Withholding cooperation from children

Children don't realize and parents forget how dependent children are. Even 15-year-olds need to be fed and have their clothes washed and a ride to the mall. They tend to take these things as givens, that they are entitled to all kinds of benefits from us. "I didn't ask to be born", an adolescent might say, as if that proved some kind of parental obligation. Neither did we ask to be born, either, and since nobody in the history of the world did, this argument is not particularly compelling.

Most parents operate on a "punishment" basis, by which I mean they assume that their children are entitled to all the privileges they can legally manage, and that when a child misbehaves one or more of those privileges should be removed. When we punish by removing a privilege, there is rarely much connection between the misbehavior being punished and the removal of the privilege. To the child, they are simply being punished.

An alternative method is the "reward" method. In this approach, a child has no privileges other than basic ones, food, clothing, medical help and shelter. Every additional privilege has to be earned, and the privilege earned is always related to a specific behavior. An adolescent might earn late-night privileges on the weekend by demonstrating specific kinds of reliability during the week, such as being on time with chores. A child might earn time on video games by getting homework in on time on a daily or weekly basis, or might earn extra privileges for showing respectful behavior to the parents.

There are many advantages to the second approach, but one of the disadvantages is that the parents have to spend considerable time thinking about what they want to teach and how they want to relate privileges to specific behaviors. It takes time to figure out what a basic level of privilege they want their children to have, and to change that appropriately as the children age. In addition, they have to keep track of what's going on, and that takes more time and attention. Punishment, on the other hand, is quickly dealt out and quickly over, and rarely teaches much of anything useful other than to keep one's head down. Most children prefer punishment regimes, since the punishment is over quickly and the child can get back to doing whatever they want.

I suspect many parents have trouble just saying "no" to a child, especially when the request is a reasonable one. We all want our children to like us. We want them to be friendly, to not make waves, to allow our complicated lives to be easier. Why be a "tough" parent when it's so easy to "give in"? Parents who "give in" have over-privileged, over-indulged and overly entitled children, and that's bad enough when they are still children, but it's really awful when they're 17. They have sold out, given up on demanding respect in order to get accommodation and liking. They end with neither being liked nor being respected.