Why you must not avoid criticising your kids

Ray

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Why you must not avoid criticising your kids


TONY ALLEN-MILLS

Feb. 6: Like most American students, undergraduates at the University of Michigan drink beer, hold loud parties and occasionally get into trouble with the law. Yet it is what they do not do that has made headlines across the country.

A group participating in a study of the activities they valued were asked to rank their favourites from a list that included having sex, eating their favourite food, drinking alcohol and receiving a compliment that boosted their self-esteem.

Not only did the majority of those questioned fail to make sex their first choice, most of them preferred an ego-massaging compliment to indulging in pizza or beer.

The results were published last month in The Journal of Personality as part of a study of the psychological impact of excessive self-esteem.

"Everybody likes compliments," said Brad Bushman, an Ohio State psychology professor who helped design the study. "But I was surprised it was such a powerful thing that it trumped everything else."

The findings have sparked a national debate about America's obsession with self-esteem, and what some researchers have described as a "narcissism epidemic". Variously blamed on weak parenting, political correctness, reality television shows or Internet networking, the trend has given birth to a so-called "look at me" generation.

Evidence of dangerous self-regard has been detected everywhere from America's recent mortgage meltdown — at least partly caused by what some researchers have described as the "narcissistic overconfidence" of homebuyers — to babies' bibs embroidered with the words "Supermodel" or "Chick magnet".

Previously associated with troubled youths from underprivileged homes — where lack of self-esteem is routinely blamed for crime and drug addiction — the phenomenon has spread to elite institutions.

Lawrence Summers, the former chief economic adviser to President Barack Obama, recently recalled that during his previous tenure as president of Harvard University he startled faculty members by questioning their approach to education.

"You have to decide whether achievement is the route to self-esteem or whether self-esteem is the route to achievement," Summers said. "I think you guys think self-esteem is the route to achievement, and I think you're wrong."

The notion of self-esteem was first described as a balance between doing good and feeling good. Many psychologists feel that balance has tilted dramatically and that today only feeling good matters.

Among the examples of narcissistic behaviour cited by Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell, authors of a widely quoted book, The Narcissism Epidemic, are the anonymous nightclubbers who hire fake paparazzi to follow them around and the teenage girl who demands a marching band to precede her down a red carpet as she arrives at her 16th birthday party.

Not everyone is convinced that the trend is new or particularly dangerous. Claire Gordon, a student at Yale, argued last week that modern children grow up not to the sound of applause but to intense parental pressure to succeed. "So college students today get their headiest high from a self-esteem fix," said Gordon. "This doesn't mean they're all ego addicts."

Yet even Gordon acknowledged that many people turn to the Internet for ego-building feedback from "friends" who "like" them on Facebook; who "re-tweet" (copy) their posts on Twitter; and who comment favourably on their pictures on the Flickr photo-sharing site. "We aren't so much narcissistic as needy," Gordon concluded.

The authors argue that narcissism is also damaging — promoting materialism, aggression, lack of care for others and shallow values, among other negatives — yet the main response from parents and teachers is to avoid criticism of children at all costs.
THE SUNDAY TIMES, LONDON
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First, we had Dr Benjamin Spock's theory of never curbing the children to do what they want to do and never lesson them and now we have this latest!

Dr Spock told parents--listen to your baby and your baby will tell you what to do; listen to yourself and you will understand what your baby needs.

Compare that with this article. I found this most interesting:

Any comments of what is the better way to bring up children?
 

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