Parents & Company | DeWitt on Parenting

Helicopter Parents

Russ — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:57:19 +0000

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The Value of Homework

CWK — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:23:37 +0000

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Civility

Russ — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:50:20 +0000

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Internet Ethics

Russ — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:40:28 +0000

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Downloading Copyrighted Music

Russ — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:46:29 +0000

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“Cyberbullying”

Russ — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:28:59 +0000

Cyberbulling is heartbreaking. We have interviewed so many children who talk about being bullied and harassed on the Internet or via text messages. They cry. Their parents cry. They tell stories about being tortured with cruel words and mean-spirited rumors so foul I cannot repeat them here. Many say it may begin with one bully but before long a whole gang of kids join in the cruelty. And often, despite the victim’s efforts to change passwords and screen names, the bullying continues for months or even years.

But it’s also heartbreaking for me to think of the bullies. How can a child, not that many years from the pure innocence of infancy, be that evil? When I hear the agony in the voice of the victim, I want to put my arms around that child… and then go find the bullies and throttle them right before I call the police and have them jailed for assault. But while some of these kids really may be sadistic and mean… I think many of them are just too young, and too poorly taught by their parents, to realize the harm they do, and have done. In the virtual world, just like the children in Lord of the Flies, they are ungoverned. They are left alone in the wilderness of the Web where there is no sheriff, no vice-principal, no hall monitor to keep our kids in line. Which means it is our job. Parents. And since we can’t always be there to see what they write on someone’s Facebook page or in a text message, to prevent good kids from bullying we have to build within them empathy and a conscience that will serve them when we’re not there.

And part of that task is to use your child’s imagination. I think bullies are not so much evil as unfeeling. They cannot feel the pain and tears of the victim because they can’t see it or hear it. We have to teach them, role model for them, describe to them the hurt that you cannot see on the Internet but that we can help them imagine.

When Kids Steal

Russ — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:16:09 +0000

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“Supervised” Underage Drinking

Russ — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:14:10 +0000

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Binge Drinking

Russ — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:26:59 +0000

Terrell is 17 years old and maybe he said it best.

“I did a lot of stupid things while I was drunk, like about a thousand things, really.”

I think there are two lessons imbedded in his comment. He is not talking about being stupid after having a drink, having one beer or maybe two. He means he got stupid when he drank way too much, when he got drunk. Many will argue that at the age of 18, 19, 20, kids shouldn’t drink at all but the real problem is that so many kids binge drink, they slug down a 12-pack, or six or eight or 10 drinks at one sitting. They haven’t learned to go slow, to pay attention to the signs that they’re approaching the edge of losing control. In fact, that’s their goal, to feel oblivious and bullet-proof. They don’t know, they haven’t learned yet that getting happy and goofy and silly under the influence has a dark side. That’s the other lesson here: he’s right – there are about a thousand things that can go wrong.

Fights, black-outs, injuries, sex, car crashes, crime, lawsuits, arrest & prosecution, guilt, depression, addiction, ruined reputations, heartbreak for family and friends, on and on. And all of these, singly and in combination, happen a thousand times a day.

A central question in parenting is… can our children only learn “the hard way”? Or, said differently, can they learn about the danger of drinking, especially binge drinking, not by getting drunk, but by having lots of lively and informative talks with their parents starting when they’re really young? In conversations repeated year after year, can parents help a teenager feel in his gut the danger of drinking and driving, or does that child have to get drunk, get behind the wheel, and then crash?

Both teaching methods may be effective but it seems to me one of them is obviously better than the other.

Bystanders Can Stop Bullying

Russ — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:00:13 +0000

One day my daughter came home from school with a story about a kid who had been bullied. She was in middle school and she had witnessed a bully making fun of another child. I asked her how she responded. She said she watched and listened but didn’t do anything because she didn’t know what to do. As she told me, I saw the beginning of tears in her eyes.

I learned a couple of things about bullying that day. One is that, in the heat of the moment, kids don’t automatically know what to do if they witness bullying. We need to teach them; we need to talk it out with them and explore…even role model…different choices they could make. Ask the bully to stop. Pull the victim away. Tell someone. Hit the kid. And then talk about the likely consequences of each.

But I learned something else that day. Bullying hurts the witnesses, too. It hurts to watch someone get hurt. And not knowing what to do, feeling guilty about doing nothing, that hurts too.

That’s why I included hitting the bully. Not a good choice, I know, and not one that I said out loud to my daughter, but I won’t say I didn’t think of it. But then I stopped and said to myself, there is another hurt kid in this story. The bully. Somewhere along the line, she got hurt as well.