A Parent's Role In Educating Children: Giving Children Autonomy - Part 2
A PARENT’S ROLE IN EDUCATING CHILDREN
Giving Children Autonomy - Part 2
In Beyond the Classroom, Laurence Steinberg’s research suggests that the primary factor for school success is a student’s the level of engagement in learning. If children value education, if they understand how a strong education will play out in their lives, and if they make learning their personal responsibility, they are likely to have a successful experience in school. Steinberg points out that parents play the most formidable role in shaping these values by exercising firmness, acceptance and autonomy.
As we discussed in previous essays, efforts to teach children how to exercise autonomy are built upon a foundation of parental firmness – shaping habits and will at an early age, and acceptance – assuring the child of unconditional, parental love and support. From this foundation, parents should keep in mind two guiding principles as they begin to give their children greater personal autonomy.
The first principle builds upon precepts of classical education: autonomy that which leads to personal development and responsibility is rooted in reason. A life of reason subjects passion to knowledge, experience, history, and critical thinking. To be truly free, a child must learn that reasoning is the pathway to a noble life and passions should assume a subordinate position. This is not to say children should not be passionate and instinctive per se. Rather it means that passion, commitment, and intuition are intimately connected to, and closely follow after, reasoned conclusions.
Second, parents should remember that children do not develop strong reasoning powers on their own. They need guidance and instruction from parents, and for this reason parents must learn to develop a close, communicative relationship with their children. Within this relationship parents can show their children how to reason through the decisions and events that cross their children’s pathway during the pre-teen and teen years.
There are four guiding principles that can help us build a communicative relationship with our children.
·Start early. In the pre-teen years, make the transition from the firm authoritarian to the person who is still in authority but who also listens and takes into consideration the child’s view.
·Respect the emerging person. During the pre-teen and teen years children are blossoming, slowly and steadily, into distinctive individuals. They are struggling to discover their place in life; they want to establish their uniqueness. It helps to understand this dynamic because in conversation you will respect your children’s views and give them an honest ear. This does not mean that you let children do whatever they wish. You still must hold the reigns of guidance. But as your children mature, allow them to express their views, hopes, and expectations.
·Trust yourself. Your perspective on life, your education, your experience, and your understanding of family and cultural values is far more informed and far deeper than your children’s. Your personal wisdom is sufficient to allow your children to express their thoughts, wishes, and opinions about life no matter how right or wrong they may be, because within respectful conversation you can explain to your children a deeper and broader understanding of whatever topic your are discussing. You can help them see issues and challenges from a more inclusive perspective. While allowing their expression of personal identity your can, in a reasoned discussion, steer their thinking toward a more considered worldview.
·Finally, your conversations with your children should be a collaborative exercise similar to what Socrates called the self-examined life. You and your children can approach personal issues and decisions together. Look at the facts, consider options, suggest alternative solutions, prioritize choices, discern between needs and wants. You can actually converse like colleagues while simultaneously introducing your children to considerations and insights that reflect your wisdom from life experiences. In other words, through the vehicle of loving, respectful conversation, you will be able to teach your child to approach life with the same kind of thoughtful consideration that you yourself exercise. Quite honestly, children love this. They rise up to higher standards of thought when their views are respected. They thrive in taking an active, yet collaborative, part in their choices. In this kind of conversation, they actually want Dad or Mom play an integral, supportive role in their development. Through experience, they come to discover that not only are Dad and Mom two “smart cookies” but that their parents love them deeply, and are standing beside them for the their best interests.
By Charles Debelak
