tell them to read this book, or, better, read it
yourself, publish a few ideas from it in your next camp newsletter and
then recommend they buy it and read it.
To me, the ultimate issue in the situation you describe is respect of
authority — authority used in the broadest sense of the word. Because
we as a culture have developed a suspicion of authority and have come
to "question authority" (the famous slogan of the late 1960s
and early 1970s), we have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Authority
can be nurturing, benevolent, caring, and understanding — and still
be firm! The problem is parents have developed an "either-or"
outlook when it comes to authority — and have become vague and undependable,
which has engendered disrespect and contempt in their own children. When
someone who takes an active interest in you tells you to "stop"
rude behavior, it can be a relief, even though children may at first resist
and test that authority. Children will often test authority to see if
they can truly count on it. When it fails, they become increasingly resentful,
unruly, and undisciplined. As Mogel says in her book, "You can spend
hours trying to explain and rationalize every decision, but it is your
word, not your reasoning (that) matters."
I am glad that camps are presenting themselves as strong allies in youth
development — offering not just fun, but growth and life learning
for children. Camp can truly be a powerful force in a child's life.
But without basic respect, we have no youth development. A camper who
does not recognize or respect the authority of his or her counselor or
director cannot learn — take things
in — from that adult. Indeed, certain principles of living are a
kind of authority. Self-discipline, which can be thought of as the ability
to say "no" to one's impulses, pays huge dividends to
a child socially, academically, and emotionally. (Without it, we have
no civilization!)
I believe we are seeing the effects of the lack of respect for authority
in children today. The behavior you describe is a symptom of this lack.
When parents say they "just want their kids to be happy," assert
your authority (your wisdom and experience) by saying you want them to
be happy, too, and . . . that their child will always be miserable and
unhappy if they fail to recognize the good in and have respect for the
kind and generous people giving them that fun — here at camp or
elsewhere. Without that respect, you have nothing from which to work.
Originally published in the 2005 March/April
issue of Camping Magazine.
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