Can Bad Children Happen to Good Parents?

Hausman, Carol P.

Can Bad Children Happen to Good Parents? Raising Your Child to be a Mensch by Neil Kurshan Macmillan, 1987. Ill pp,$14.95 Reviewed by Carol P.Hausman My children turned out to be menschen, * but...

...We would all love it if there were an easy answer...
...So it must be—if we believe Kurshan— that the parents we thought were rotten are really closet menschen...
...The theory that children are a blank screen—a tabula rasa—when they are born has been largely discarded...
...Kurshan's dubious message is buried in repetitive, boring prose and a preachy tone...
...As parents, we treat our various offspring in different ways...
...A Guide to Paying a Shiva Call," appeared in the September 1987 issue of moment...
...About halfway through the book, things pick up a bit when the preaching abates and Kurshan makes some practical suggestions about listening to children, praising them, setting limits, showing mutual respect and seeing another's viewpoint...
...This is not only because of their differing places in the family hierarchy, but also because of their own personal style which in turn causes others to treat them in special ways...
...Plural of mensch, meaning "person," and connoting someone who is upright, honorable and decent...
...The jacket says that the book was originally a sermon, and that's the length that it should have stayed...
...In a promotional talk, Kurshan said this was intentional—he wants to dispense with the myth that Yiddish is solely a language of humor...
...Of course we are often amazed when absolutely wonderful children come from families we think have terrible values...
...We know that even children in the same family become different kinds of adults...
...Little do they know—at least according to Rabbi Neil Kurshan...
...But if I hadn't been asked to review the book, I never would have been able to finish * The practice of being a mensch Carol P. Hausman is a clinical psychologist and gerontologist and is on the faculty of the Washington School of Psychiatry...
...Perhaps if parental values were the only influence that children came up against, we'd have more assurance of the outcome...
...But our children meet other children, other children's parents, influential teachers, and many others, all of whom contribute to their values, ideals and behavior...
...I feel sorry about giving a negative review to the good rabbi who puts so much effort into writing a book about things in which he deeply believes...
...Furthermore, the concept of extrinsic rewards, like gold stars, as motivational tools was discarded by modern educators long ago, in favor of intrinsic rewards— teaching children to do the right thing because it is right, not because they will get rewards for doing so...
...Who knows what all of this means as far as the kind of adults each of them will become...
...And if some of that happens to rub off on their children, it's a great fringe benefit...
...In the real world, I think it's fine for people to have good values and to try to live by them...
...Ill pp,$14.95 Reviewed by Carol P.Hausman My children turned out to be menschen, * but they don't give me any credit...
...And vice versa: Those exemplary parents who produced bad apples—cult members, druggies, promiscuous ones—must really have been closet rogues...
...One might wonder how a book of only 111 pages can be repetitive...
...Her article, "First You Mourn...
...You may think I'm taking a humorous Yiddishkeit book too seriously...
...If such a practice were instituted in a home, my best guess is that it would create unhealthy competitiveness among the children—not kindness and generosity...
...The one who seems more self-centered, we might lecture more about values...
...I shudder at the idea of parents putting themselves in the position of being a daily judge of what's responsible enough for a reward, as well as the idea of children constantly asking whether a deed was leaf-worthy...
...Moreover, each child comes into this world with a certain disposition that makes him/her react to the various environmental influences in a unique manner...
...We work on homework more with the slower one, and we take the curious one to particular museums...
...What Kurshan seems to be ignoring is the fact that no one knows the secret of what makes children turn out in certain ways...
...Although Kurshan makes it plain that there are no guarantees, his general message is: The way parents live and the values they impart have a direct influence on what kind of people their children become...
...We would love to have power and control over what matters most to us—the kind of people our children become...
...That, to me, would be a more noble attempt to pave the path to menschlichkeit...
...It's quite a feat to be able to find so many ways to say the same thing over and over...
...We encourage the quiet child to speak up, and the noisy one to keep quiet...
...For example, in a section on teaching children responsibility, Kurshan tells about a family that had a picture of a large tree in the living room on which the parents pasted a leaf each time one of the children did something unusually responsible...
...someone of noble character, according to Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish...
...However, the humorous-sounding title followed by a humorless book is really a bit of "bait and switch...
...The book is full of goody-goody anecdotes, some of which are reminiscent of old-fashioned child rearing practices that have fallen into disuse for sound psychological reasons...
...This is a valuable section and could be very helpful to people for whom treating children like human beings doesn't come naturally...
...And the self-sacrificing one we might encourage to think of herself more...

Vol. 13 • November 1988 • No. 8


 
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