Grading your parenting on a curve
If children don’t learn to obey their parents, they won’t learn to obey themselves. Self-discipline is a form of discipline. Discipline has to be taught. Or as an adult, the child will still be unable to choose what is necessary over what is pleasurable.
We have to prepare our children for the world they will be living in. When you ask your supervisor for a raise or a promotion, your request won’t judged by whether you’re a nice person or whether you tried hard. Not if your company wants to profit. Your request will be judged by whether you can do the work.
Are requests for graduation are treated that way? Can you graduate from high school or college without being able to do the work?
It’s so easy to grade your parenting skills on a curve, like your math teacher used to. Or to grade your child’s behavior on a curve. If my child is no more spoiled or undisciplined than other children, I tend to feel satisfied as a father.
But I don’t want to do that. I want to reject that attitude. If tuberculosis were endemic in my town, would I be happy if my child didn’t cough any more than the other children? Society has problems: chronic, possibly fatal problems. And I don’t want my child to have them too. Even if every other child does.
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