Bans teach children no real lessons

HOW do kids exercise selfdiscipline and personal responsibility if it is never taught but then demanded of them?

At some point, it seems we adopted the knee-jerk approach to social cohesion and parenting in this country by insisting a ban is the solution to anything too arduous or time-consuming to tackle.

So kids getting fat because they’re choosing a packet of sugar-laced snacks instead of an apple? We’d better ban junk food at school then.

Teens with a newly minted driver’s licence driving too fast? Best install an electronic stalking device in their car to check their speed.

And while you’re at it, install a tracking device via your smartphone so you can see where they are at all times even if they aren’t driving. It’s a foolproof concept – kids are always glued to their phones after all.

Labels on soft drinks, a trigger warning on a Peter Rabbit movie this year because it includes a sub-plot about food allergies or an ethos that having a best friend as a child must be actively discouraged because it is “inherently exclusionary”.

These are the hurdles lurking before the modern parent.

No matter that kids are naturally inclusive and less judgmental than us adults. What will the self-righteous mob rally for next week – a ban on free thinking?

And if kids do look up from their screens, they’ll see adults so tangled up in a politically correct web that using the phrase “white” to describe just about anything can trigger a lynch mob.

Life is becoming all about control minus the actual personal responsibility, the one thing our kids desperately need us to teach them.

Raising children to achieve great levels of success seems a hollow objective if they can’t hold themselves accountable for their actions.

But the ban-it-all solution was back on the agenda this week when Finnish education expert Pasi Sahlberg urged us to veto mobile phones in Aussie primary schools.

Dr Sahlberg said prohibiting the devices for juniors and teaching selfdiscipline for secondary students was crucial to stopping the havoc phones, in particular, wreak on classroom behaviour and learning. High schools should “act quickly” to plug the damage, he said.

But we are fuelling a generation that doesn’t know how to be held accountable so surely banning them for kids under 12 teaches them nothing.

Kids by nature are impulsive creatures and they need to learn the skills to manage that. This helps them to become responsible for their actions, respectful of consequences and aware of the impact of their behaviour on others. It helps them distinguish between good choices and bad choices.

And it’s our job as parents to model personal responsibility – not schools.

We live in a world of acute instant gratification. We wait for nothing unless we really have to and if we can’t “have it now” we don’t want it.

Choosing the right course of behaviour by thinking things through is becoming the taboo of our time. How sad is it that we are losing that thrill of anticipation, the challenge of patience.

Why do we want to deny our children these important facets of being a well-rounded human? I think it is because we are afraid they won’t like us any more if we say no.

Recently at a local swimming pool, I saw a mum pull out five different costumes and ask her daughter, stood there with her five-year-old arms crossed, which one she wanted to wear.

The same routine followed after the swim – tracksuit pants or PJs, the blue ones or the Disney ones. And so on.

For this child, the question is whether she will ever learn to be happy with what she has got. That contentment and acceptance leads directly to taking responsibility for your own thoughts and actions.

Not only is it exhausting for the parent as they run rings around their little darlings, but they are setting up themselves and their children for a lifetime of misery.

While this ritual – far more common than it should be – might give you a giggle, it becomes a power struggle that is anything but funny.

Like all humans, children love power and they learn pretty quickly how to wield it. Crying, refusing to eat certain foods, refusing to go to bed are all normal exertions of it.

It is how the parent chooses to respond that matters.

Some parents are so determined to keep the peace that they will do anything.

Your children will not thank you for it when they reach adolescence and someone offers them drugs and they don’t want them but they haven’t learned the power of no.

We can’t expect perfection from our children, but it is not the mistake that matters as much as the response from a parent, and the demand for accountability.