Raising Progressive Offspring
By Emily Spence, 09/16/07One's living in a proactively progressive family is not easy from a number of standpoints. Especially as a youngster, one can feel torn between wanting to fit in with contemporaries and standing up for an altogether different viewpoint and lifestyle -- an alternative that could cause one to be ostracized and shunned by peers...
...In the end, it seems important that children, starting at a tender age, are exposed to opportunities in which, through being generous to others, they can begin to see the merit of social service. In a similar vein, their having access to many positive role models to point the way and set examples can also be worthwhile. Similarly, it can be helpful to try to ensure that peers are present, who ratify atypical behaviors, such as my child exhibited when she stood up to the KKK endorsing jocks and affirmed the maligned gays at her school.
All such behaviors matter, it appears. Especially this looks to be so as the examples that progressive youth set can help further youngsters to, in turn, question the status quo.
Relative to this, the manner in which one disciplines a child makes a big difference in the types of values, standards and principles that they practice. For instance, a tyrannical style of discipline can create sullen resentment and belligerence. At the same time, it can cause a child to easily cave into bullies and want to emulate the controlling despotic parents. It, likewise, teaches children not to question or stand up to authority figures, nor anyone else with power over them. All considered, overt control and force do not yield constructive results for children.
At the same time, love withdrawal, coldness and shaming from adult care givers, while these can induce obedience, often can creates weak, co-dependent children. These techniques also creates insecurity as conditional love can undermine self-confidence and capacity for independent action since the recipient of such practices constantly seeks assurance of approval and love from the emotionally inconsistent adult. As such, while it is a less direct and more subtle form of manipulation than the above authoritarian style, it can be just as ruinous.
A third method that is can be damaging involves the heavy use of extrinsic reinforcement such as many school administrators employ. Little gold stars, trophies, trinkets, medals, constant praise and so on can reinforce the inability to do something simply because it is right to do and because one has (intrinsic, internalized) pleasure from the moments that one decisively undertakes right actions. Instead, one comes to rely on externally provided inducements -- i.e., rewards, commendation and so on.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18396.htm
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