So often, parents must suffer through their kids’ childhoods.
It is so tragic when a parent is not able to enjoy their child.
I know, we’re all supposed to tell ourselves that our kid is just “who they are,” and that we are supposed to be okay with our kid having whatever personality they end up having.
What complete and utter nonsense.
The fact is, a lot of personalities are bad. Some are absolutely terrible. It is your responsibility as a parent to make it so that your kid has a good personality and not a bad one.
“But,” you might say, “there’s no such thing as a ‘bad’ personality! Everyone is different, and all of the different kinds of people in the world make the world better.”
No, they don’t. Some people make the world better. Some people make the world worse, and it is your job as a parent to make sure your kid is a person who makes your life, his life, and the world better!
To be clear, different personalities are great. Bad personalities are not. A different personality is personified by a kid who is obsessed with lampposts, or is really shy, or only wants to eat toast. More power to those kids! I’m talking about kids who think it’s cool to cause problems for other people, or to be rude, or to never listen to their elders. Those are bad personalities.
Unfortunately, as we walk through the world, we all see so many people whose parents failed to make their kids into people who make the world better. You see these people all the time: people who go out of their way to hurt others. People who don’t care about causing problems for others through abuse or neglect. People who play their iPad with the volume on full blast at a restaurant, annoying every person within 100 feet, even though their headphones are stowed in their pockets, mere inches away. People who treat servers at restaurants or baristas at coffee shops as if they are somehow beneath them. There are already way too many of these people in the world. We don’t need another one.
Here are some thoughts on how to not make another one.
Your kid, up to this moment, is who you’ve allowed him to be, and who you’ve taught him to be.
First, stop allowing him to cause problems for other people. Start by considering yourself. Start with the idea that you owe it to yourself to have a kid in your own life that makes your life better. Furthermore, start with the understanding that you shouldn’t let your kid do things that annoy you. That’s a good start, since you are around yourself all of the time, and you have a pretty good sense of when you are annoyed, and that’s a pretty good metric on whether or not your kid’s behavior is antisocial. An antisocial behavior is a behavior that causes a problem for someone else in the world. Since you are in the world, and since you are his parent, who better than you to keep tabs on this?
Second, stop teaching him to cause problems for other people. It’s doubtful that you have sat him down with a pencil and paper and delivered lessons on how to be a jerk. Even very antisocial parents don’t do that. However, they do often teach their kids antisocial behavior by modeling such behavior. Your kid is always watching. What is he learning? Are you holding yourself to a high standard of conduct while he’s around? Are you treating people with respect and kindness? Are you saying “please” and “thank you” to servers and baristas? Are you wearing headphones at a restaurant?
You also have a responsibility to your kid to make sure that being himself is a good thing. If he goes through life causing problems for people, a lot of people will spend a lot of their time making your kid’s life harder and worse.
All parents have a profound responsibility to the world to put people in it who will make the world better. It may be the most important responsibility that any of us have. If your kid were released into the wild today, would he be ready to make it better?