Purposeful Parenting: A Practical Guide for Today's World

By Harve E. Rawson

At last! A guide to parenting that actually talks about the art of
parenting. This book, in plain language, tackles many of the
problems today's parents experience AND gives you practical,
realistic ways of effectively dealing with them. Written by a
child psychologist with a lifetime of experience, the book pulls
no punches and focuses on what works and what doesn't.

The book is organized around thirty-two pertinent topics that
most concern parents today. Some sample topics are: "Help! I'm
a Single Parent," "Your Child and Sports," "Help! My Kid's
Getting Fat!" "Helping Your Child Do His Best in School," "Sex
and the American Teenager - What's a Parent to Do?," "Religion
in a Child's Life," "Divorce and Kids - What Really Happens,"
"Is TV All Bad?" "Teaching Your Child Morality," "Helping
Your Kids Pull Themselves Out of Bad Social Situations," and
"Red Flags for Parents!" All thirty-two topics were generated by
parents themselves, calling in their requests for topics to a radio
show on parenting hosted by the author of this book.

The author, Dr. Harve E. Rawson, has a lot to say. He has been
a professor of psychology for thirty-two years, a dean of faculty,
a research scientist, director of a residential program for children
with behavior problems for twenty-five years, producer of two
syndicated radio shows, author of 40 professional journal articles
regarding work with children, and author of four books. His
professional knowledge of child psychology, clinical social
work, and all aspects of education, plus the practical experience
of rearing two sons, reflects itself in every page of this book
which he describes as "the culmination of everything that I, or
anyone I've ever read or talked to, know about parenting."

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 4, 2003
• ISBN: 9781403358318

Harve E. Rawson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Harve E. Rawson was raised in the Ozark Mountains of Southwestern Missouri. He attended Antioch College and then Ohio State University where he received his Ph.D. in psychology. His first post-doctoral job was working for North American Aviation as a psychologist on "Project Apollo." After that, he began a long career as a professor at Hanover College, a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. During his 32-year tenure at Hanover, Dr. Rawson taught thousands of students, completed post-doctoral work in both experimental and clinical psychology, founded and directed (for 25 years) a short-term residential treatment center for behaviorally-disoriented children, was twice president of the Indiana Psychological Association, was awarded the Indiana Psychology Association's Distinguished Academic Psychologist Award and later their Community Service Award for his work with children, was awarded Hanover College's first teaching award (receiving it a second time in 1980) and, in 1988, was named a Fulbright Scholar with assignment in Bahrain. In 1994, the same year as his early retirement from Hanover, Dr. Rawson was again named a Fulbright Scholar, but instead became Dean of Faculty and, later, Dean of the College of Franklin College (another small liberal arts college). In 1998, he was appointed visiting professor of psychology at Mississippi State University, a brief interlude prior to further world travels which now includes over 170 countries. Dr. Rawson has over the past decade completed two radio broadcast series, 3 CDs, and seven published books ranging from a collection of parables drawn from his early childhood, three books of travel tales, a book on his college teaching experiences, a book on parenting, a radio series on world travel, a science-fiction "retro-historical" novel, a family history, and a book centered on the experiences of a World War II soldier.

Book preview

© 2002 by Harve E. Rawson, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 1-4033-5831-1 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-4033-5831-8 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4033-5832-X (Paperback)

IstBooks-rev. 02/19/03

Contents

IS TV ALL BAD? A REALISTIC GUIDE FOR PARENTS

Television is blamed for many of our social evils today: violent behavior, promiscuity, vile language, disrespect for others to the point of incivility, sexual deviance, murder. State and federal legislators are always threatening to restrict programming. Presidents Bush and Clinton talked about V-chips, Tipper Gore wants to come down on certain obscene music albums, and networks respond by obscure rating systems and a lot of talk about the First Amendment and freedom of speech. Is there any good to TV?

HELPING YOUR CHILD DO HIS BEST IN SCHOOL

We all want our children to do the best they can at school. Many of them do. Some of them don’t. What’s a parent’s role in all this? How much slack should you allow in how the schools are interacting with your child? How much should you push and is this really necessary? Can you overdo pushing your child? How can something so important as their schooling be over-done?

YOUR CHILD AND SPORTS

Do sports really develop character and self discipline as many coaches claim? Does being a jock really prepare you for life in a competitive society? Or are these just specious claims made to cover the fact that both children and adults really enjoy playing active competitive games, find it a lot of fun to do so, and bask in the ego boosts and popularity that often accompanies participation in sports.

BRACES, GLASSES, PIMPLES, ASTHMA, BLOTCHY SKIN, AND JUST BEING DIFFERENT

Every child is different in at least some ways. But some children are really different. What about rearing these kinds of kids? How can we best help them grow up with the least amount of ridicule and pain and yet be able to reach their full potential?

WHO ARE OUR CHILDREN’S HEROES?

All of us have our heroes. But our children’s heroes may leave a lot to be desired in our eyes. Are modern sports heroes, movie stars, music idols, and TV icons as harmless as they seem? Are these infatuations just the harmless fun of growing up? Think again-they may be far more influential than you ever imagined. And a lot of that influence may not be for the better!

JOSEPH AND HIS COAT OF MANY COLORS-IS SIBLING RIVALRY PART OF HUMAN NATURE

If you have more than one child, most parents, at some point or another, have to face the put-downs, the snide comparisons, and the frequent bickering that all too often erupt among siblings. Sibling rivalry has been around since anyone can recall As parents, do we just have to grin and bear it or is there something we can do about it?

ARE SOME PARENTS OVER-PROTECTIVE?

Can parent’s natural inclinations to protect their child be overdone sometimes and actually impede a child’s growth? Exposing your child to some smaller social hurts may actually teach your child some lessons that will help them mature and be invaluable in later life.

TEACHING A CHILD MORALITY

The topic of this chapter is the rather old-fashioned concept of morality. Can morality actually be taught to children or is this something you either have or you don’t? If it can be taught, should parents tackle this head-on or should they leave it up to their church to teach it? Do parent’s religious beliefs, whether they go to church or not, sink in" over time on their own?

IS BEING CREATIVE NONCONFORMING?

A really creative child is often rejected by his or her peers as being weird or a nerd. Peer rejection can hurt so bad, some bright able children often hide their own talents simply to gain popularity among their school mates who tend to value conformity, mediocrity, and playing the game above all else. What can parents do to help their children risk displaying their own creative abilities?

ANGER MANAGEMENT: WHEN YOU’VE HAD IT-YOU’VE REALLY HAD IT UP TO HERE!

Anger Management is NOT a new area of parenting. Running the risk of losing it with your children has been around as long as recorded history. Kids are sometimes experts at pushing us to the limit. Honest parents understand the horror of child abuse because with a little less control from themselves or others, it might have been them at one time or another. How can we make sure we protect our kids from our darkest side?

LEAVING TIME FOR GROWING UP

Are we over-scheduling our kids with too many planned activities? What ever happened to spontaneous sandlot ball games; wandering through the neighborhood; and just dreaming up your own activities? Are kids today programmed away from creativity, learning how to entertain themselves, and playing without adult supervision ?

LOSS, GRIEVING, AND DEPRESSION

Did you know Freud thought these things were primarily for Adults Only? Nowadays, we know children experience depression just like adults and we also know how we can help a child cope with loss; both irreplaceable permanent loss and loss we just thought was irreplaceable. The sad child who seems to be disengaging -from his friends, from you as his parents, from his brothers and sisters, from most of his activities-how can you stop the ‘steamroller effect’?

THE RELENTLESS PURSUIT OF POPULARITY

I’m fat, not very good-looking, and lousy at sports-no wonder no one likes me. Realistically, your children are right-people are talking about them, one way or another, and deviation from a rigid set of norms is often grounds for criticism and ultimate rejection from your children’s peers. For good or bad, we never seem to outgrow our need to be accepted, to be loved, to be respected.

GAINING PARENTAL RESPECT

Although parents are by no means perfect, they certainly should be respected by their children. Respect doesn’t automatically come with simply loving the child, however. Nor does it come from just being the child’s care giver. Respect has to be carefully earned over time. Some methods to gain appropriate respect are far more effective than others. When a child does learn to respect an authority figure, a valuable lesson for life has been learned. Getting this message over to kids effectively is one of the major tasks of parenting.

PEER PRESSURE

The Boys & Girls Club, youth fellowship at church, and hard-core gangs-what’s the difference? We’ve all formed intense adolescent friendships, been heavily influenced by our peers, done things just to gain acceptance, and usually joined a club or two simply because they accepted us and offered us some status. Why are some things good and others bad?

PUBLIC BEHAVIOR

Is it realistic to expect your child to act differently in public than at home? Should you allow your children to embarrass you in public? Are you embarrassing them in public? Dual Personalities have their time and place for both adults and children.

HELP! MY KID’S GETTING FAT

The number of overweight children and adolescents in the United States has more than doubled in the past two decades. By 1994, 13% of America’s children were obese; by 2000, 25% were obese. It’s now America’s biggest health problem and, for children, the problem is often lifelong. Obese children don’t just have a health problem, though. They often suffer peer ridicule, adult rejection, exclusion from sports activities, and even have trouble getting dates.

IS HIGH SELF-ESTEEM ALWAYS GOOD?

What’s the difference between a healthy self-esteem and pie-in-the-sky arrogance? Unfortunately, nothing comes free in this world, including self-esteem. Too often programs claim they’re building self-esteem through positive reinforcement when in fact they’re simply teaching children you can get rewards for little work or real effort. What parent’s need to concentrate on is developing self-worth which requires a child to know he’s working up to his capacity.

RELIGION IN A CHILD’S LIFE

Every religion places great emphasis on good child rearing. And religions often excel in teaching tolerance, concern for others, and setting priorities. But it can also be suffocating in extreme cases. Within these two extremes, religion can play a powerful influence in the life of a child. Learning there is a power greater than ourselves can teach humility, perspective, confidence, important life values, and give direction.

RED FLAGS FOR PARENTS!

When should you seek out professional help? We all hate to admit we can’t solve all problems, but after you’ve given it an honest try, why not utilize the many professionals in the area that very well may be able to help both you and your child. The problem is picking out a good professional that can help you the most.

SEX AND THE AMERICAN TEENAGER-WHAT’S A PARENT TO DO?

Self-respect, promiscuity, respect from your peers, ‘being cool,’ ‘being the last virgin,’ and ‘image’-What’s a teenager to do? Parents can and do make a difference in this difficult area.

BEING A GOOD GRANDPARENT

Grandparents range all the way from those who end up raising their grandchildren to those who prefer to stay their distance. There’s a middle ground where grandparents can play a unique, but invaluable role in children’s lives without meddling and without resentment on the part of the parents. Good grandparents know they can contribute empathy and understanding when its needed, offer support when appropriate, and give a historical perspective to events. Still, many grandparents wonder why their children, now parents themselves, don’t ask their advice more often.

DIVORCE AND KIDS-WHAT REALLY HAPPENS

Divorce has really escalated in this country during the past 30 years and most consider this difficult, at best, for children caught in the middle. From a child’s viewpoint, divorce, whatever else it is, is the termination of a situation where there are two live-in parents. Usually, divorce makes it clear to the child that the parents, for any number of reasons, can’t stand to live with each other. And, almost absurdly, sometimes a child blames him or herself for this happening.

MYTHS OF CHILD REARING

In our culture, some things we teach children appear contradictory. How can we teach a person to be altruistic and competitive? To cope with abstractions and be free-thinking, yet be concrete and sensible? To be realistic without being cynical? To be assertive and yet be modest? To be practical without losing our playfulness? To be serious-minded yet remain able to laugh at ourselves? There are ways around these contradictions, but parents have to think out what they’re doing, and why, when they teach some of these important life values.

CAREER BUILDING: WHAT’S THE HURRY ANYWAY?

Every parent wants their child to do well in a career that is profitable, prestigious, secure, and needed. That’s not unreasonable, but when should a child start preparing for such a career? Recently, parents seem to think the earlier the better and are pressuring schools to offer career preparation as early as middle school. Relax and let your child build on the basics.

HELPING YOUR KIDS PULL THEMSELVES OUT OF BAD SOCIAL SITUATIONS

All kids, at some point or another, get into social situations they wish they weren’t or know they shouldn’t be in, e.g., the party where someone starts using some drugs or things are getting out of hand sexually. We all have been in social situations where our inner self says no, but our craving for acceptance and popularity says yes. What, if anything, can a parent do to help their children out in situations like this?

HELP! I’M A SINGLE PARENT

Single parenting (whether you’re a mother or a father) is no picnic and stretches the parameters of what one person can do. Are there ways it can work better or should we just acclimate to its potential limitations?

TRAVELING/VACATIONING WITH KIDS AND ENJOYING IT-IS IT POSSIBLE?

Most parents, especially those with younger children, really dread traveling with their kids. In fact, some avoid taking vacations because their kids are too hard to travel with. Legions of other parents agree with them. Certainly, it’s a common concern. Whereas parents use to play games with license plates to keep their children amused and distracted from the fact they were confined in a car, they now have whole mini-vans devoted to being traveling entertainment centers for restless children. General Motors, Chrysler, and Honda all produce vans complete with built-in DVDs and videotapes to show movies CD players for rear-seat passengers, and even rear power outlets for the kid’s videogame equipment. Are such expensive distractions the answer?

KIDS AND THE WORKING WORLD

Isn’t it good for kids to meet the responsibilities of the working world? Or is the promise different from the reality?

IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY KID TOO?

Is the diagnostic alphabet game of ADD, ADHD, OD, CD, and LD a real epidemic, a hoax, a con game, a convenience, a social malaise, or are we finally coming to our senses and recognizing problems we conveniently overlooked before?

MOVING WITH KIDS

When a family has to move, the child’s first reaction is usually No. Why their fears are more realistic than you might think; what you can do to get them to cope with this new challenge; and why their fears probably are greater than yours.

SPECIAL EDUCATION AND YOUR CHILD’S SCHOOLING

Once public schools just taught the fit and able. Schools now have programs for a huge variety of handicaps and disabilities with the goal of teaching all children regardless of their special problems. Such programs strain school system resources, heighten teacher burnout, and, at times, has even created conflicts between parents of normal and special education kids. Yet, no one wants to go back to the way it was. Whether your child is in a special education program or not, it’s important to understand what’s going on and why.

RULES FOR PARENTING?

Despite many books offering rules for parenting, good parenting is far too complex a task to reduce down to some simple little rules that apply in all situations. But, as a summary, here are a few suggestions from each of the 32 topical segments of this book that might help as a general reminder of what’s been discussed in this book. Here are also some general, almost philosophical parental behavior guidelines that work in most, but not all, instances. Regardless, remember the thinking parent is probably the best parent..

Dedicated to

Dr. Maria Oberhausen, a dear friend, a good professional colleague, and always an inspiration

Mrs. Joyce E. Rawson, a wonderful parent, a great teacher, and a supportive wife

My two sons, Paul and Reed Rawson, who taught my wife and me that parenting can be fun, challenging, and worthwhile

FOREWORD

I taught developmental psychology for 35 years. It’s a fascinating field, but each year I found myself putting more and more emphasis on the application of what the research was telling us about optimal psycho-social development of children. By the time I finished teaching, the course was more about parenting the next generation than about the development of the current or past generations.

The same time I was a professor of child psychology, each summer I was running a short-term residential treatment center for children six to twelve years old who had a variety of disabling behavior problems. There, I saw first hand the horrible results of faulty parenting. First, I worked with just the kids. But, as I wised up, I soon extended my efforts to working with their parents, not always with a great deal of success. No wonder I ended up preaching to my college students about the whys and wherefores of good parenting!

Since that time, I’ve run numerous workshops on the topic of effective parenting, given endless talks, and written newspaper columns as well as magazine articles. Most recently, my good friend, Dr. Maria Oberhausen, a sports psychologist and child psychotherapist, and I have recorded 28 half-hour radio shows on the topic which are now being marketed in syndication. We decided to call that series Purposeful Parenting and I’ve liked the title ever since.

This book is the culmination of all these experiences. The topics discussed were mainly suggested by others. Some were suggested by listeners of the first radio broadcasts, some by former students seeking my advice, some by teachers, but most from parents facing the everyday dilemmas parenting turns out to be.

I’ve tried to keep the book practical and to the point. As such, although it incorporates much of the research findings to date on the topic, it doesn’t cite each study by name and journal like a Ph.D. dissertation might. I’ve tried to write it in a style parents could easily understand with lots of examples drawn from everyday life. I present it in a format which allows getting to the information fast. I’ve tried to pack each segment with a great deal of information in the fewest number of pages. But most of all, I’ve tried to make sure it represents the best and latest information available in this complex area.

Special Thanks

Special thanks should go to my wife Joyce Rawson who carefully edited, commented, and proofread each segment as they were slowly developed. Her patience in allowing me lots and lots of time to myself, her constant encouragement, and her input as an elementary teacher has helped me and the book considerably. In fact, I think she should at least be a co-author. Thanks also go to Dr. Maria Oberhausen who literally dragged me into a whole new venture of recording radio shows, suggesting new topics, and commenting on each and every topic at great length. She too should probably be a co-author.

I enjoyed working on the book over the past two years. I hope you enjoy reading it-and more importantly-find it of some use in the biggest and most important task an adult ever undertakes: the raising of a child.

Harve E. Rawson, Ph.D.

IS TV ALL BAD? A REALISTIC GUIDE FOR PARENTS

Television is blamed for many of our social evils today: violent behavior, promiscuity, vile language, disrespect for others to the point of incivility, sexual deviance, murder. State and federal legislators are always threatening to restrict programming. Presidents Bush and Clinton talked about V-chips, Tipper Gore wants to come down on certain obscene music albums, and networks respond by obscure rating systems and a lot of talk about the First Amendment and freedom of speech. Is there any good to TV?

Of course there’s good to television. Look at PBS, A&E, and the Discovery Channel for instance. Landing on the moon, documentaries, nature shows, depiction of great novels, visits to museums-TV can be a never ending educational field trip. How else could we all go to the Super Bowl, see the Olympics up close and personal, or witness the Berlin Wall come tumbling down right in front of our very eyes. TV is a marvelous invention-but let’s face it, most of the trouble comes from commercial interests-giving us programming that’s popular and sells ads.

But some research pretty clearly demonstrates that certain TV shows increase violent behavior. Certainly at the time of the Viet Nam War, we all wondered what the effects of watching the war on television (the first time in history) would have on children-Napalm bombs burning whole villages in front of our eyes, naked children screaming from the burns running down the roads, Buddhist Monks setting themselves on fire in protest. Surely we couldn’t just isolate all of these horrors as taking place in another world. A number of studies, some good and some ill-conceived, were undertaken in an attempt to find out if there were effects, and, if so, how long lasting were the effects.

The most famous of these studies was one done by the psychologist Albert Bandura. He showed small children TV footage of boxing matches and Vietnam War atrocities and found their hitting of an inanimate object (Bobo, a balloon clown available in their nursery school playroom) increased dramatically as compared to hitting the clown after watching non-violent TV footage. Bandura concluded that violent behavior increased in children after witnessing a model of violent behavior-in this case boxing and war activities. It shows you how to do it, but worse yet, it legitimizes violent abhorrent behavior-it says it is OK because you just saw other people doing it. Other studies over the years tended to confirm Bandura’s findings: when you see abhorrent violent behavior over and over and over, it not only shows you how it’s done, but it makes it seem more normal, and it desensitizes you to its abhorrence. It’s harder to demonstrate, as Bandura did, that it actually increases your own violent behavior, but the results certainly tend to point in that direction.

A current example of both the concepts of modeling and legitimization is the use of the words on TV most people once considered off-limits. Once ass or bitch or suck is used on one show, within weeks you start hearing it used on a number of other shows-it has been legitimized as far as TV producers are concerned. But worse, children watching the shows quickly begin to incorporate such language into their own vocabularies. That sucks is now part of the language. It’s hard to argue that our language hasn’t coarsened as a result of TV watching: why not use the new words when everyone else (according to TV) is using them and it’s obviously alright now to use that sort of language (again according to TV). The joke is the only word left is the "f’ word and movies (and HBO) have certainly taken care of that.

A frightening example of modeling are the so-called copycat crimes-crimes that imitate in exact detail what a person has seen on TV. It is surprising how many well-documented identical crimes are committed just days after a popular TV show has shown you how to do it (often down to the last detail). When apprehended, perpetrators of these copy-cat crimes readily admit they not only got the idea but the methodology of how to do it from watching the TV show. Obviously, TV viewing is having a profound influence on at least some of us! The process is: (1) it models the behavior; (2) it desensitizes us to the depravity of it; and (3) it legitimizes it.

The end result is the little kid goes to school and tells the teacher, This book sucks and sees nothing wrong with it. I personally consider that vulgar and offensive. But elementary school teachers today are used to that. This comes directly from television in my opinion. All this talk has been legitimized, modeled, and made a part of our life today by television. So our language has changed considerably and it’s hard to argue that television hasn’t been responsible for a large part of this change. The question is: did we want it to change in the direction it has; do television producers have the right to do this to our children?

People often say that just hearing or talking about things we shouldn’t do (like is portrayed so often on television) is actually good for us. The argument is made that, if we see it on TV, we get it out of our system vicariously and won’t do it ourselves. Some current TV producers take this line in an attempt to ennoble what they’re doing, recasting modeling crime as a public service. That’s the old catharsis theory-very popular in the Freudian days. Out of that theory comes the myth that a person who talks about suicide won’t commit suicide. A lot of morgues will testify to the fact that’s simply not true. The usual example given to support the catharsis theory are the Ancient Romans watched gladiators hack each other to bits (what could be more violent than that?) and, as a result of witnessing such violence, were less prone to rioting and violence themselves. Actually, there is no evidence of this at all. It turns out the Ancient Romans were a very violent group of people in their everyday behavior compared to today’s society. So if anything you could argue that the gladiatorial games only made them worse! Does watching Mike Tyson bite off someone’s ear satisfy your own violent cravings? Or does it just: (1) show us how it’s done; and (2) legitimizes it in that Mike Tyson is still boxing and making big bucks doing it. If the catharsis theory were true, one could argue that the Super