5 Popular Parenting Fads That Make Sense (And Screw Kids Up)

You know what isn't temporary? A child sensing and knowing each and every day that his or her parents can't stand to be in the same room with each other. Children, while certainly having a capacity for untold stupidity, are incredibly perceptive little bastards. Studies show that they are very capable of picking up on all of that simmering hostility, and that it has a negative effect on everything they do. A two-parent home might be better for kids, but not if those two parents fucking hate each other. Wait, did we really need science to tell us this? Some of you have lived that shit.

Otherwise, assuming a divorce doesn't go full The Wars of the Roses or that the parents don't spend the majority of their time talking shit behind each other's backs, the kid is probably eventually going to be just fine ... because what's best for the children is knowing that their parents are happy. Now, since a happy marriage is the optimal condition, you do have good reason to try to work that shit out first. So, go to couple's counseling or do whatever you need to do. But, the goal is to actually fix the marriage -- not to prolong a toxic situation while you walk around feeling like a martyr and secretly blame the kids for ruining your happiness.

Studies started turning up a few years ago that showed the D.A.R.E. program may actually have increased drug use, thanks to the fact that constantly warning kids about "peer pressure" actually made it seem like everybody was doing drugs but them (instead of the reality, which was that drug users were always a minority). So, all of the "don't do drugs, even if it means you're literally the only kid at the party not doing them!" bullshit actually pushed kids into doing drugs, out of fear of being that guy.

Well, we have since entered a future in which TV heroes cook meth, and cannabis is more socially acceptable than gluten, so it doesn't take a genius to guess that things haven't taken a magical U-turn in recent years. What we're finding is that there is a fundamental flaw in our current fearmongering method of keeping kids informed about drugs. It turns out that's just not how people work, regardless of age.

First of all, trying to terrify people with anecdotes doesn't work on anyone who has actually started using drugs -- recent research suggests that not only are drug users completely undeterred by health warnings, but they're already more aware of the risks than the rest of us. It makes sense, really -- nobody knows more about the dangers of sticking a penis into a pool filter than the guy who sticks his penis into pool filters. Likewise, no heroin user is in the dark about how exactly heroin can go wrong -- they saw that shit firsthand, last weekend. They do it anyway.

On the other hand, if the teen hasn't started using, then cautionary tales about weed-induced schizophrenia are still going to be lost on them. That's because there's a fantastic chance that even if they have never touched a bong, they know someone who has ... and they know that person didn't die from it. This is what the grown-ups simply couldn't wrap their heads around: That a single weekend -- spent with a happy, functional stoner -- trumps a million scaremongering bumper stickers. Humans always trust what they see with their own eyes.

So, what's the alternative? Incredibly, those grown-ups have started to learn this lesson in the last couple of years and figured out anti-drug programs work better without the fear element. It's a combination of focusing on positives that teens actually care about (such as independence and having control of their own lives) and teaching them realistic social skills to help them refuse drugs in a way that doesn't put them on a one-way street to Wedgietown. In other words: the exact opposite of "Just Say No."

So, a timeout is a popular, non-violent disciplinary action where a parent banishes their tantrum-throwing child to an isolated environment to chill out for a period of time (i.e., "Go stand in the corner"). You might have been subjected to timeouts as a kid or as an adult (often called "jail"), but, even if you haven't, you should be able to partake in the following thought experiment:

Imagine a situation in which you're misbehaving, and the nearest authority figure's first reaction is to send you to your bedroom. Do you take the opportunity to examine your behavior and better understand just why it was you being punished? Or, do you just use the opportunity to vent your anger on Fruit Ninja or whatever until said authority comes to check on you -- because fuck them and their random-ass punishments?

Of course, most of us choose the latter, even as adults who should be able to figure out what we did wrong. Now, imagine you're an actual child when that situation arises: Children lack the experience and social intelligence to understand why it is that they're being punished, much less the ability to analyze their own behavior -- little kids' brains just don't work that way. So, the kid remains unrepentant, stewing over the fact that their parents suck and have wrong opinions, and, when they grow up, they'll make up their own set of random-ass rules that everyone else has to follow. Basically, that's how you get politicians.

So, what do you do instead? Well, see, the point of parenting -- however you do it -- is that you have to be there. A timeout is saying, "As a punishment, I'm going to stop parenting you for a while." Withholding parental interaction as a punishment is like taking away their toothbrush. The opposite would be what some experts call a "time-in" because even scientists are terrible at naming things. Another name for it could be "actually take time to talk to your kids about discipline every day, whether they're acting like assholes or not."

It won't seem to have an effect right away -- no discipline method can simply fix a kid, Dog Whisperer-style -- but, over time, you get a child who can actually think through their actions. And you don't wind up sending the unintentional message of "Your parents only want to interact with you when you're being good."

On a similar note ...

It all amounts to the classic "all work and no play" piece of life advice that esteemed career coach Jack Nicholson gave us in his famed self-help documentary, The Shining. If you subject your kids to a strict schedule without enough free time, you're shaping one dull-minded citizen. Or, to put it another way, what happens to them once you're not there to set their schedules? The lessons of why you were forcing them to get exactly eight hours of sleep a night are still unlearned. To develop properly, kids have to have room to screw up and figure things out for themselves -- hopefully in a way that doesn't result in them getting addicted to meth or losing a limb.

Obviously, a lot of this comes from parents seeing the screeching brats raised by parents who gave them too much freedom -- "We even let him name himself just after he was born! His name is THHFFFFFTHHPTT! -- and deciding there is no mistake to be made in the other direction. But, free time is just as critical to a developing mind as a structured environment because it allows children time to think.

Well, we've previously mentioned the various ways this offers ample opportunities to royally mess up a nation's youth, mainly because it becomes impossible to teach kids right from wrong when you're doling out the same punishment for having a slightly sharpened Popsicle stick as you do for possession of an assault rifle. It just makes all of your rules look like arbitrary nonsense. The concept of crime becomes meaningless when you declare everything to be a crime.

But, it's actually even worse than that. Hey, remember what we said about timeouts as punishment earlier? How you're punishing them by taking away something they need (that is, guidance)? Well, now multiply that by a thousand.

Yeah, every time you remove a kid from school, you're essentially resigning them to a life of scumbaggery and minimum wage. Suspension is a remarkable predictor of future academic performance. In fact, a single suspension increases a child's chance of dropping out by a whopping 68 percent, as well as doubles their chance of having to repeat a grade. This also goes a long way to effectively removing them from a fair amount of their social support network. These days, thanks to zero-tolerance policies, one in nine kids gets to experience it.

But, what about the other kids? You know, the good children who don't deserve to have their learning cut short by some punk who likes to smoke pot and throw ninja stars at the teacher? Shouldn't we strive to create an environment where they can learn unimpeded? Technically, sure, but suspending a child doesn't actually do that at all. All it does is allow the teacher to remove what they deem to be a difficult kid from their immediate presence for a few days, while the troubled kid gets a free vacation from school, learning absolutely nothing about what they did wrong. Then, they come back and probably get suspended again.

A cynical person would say that society seems to be full of disciplinary measures that are super easy to dole out -- but don't actually accomplish anything other than making the disciplinarian feel better. Kicking a troublesome kid out of a classroom is easy and probably very satisfying. Actually teaching that kid how to be less troublesome is hard. But, as the adults in the situation, isn't that, you know, kind of your job?

For more ways we're messing our kids up, read 7 Things 'Good Parents' Do (That Screw Up Kids For Life). And also check out 5 Hallmarks of Bad Parenting That Are Actually Good for Kids.

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