Advice from Kids
By Dr. Marvin
Berkowitz
First let me say that I have been meeting lots of great kids
lately. We all continually (and not without justification)
lament the woeful state of many youth today. They are lazy,
selfish, have short attention spans, and are cynical, jaded, and
seemingly unaffected by violence.
The good news is that they are not all like that.
I had dinner the other night with five students from Washington
University. I didn’t know them, but we had a mutual friend and
all ended up closing The Tap Room in St. Louis. So I got to know
them a bit. And they were great. A true delight.
They are all serious students. They all have missions in life.
One young man was part of a group that educates their peers
about date rape. One young woman is a fellow at the Social
Justice Institute of St. Louis Hillel, and part of a group that
uses theater to educate about issues of social injustice. And so
on. Their parents should be very proud. Not only of how the kids
turned out, but of their own apparent contributions to how those
kids turned out.
Then I had an opportunity to spend three hours working with 70
sophomore, junior and senior high school leaders from Rockwood
Summit High School (in the St. Louis area). They are peer
leaders who wanted to learn how to run peer discussions about
character once a month as part of a new initiative at their high
school. Because their principal, Susan Springmeyer, is my
doctoral student and a member of my Leadership Academy in
Character Education, the match was easy to arrange.
These teens were enthusiastic,
cooperative, energetic, bright, and very open and forthcoming.
We had a great morning together and I hope they learned some
useful skills.
I know I learned much from them.
One thing I try to remember to do when I am with kids is to
steal their ideas to use in this column. That is I try to ask
them for their advice to parents.
“If you were a consultant on
how parents should raise their kids, what would you advise
them?” (Hey it is not easy coming up with topics for columns 52
times a year!).
So I asked these high school
kids that question. Actually, I first asked for volunteers for a
model class meeting and had this discussion with the nine
volunteers, while their 60 peers stood around and watched and
listened. But I let the others chime in afterwards.
The advice was simple.
“Keep the lines of
communication open.”
“We need to know that we can talk to our parents about
anything.”
“Trust us.”
“Give us some space to make
our own decisions.”
I was not surprised by the
plea for parents to give them more freedom, more autonomy, more
“space.” That is a classic adolescent cry. They are trying to be
independent and mature and resent parental supervision and
restrictions.
And it is our job as parents to magically balance that with
being protective guardians of our children’s welfare. One of the
tougher jobs in the universe.
But I was a little surprised
at these teenagers’ clear understanding of how critical
parent-child communication is, especially for issues that are
difficult to deal with and talk about. They recognized their own
need to be able to talk to the most important people in their
lives, their parents, about issues that troubled and/or
challenged them.
And they are right.
Plus they were clearly telling
me (and now you) that they wanted to be able to talk to their
parents about sex, drugs, peer pressure, and so on.
So not only listen to your
kids about such matters. But listen to them about how to be a
better parent. After all, who knows more about the kind of
parent you are than your own child.
Take some time to ask them how well you are doing your job as a
parent. Ask their advice and evaluation. You may be pleasantly
surprised by the grade you get. And more important, you may get
some good advice about how to improve your performance. All
while keeping the lines of communication open and fostering your
child’s character development.
