With the advent of 'praising' our children for everything they do, big or small, the attitudes of children are changing. There are times when extreme praise for seemingly little things are good. How many times have parents stood over a potty, with the first wee or poo in it and excitedly told the child how wonderful they are, how clever they are, that Mummy is so pleased with them and so proud, and just wait until Daddy gets home from work and he will be completely excited too?
But praise is getting out of hand. Children are not allowed to fail at school these days. Everybody is a winner. Of course the child might feel good, but you and I know that not everyone is a winner. There are some real duds out there, who don't try, don't care and spend their entire life messing up someone else's life. So as they grow into teenagers, they have this belief that the world thinks they are fabulous come what may, they are a success no matter how much of a failure they really are, and to top it off, we are not allowed to shape our children any more with a bit of judicious discipline.
You may think my view a little warped, but we have brought up five children, none of them criminals, all in the workforce or 'at home' mums, and so far we haven't had to face police or courts on account of them.
This is why the article in today's Courier Mail really appealed. This is a copied and pasted article, it is not my writing, and I give the references here so you can go to the source and read it for yourself.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/kids-dont-understand-the-meaning-of-the-word-humility-let-alone-practise-it/story-fncak5zz-1226474389761
The article by Angela Mollard starts here:
"RECENTLY I read Charlotte’s
Web to my daughter.
Remember the story? A tenacious and articulate spider writes
words in her web to describe a sweet but otherwise unremarkable pig.
‘Terrific’, she spells out, then ‘radiant’. Just before she
dies – because even uncommonly gifted arachnids still cark it – she spins the
word ‘humble’.
“What does humble mean, Mum?” asks my daughter.
“It means you don’t have tickets on yourself; let’s say you
won the spelling bee at school, you wouldn’t show off about it.”
My daughter thinks for a moment, then replies, “I don’t know
anyone who’s humble.”
There, dear reader, is the voice of a generation. Humility,
that most venerated, ancient and biblical of virtues, has slipped out of our
lexicon, swept away by a culture that’s all about the ‘me’, not ‘we’.
As a freshly minted journalism graduate, I wrote obituaries
when there were no ambulances to chase. It was brain-numbingly dull. Most of
the subjects hadn’t actually died, but the editor wanted to be prepared.
So I’d eulogise on Sir Edmund Hillary, Nelson Mandela, the
Queen Mother (I knocked her off three times) – extraordinary people defined by
a common adjective: humility.
Years later, his obit yellowing in a file, I cajoled Hillary
to confess who stepped on the summit of Everest first, he or Tenzing Norgay?
“We reached the top almost together,” he said firmly. (Notably, there’s no
photo of Hillary on the peak; he simply didn’t think to take one.)
In these days of social media and ‘selfies’, it’s not hard
to be humble – it’s impossible. Everybody is a brand to be self-promoted. “Get
yourself an agent,” said a showbiz friend when I started this column. “Why?” I
asked.
“People will read it for the writing, not because I’m some
chick on a yoghurt ad.” He smiled knowingly: “Trust me.” (Wish I had, there’s a
motza to be made spruiking dairy products.)
“Humility,” said CS Lewis, “is not thinking less of
yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” What a quaint notion for a culture
raised on praise and driven by a need for recognition.
This lack of humility now defines who we are: the arrogance
that drove the global financial crisis; the self-inflation and deflation of our
athletes in London; the buying of Twitter or Facebook followers; the slow death
of civility.
“We’re going to audit you,” a media exec told me recently
when I was up for a new role.
“Audit me? What for?” I asked anxiously, regretting my tax
tardiness.
“For popularity; you know, to see how many followers you
have and how often you’ve been ‘liked’ and ‘favourited’.” Jeez, Louise – I’m a
writer. Do you reckon Shakespeare could have knocked out 37 plays and a zillion
sonnets if he’d had to constantly tweet about how fabulous he was?
Look, I love social media, but this need to shop-window
ourselves is creating a generation that calculates its worth on external
adulation, not personal integrity. Where will our next Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi
or Aung San Suu Kyi come from if we continue to pursue glory over good?
One obituary I wish I’d written was Neil Armstrong’s. When
he died, TV producers scrambled for video footage.
Yes, there was the moon walk, but there were no red carpets,
no appearances on Letterman, no reunions with retired astronauts. He was the
ultimate humble hero – an explorer who sought greatness not for one man, but
for mankind.
Catch Angela Mollard every Sunday at 8.45am on Weekend
Today, on the Nine Network.
Email angelamollard@sundaymagazine.com.au. Follow her at www.twitter.com/angelamollard."
How true is that? And today our children and grandchildren gauge their level of success on how many facebook friends they have, or who likes them, when in fact, most of them would fall over them in the street and not know them.
In my book, a little bit of humility goes a long way.
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