Parenting Post

I was trying to teach my students about a plot point in Ibsen's "Doll's House" and the universality of certain human behaviors. How many of you, I asked, ever broke a food rule? Y'know, like ate at a time when you weren't allowed to, or a food you weren't supposed to (not because of allergies or like that), or an amount you weren't supposed to?

Look ma: No hands.

I tried to clarify -- come on, like when your parents say you can have just 2 cookies and you sneak a third when no one is looking? I did it. No one snagged an extra lollipop at shul?

They remained unmoved and unmoving.

Then you are either you are all phenomenal liars or the most compliant and obedient people EVER.

I focused on one boy. Really really you never broke a single food rule?

Finally, he spoke. "I guess I never had any food rules. My parents just figured we'd be reasonable."

I then checked with all of my 10th grade classes; I asked "Does or did any of you have any rules about what you could eat, the way I did?" No one. Not a one. No one even asked for clarification or paused. 

When I was a boy there were a couple of food rules applied in the house:

No junk before noon

2 "junks" per day (weekday)

3 "junks" on Shabbat (the Yom Tov rule was never clearly stated but since it was honored more in the breach I saw no reason to inquire further)

There were probably other subtleties I forgot (no food upstairs after Purim), but these were the big ones. And my students had NO idea what I was talking about.

Analyzing possibilities:

A. My parents were control ogres trying to limit my enjoyment of life and draw their sustenance from my suffering so they invented these rules to sharpen my longing, sweetening my flavor as they absorbed my life-force

B. My parents innovated a reasonable set of controls using best available information and a sincere concern for our diet and health so they established standards that were reasonable compromises between a fascistic control and a devil-may-care attitude.

C. My parents practiced some policy implementation consistent with the practices of the time and approved of by experts in all things parental and associated fields.

D. Children today are not being parented as much as being aided and abetted. No limits leads to a variety of long-term mental and physical health concerns. They have no rules and they think that that's how life will always be.

E. Kids today have mutated to lack the "sweet tooth" as well as the "salty tooth" and whatever combination of teeth that makes pizza so flipping good. Basically kids today have no teeth. Prove me wrong.

F. Generations of successively successful parenting has led to a generation of naturally well behaved and well adjusted young people who have strong internal motivation and moral center. They need no rules for they have achieved pre-Edenic-fall-innocence and cannot even have awareness of "want."

I'm sure that there are other theorums to be explored and implored but right now I have to see if the NFL is still cheating (if you have been watching the games over the last few weeks, you know the answer.)