A Parent's Role in Educating Children: The Place for Firmness, Acceptance, and Autonomy - Part 2
In our previous discussion, we explained the role that student engagement has in learning. Even though teachers and curriculum play an important role in classroom success, Laurence Steinberg’s research strongly supports the idea that student effort, an active engagement in learning, is the most important factor.
At first look, it would seem that engagement is a result of intrinsic motivation, but in fact, Steinberg notes, “Most of the time, what keeps students going in school is not intrinsic motivation – motivation derived from the process of learning itself – but extrinsic motivation – motivation that comes from the real or perceived consequences associated with success or failure, whether these consequences are immediate or delayed. In order to emotionally engage in school, students must believe that what they are learning there is either interesting or valuable – and preferably, both.”
The home environment plays the most critical role in shaping student motivation toward academic engagement. Steinberg cites three parental factors: acceptance, firmness and autonomy. From my own experience, although the three factors work in harmony, firmness plays a leading role with younger children under the age of twelve.
Firmness toward children involves two realizations and three practices. The first realization is the acknowledgement that the parental perspectives on life, on personal and cultural values, and on wisdom in practical affairs based upon life’s experiences is far superior to that of a child’s. Yes, Mom and Dad, you do know better! And the best thing you can do for your child is to introduce your children to what you believe is best.
The second realization that parents need is that although children are born with the potential to become beautiful young people, virtuous and good, they also have the innate potential for vice and corruption. The former must be nurtured; the latter quenched.
Three practices issue from these two realizations. First, beginning at a young age, children need clear moral and ethical foundations, even though we know adult life is not black and white; it is filled with complex ethical decisions. Children, however, cannot begin here. They do not have either the human experience or education that supports wisdom, and if they do not begin life with a clear moral compass they are very likely to choose pathways in life that are unproductive at best and destructive at worst.
This leads to the second practice: imposing your will – rooted in an adult moral and ethical perspective – upon your child’s will – one drifting among childhood passions of likes and dislikes. Certainly an “epic” battle and the need for firmness lie here. Here also is where many parents fail, undermined by notions that somehow if the parents “make” their children behave, if they insist that their children do what is good and right, they will stifle the children’s freedom, perhaps sow seeds of rebellion against authority, or create childhood trauma that will permanently scar the child. Suffice it to say that this reasoning is fatally flawed. Actually if parents do not compel their young children to do what is good toward themselves and others, parents will inadvertently lead the child to become a prisoner to the child’s own passions and later peer group pressure.
Finally, firmness must be balanced by acceptance and autonomy. Parental acceptance, conveyed through words and deeds, tells children that Mom and Dad love them unconditionally and they will do whatever they can so that their children will lead a happy and productive life. Autonomy recognizes that ultimately children must make their own choices in life and parents need to guide their reasoning so that those choices lead toward a fulfilling life.
By Charles Debelak
