IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO MAKE YOUR KIDS HAPPY

OK, maybe I am being a little too dramatic, but the direction you are taking now with your parenting will not produce a positive outcome.  The route taken by parents now – “make your child happy/parenting as a friend approach” simply teaches your child you are their servant and that they are entitled to whatever they deem as necessary in order “to be happy.”

“No!” or “You need to wait,” are curse words NEVER to be spoken aloud in your home.  These words are beyond “just wrong.” They crush the magical world children and teens want to believe is their destiny and right.  So tell me, how is “being your child’s best friend” working for you?

You don’t need to respond.  I have been hearing the consequences for years!!  “My kids don’t respect me.”  “All they do is argue with me.” “Why won’t they listen to me?” “All they care about is themselves!!” My straight forward answer to parents: “We need to discuss how you taught them to think that you are their servant.”

Parenting is NOT about making your kids HAPPY! It’s about helping your children build their character skills to be successful in the adult world.  Now, your children are NOT going to like this parental paradigm shift one bit!!  For years, you mistakenly worked very hard to please them.  You truly believed if they were happy and continuously rewarded that your efforts would produce responsible, motivated, grateful and parent-pleasing children.

Instead – to your shock and confusion – your children transformed into young adolescent vampires, determined to suck every ounce of contentment and peace of mind from you. They have a constant unquenchable thirst for entertainment, excitement, freedom and the marketed possessions that they plead are necessary for life meaning AND their quest for happiness and worthiness!

I grew up hearing “What do you think, money grows on trees?” How I wanted that to be true: fairies that took your teeth and gave you money!!  There was Santa Claus that made your merry at Christmas – despite the TRUTH.  I certainly was not good all of the time!!  That somehow, magically, Santa forgot the 5 trillion times I teased and instigated fights with my sister and brother all year long!

So, Santa taught me “being good” was REALLY not necessary in order to get what I wanted!!  Yet, there was this “other side of life growing up in Jersey and being of immigrant grandparents and father that around age 10 painfully taught me: “Nothing is free. If you want it then work for it!”

Then, emerged the painful process of acceptance.  Santa Claus was not real.  All my baby teeth were gone.  The final blow?  My father bought a business that quickly I came to accept was a “family business.” It was expected to be one of my priorities – not a privilege as a first born – but a responsibility!

I don’t think my parents understood that stealing my “entitled happiness” and saddling me with “suffering” was going to be the foundation upon which I would build my character skills.  They were young, eager to achieve the American Dream, raising three kids and totally dependent on the “family business” as the vehicle for their success.

They simply incorporated me, then my sister and brother, as a natural process in the evolution of living and working….then, working to live.