Scouting, Volume 50, Number 10, December 1962 Page: 30
32 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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You Can't Be
30
(Continued from page 11)
Along with these skills, children
learned a set of goals in life and a
concept of morality.
Now fathers work far from their
sons and see them only in leisure
hours. Mothers buy precooked foods
and ready-made clothing. Having thus
lost the old techniques of child rear-
ing, we have not yet found new ones
to replace them.
This doesn't mean that the job is
beyond the abilities of modern par-
ents. It does mean that they must con-
sciously lavish time and ingenuity on
the job of child rearing. Take the con-
dition sometimes called "technologi-
cal unemployment of the young."
In the past, when children were an
economic asset to the household, they
had the unique satisfaction of know-
ing that they were important to the
family's well-being. Today, parents
must deliberately think up ways to
simulate that satisfaction.
"This isn't easy," says Mrs. Sidonie
M. Gruenberg, editor of the Encyclo-
pedia of Child Care and Guidance. "It
takes planning. But even in an apart-
ment there are responsibilities a child
can assume. You can teach him to take
telephone messages, to help out with
a smaller brother or sister; you can
put him in charge of making minor
household repairs. It's simpler to do
everything yourself, but that deprives
the child of the chance to feel needed,
to learn responsibility."
Similarly, Dr. Ray Baber, a sociolo-
gist who has studied the family inten-
sively, urges parents to encourage their
children to participate in family de-
cisions. The girl who picks the new
wallpaper for her room or the boy who
helps decide where the family should
spend its vacation not only achieves a
sense of importance but recognizes
that his wishes — and his reasons for
them—may have a real effect on the
rest of the family. And from this comes
a sense of responsibility.
It is easier to answer a child's ques-
tions with flat pronouncements than to
discuss them with him creatively. Yet
through such painstaking discussions
children and parents can develop a
wonderful closeness.
Dr. Reuben Hill, at the University
of North Carolina, accidentally dis-
covered an interesting technique in
this respect. One night, as two of his
children were climbing into bed, four-
year-old David asked him why the
moon and stars didn't fall down like
the snow. Hill decided to pass the buck
to seven-year-old Judy by asking,
"What do you think?" Judy bubbled
over with ideas and soon David was
chiming in with suggestions of his
own.
From then on, this "What do you
think?" game became a nightly rou-
tine in the Hill household. Among the
subjects discussed were sex differ-
ences, digestion, death, heaven, pov-
erty. The children thus acquired a
wealth of new understanding. "With
us, and with many of our friends who
tried it," says Dr. Hill, "the game be-
came a short cut to all sorts of mean-
ingful issues."
There are no hard-and-fast rules
about passing on important values to
your children. Each parent must find
his own way. Allen Funt, creator
of the TV show "Candid Camera,"
equipped his cellar with a splendid
mm. t
workshop, but he found it kept him
away from his two small children just
when he should be with them. If he
let them wander around in the work-
shop they got underfoot, were bored,
and often came dangerously close to
his power tools. So Funt built each
child a small workbench near his own,
complete with an assortment of pint-
sized (and safe) tools. Then all three
worked assiduously and happily to-
gether, each on whatever he wanted
to make. The children's efforts may
not have produced triumphs of cabinet-
making, but there were permanent
by-products. Patience and persistence,
for example, and comradely sharing.
There are hundreds of ways to be a
good parent. With the complications
of modern living we can't expect par-
enthood to be an effortless and uncon-
scious process. We must give our best
to the task, just as we would to any
important creative work. And the re-
ward is unlike any other in life.
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 50, Number 10, December 1962, periodical, December 1962; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth331737/m1/32/: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.