ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 28, 1996 TAG: 9611290078
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A26 EDITION: HOLIDAY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
THESE PARENTING EXPERTS say adults have been overly concerned with building children's self-esteem, and need to teach them about responsibility and consequences.
About a year ago, Mary Ellis recalls, her six teen-agers - three children and three stepchildren - were out of control. Then she and her husband decided to stop putting up with it. They set and enforced curfews, assigned chores, meted out stronger punishments and demanded to be treated with respect.
The new approach is working, Ellis says - the teen-agers' behavior and grades have improved dramatically.
Last week, the Gaithersburg, Md., librarian met the man who inspired her to change her ways: psychologist John Rosemond, whose books and newspaper columns urge parents to be stricter. He was in Frederick, Md., delivering a series of speeches attended by hundreds of parents. At each break in the program, dozens of them crowded around him, sharing stories about their children.
``Now they're a tremendous success,'' Ellis told Rosemond as he nodded and scribbled his signature in one of his books she'd just purchased. ``They treat me like a queen. It's a pleasure to be with them.''
Rosemond is one of a growing number of educators and psychologists spreading a get-tough message that is resonating with many parents. These experts contend that many baby boomer parents are so concerned with building youngsters' self-esteem, protecting them from stress and making them partners in the family that they are raising a generation of selfish, ill-mannered, troubled children.
``I have seen children upbraid their parents for not serving them well or quickly enough,'' wrote Brown University education professor William Damon in his book on the subject. ``I have observed children insulting, cursing, yelling at or even threatening their parents. When I mention such incidents to colleagues, they do not strike anyone as remarkable or surprising.''
The solution, according to Damon and others: establish clear and consistent rules, crack down strongly on misbehavior and stop trying to get your child to agree with every decision you make. Some of the specialists say that a child of grade-school age sometimes should be sent to his room for the day and that parents should not rule out spanking.
For years, religious conservatives have advocated a return to stricter discipline, but this latest group of disciplinarians is reaching a wider audience.
Books criticizing lax parents are crowding bookstore shelves, including Damon's ``Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in America's Homes and Schools''; family therapist Elizabeth Ellis' ``Raising a Responsible Child: How Parents Can Avoid Indulging Too Much and Rescuing Too Often''; and ``Spoiled Rotten: Today's Children and How to Change Them,'' by former telecommunications salesman Fred Gosman.
Lecturers such as Gosman make hundreds of speeches a year to teachers, corporations, PTAs and other parent groups. On television, Judy Sheindlin, a retired family court judge in Manhattan, preaches firmer parenting on her syndicated show ``Judge Judy,'' seen in Washington and most of the rest of the country. In McCall's magazine, parenting columnist Ron Taffel urges readers to stop bargaining and reasoning so much with their children and to tell them more often, ``Because I'm the parent, that's why.''
But the message that parents are being too indulgent concerns some psychologists and pediatricians.
Some of the advocates of stricter parenting ``almost sound like the children are the enemy,'' says Edith Lawrence, a family therapist and associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. She worries that parents will adopt so many rigid rules and punishments that their children will be afraid to talk to them, especially about sensitive topics such as sex and drugs.
Punishments as harsh as confining a child to his room for the day are ``absurd,'' says pediatrician and parenting guru T. Berry Brazelton. Those measures ``cause overreactions that don't teach them a thing except anger, and I don't think we can afford that.''
Rosemond, 48, who sells about 130,000 books a year and whose column appears in 200 newspapers, is among the most outspoken of those urging parents to reassert their authority. In his books and speeches, the former family therapist from Gastonia, N.C., rails against child-rearing experts who he says have caused parents to worry too much about their children's feelings.
``Stop trying to resolve everything with your child,'' he told parents in one of his speeches in Frederick, which were sponsored by the local school system and Frederick Memorial Hospital. ``Stop trying to have a wonderful relationship with your child. A good relationship is out at the end of the road. It is not, in most cases, today.''
LENGTH: Medium: 87 linesby CNB