American Ideals Meets Children The Challenge and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle

There’s so much division in the United States regarding our freedoms but no matter whether you are on the right or left or somewhere in the middle we all seem to have the common thread of wanting to exercise as much of it as we can. This begs for a definition of this freedom we all call our own in America.

Rudolf Dreikurs, MD in his book Children the Challenge was a great observer of our modern time. Even though his book was written in 1964, it gives us great insight into the troubles of our day and age. At the start of the Vietnam War he saw that a shift needed to occur in parenting brought on by the demands of the changing societal morals. No longer was parenting by the “do-as-I-say,” authority-figure approach going to work. He recognized that society was demanding more democracy, and therefore, parenting had to accommodate to the demands of children who were being influenced by the society in which they lived. What he proposed was that democracy is FREEDOM WITH LIMITATIONS. Democracy wasn’t and isn’t anarchy. Democracy is freedom that doesn’t encroach on others’ freedom. Dr. Dreikurs’ book gives skills that parents can learn to parent by democracy and examples of what it looks like to have children who feel respected.

Dr. Dreikurs ran several parent-child teaching centers in Chicago in his time. And, his book is written with all his experience at hand. His goal is to help parents transition to the new demands of parenting in our modern age, not out of choice but out of necessity. Children are demanding to be included in the democracy called family. Dr. Dreikurs set out to give a set of tools through vignettes (of true stories) to parents. While I believe a few of his examples need to be adjusted with the clarification that some behaviors may be due to physiological imbalances or needs for attachment and bonding that behavioral adjustments alone may not help and possibly may even harm; for example, sometimes a baby crying does in fact need to be held or someone needs to figure out why the baby is crying. Regardless, the majority of his book is full of gems.

Dr. Dreikurs’ underlying focus is to teach freedom-with-limitations to children so that they become respectful, responsible adults. He says you have to teach them to take responsibility for themselves, and discourage the belief that someone else will do things that they can do for themselves. This is not easy; it requires conscious parenting. It requires recognizing that children are smart and their demands mimic that of their society around them; parents must know they aren’t the only influence on their children. It requires parents to learn skills to know how to teach consequences of actions without “telling” children–which amounts to nagging. Everyone turns their ears off to nagging. The conscious parent finds ways to show a child the consequences of their naïve actions. Here’s an example of a vignette he gives in his book to illustrate this point:

A child was throwing rocks at bottles, which the mother clearly knew was not in his best interest. Instead of showing him the consequences of his actions, the mother kept over and over saying “now child that isn’t a good idea; you shouldn’t be throwing rocks at bottles.” Because she never got through to the child–instead her words amounted to nagging, which the child ignored–his final rock at a bottle landed glass in his eye of which permanently blinded him. How unfortunate that she wasn’t able to show him how sharp the glass was and how far it could fly and how valuable his eyes are to him.

It takes effort to be a conscious parent but if you take the time, you will have a more responsible child that turns into a more responsible adult, and this makes life better for them as well as for everyone around them. For when a child feels understood and cared enough about to be patiently shown how to act in the world, rather than be “told,” they become caring adults rather than the shallow version of simply caring only for themselves and only following their own inclinations.

Lastly, we can’t ever forget to make parenting fun. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, the series of children’s books written by Betty MacDonald in the 1940’s and 1950’s, always knew how to make learning consequences a delight. For example, when Patsy Waters refuses to take baths, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle leaves her unbathed until she becomes so caked with dirt that radishes can be planted on her!

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