Theories of Child Raising

Paddles

     There is no doubt that Milly and Vake raised the four of us with a stern hand—and the hand was Milly’s, and sometimes she was armed with a paddle in the form of a wooden spoon. Kids were kids, adults were adults, and adults gave the orders. That’s why I still remember how exceptional it was, when I was a pre-schooler, that I outran her, then sat down and made myself weigh 2,000 pounds so she couldn’t flip me over and apply hand to butt. (Sofia did not approve: “Finns don’t spank their children,” she said, to which Milly replied, “Maybe they should!” And it’s true that Vake did not participate in the spanking. When I threw a rock through a window of his shop, his response was, “It wasn’t much of a window, anyway,” and he taught me how to re-glaze it. Honestly, I didn’t do it on purpose. I was trying to throw rocks onto the shop roof, and I just missed.)

     It was natural, then, that when I was trying to raise Eric and Brook, I would apply the paddle as I deemed needed. What else did I know?  When I told Eric to go get the wooden spoon, he whimpered “I can’t find it.” So I told him to get the metal spatula, which makes his brother laugh to this day.  Brook never got punished. “I’m going to my room!” he would declare, and would stomp off before I could impose sentence. But he explained later, “I didn’t want you ragging on me like you did Eric.”

     My friend Joanne Tulanen, who is a Finn, didn’t always approve of my dictatorial ways.  When she heard me say “You have to because I said so, and I’m the absolute dictator,” she informed me that she was going to raise her daughter like a little princess.  Especially because Sarah was mixed race (African-American on her father’s side), Joanne felt there were enough people Sarah would meet in her lifetime who would want to put her down. A princess she would be.

     That was before we took a road trip from Seattle down to Oregon. As other cars passed us on the freeway, I saw that they were laughing.  I checked the kids, and saw that the little princess had made big  Play-Doh streamers of “snot” coming out of her nose, and was waving to the cars going by. It took several years, but eventually I heard Joanne say “Because I said so, and I’m the absolute dictator.”

     Now Sandy's daughter Leslie has sent me some reading from her sociology course. It seems that these days, middle-class parents don’t order their kids around so much. Only lower class parents do. Middle-class parents have traded the paddle for the “Time out,” and engage in discussion and negotiation with their children, more as though the kids were adults. Middle-class children these days experience structured time and attend classes to aid their development, which the sociologists call “Concerted cultivation,” as opposed to “Natural Growth.”

     I can see that Eric and Alison are bringing up their sons, my grandsons,  according to the “Concerted cultivation” model. A year ago, when Vake was only 2-1/2, he was gobbling down goldfish crackers after Eric had told him “That’s enough.”  Eric was busy driving the car, so I reached into the back seat and took the crackers. Who negotiates with a 2-1/2 year old? “She snatched” Vake protested. Alison explained, “We have had a discussion about snatching.”

     Vake attends Sunday school, baby gymnastics, swimming lessons, and events at the Children’s Museum. He knows how to look an adult in the eye and how to shake hands firmly and how to say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, M’am.” And he knows what they mean—when he wants to twit Eric, he says “Yes, M’am.” He understands “Time out” too well.  When Eric and his buddies were watching a football game, somebody said “Time Out!” and Vake, clueless about what he had done wrong, went to sit at his punishment place on the staircase.  “Not you, Buddy,” Eric had to explain.

     Whatever the advantages or disadvantages of child-raising theories, Eric, Brook (and Sarah, too) have turned out fine. Eric is a devoted family man and a successful lawyer.  Brook is a highly self-disciplined research scientist in much demand as a consultant or collaborator, and an Ultimate (Frisbee) coach who has won the devotion of “my kids,” his players. And Sarah is the mother of a teen-age daughter and  a school principal in the Seattle school system.

     But I have to reflect, also, on a comment by the late Carby Martin, the paternal grandfather of Eric and Brook. He was a Flathead Indian with an 8th-grade education.  It was his theory that the most important part of child-raising was just that you try.