«Children should decide for themselves when they want to be nice»
I keep getting letters from worried parents and grandparents about the risks and dangers that await children and young people in the big, bad world. I also meet many professionals with a constant look of concern on their faces. The questions these worriers ask are always the same: How can we prevent and avoid?
It has become a tradition to want to protect children and young people from all things dangerous, i.e. especially from things that are basically used, consumed and abused by adults. Let's take the relationship of young people to drugs and alcohol: «We have to do something about that» is the common opinion.
The statistical truth is that the adult part of the population has much greater problems with these addictive substances than young people, both with alcohol and with other legal and illegal drugs. What is colloquially referred to as nervous medicine is a hundred times more common among adults than among young people. The adult part of the population is, to put it mildly, a lousy role model for children and young people. Their unhealthy lifestyles are costing society a staggering amount of money.
Stirring up fears
But being concerned about this is not popular, and God forbid anyone would want to do prevention work for 30 to 40-year-olds. It is not proper to disregard the privacy of adults. On the other hand, few people care when it comes to children and young people. «It's only for their own good, they need the guidance of adults,» is the reasoning. «And it doesn't hurt if society can save money.»
The truth is that adults have much bigger problems with alcohol and drugs than young people.
But it seems as if public money is looser when it comes to the safety of their own children. It is therefore not surprising that fears are being fuelled.
Dossier: Resilience
However, the more overprotective, worrying and anxious parents and other adults are, the less the fundamental life skills of children and young people develop. And the lower their self-confidence and the worse their self-esteem will be.
We know exactly what needs to happen in the relationship between parents, carers and teachers and children so that children can develop their personal boundaries, strengths and responsibilities. But do we really want strong, self-confident, authentic children? Or wouldn't we rather have nice and well-adjusted children? The reality suggests that we actually want the latter.
An even more important question is whether they are necessarily opposites. Can't strong children also be nice?
Can't strong children also be nice?
Everything I have experienced over the last 40 years tells me that this is not a law of nature. Strong, genuine individuals (children and adults alike) can be generous, social and kind. The difference between these young people and adults is really just that they can choose when and where they want to be kind. They are not forced to do so by convention and therefore get on much better in life as individuals than in relationships with others.
And last but not least, they will rarely or never be hit by abuse, self-harm, addiction and all the other ills they may encounter.
It is we parents, pre-school teachers and teachers who decide this every day on behalf of the children and young people with whom we share responsibility. It is our decision that stems from our immense power over their present and future. No matter how powerless we sometimes feel: We are in power - and we exercise it through our daily decisions and actions.
It has long been a kind of social anthropological truth that we can predict the values and behaviour of young people in 15 to 20 years' time by analysing the values and behaviour of 33 to 45-year-olds. Mind you, we are talking about their true inner and outer behaviours, not the ones they show in public.
What are our values when it comes to strengthening the mental and social immune system and the competence of children and young people? They should be kind, gentle, obedient and social and have lots of friends (who are also kind and obedient!). They should know what they want. But only as long as it suits us and we don't lose full control over it.
All our experience tells us that we cannot prevent certain phenomena: At best, we can inform. The same experience tells us that the real prevention takes place in the first eight to ten years of life: The more we try not to stand in the way of the development of their self-esteem and self-responsibility, the lower the risk of young people becoming addicted - whether it's to alcohol, drugs, gambling, the internet, online games, power shopping, sex or anything else that involves lust and instant gratification.
Moral education has a destructive message
The truth is as obvious as it is simple: the more we try to fight against something educationally, the worse it gets. The explanation is that all moral education sends a constant and extremely destructive message to children and young people: «We don't trust you! We have no confidence that you will become a decent person if we don't support you with all our advice and admonitions.» Nothing undermines a child's self-esteem more than this constant lack of trust.
Children should know what they want - as long as it suits us and we don't lose full control over it.
True prevention lies in the ability of adults to see children in their own being, to wait, to trust in their competences and that they want the best and will have a good adult life - in their own way, at their own pace.
This would leave a lot of time and energy that adults could use to work on their own behaviour.
In collaboration with familylab.ch
Jesper Juul (1948 - 2019)
Take your child seriously - treat them with respect. Children don't need boundaries - they need relationships. Parents don't need to be consistent - they need to be credible.
The Danish family therapist Jesper Juul has influenced people like no other in recent decades with his parenting and relationship principles. The founder of the familylab counselling network and author of over 40 books («Dein kompetentes Kind», «Aus Erziehung wird Beziehung») was married twice. He is survived by a son from his first marriage and two grandchildren.
Jesper Juul died on 25 July 2019 at the age of 71 after a long illness in Odder, Denmark.
Read more:
- Jesper Juul über Smartphones im Familienalltag
- Jesper Juul, warum ist Streit wichtig?
- Online-Dossier zum Thema Resilienz