What’s up with the brats?

“Who would let their children act like that in a restaurant?!”

My mother and I were discussing the behavior of four children at the table next to ours last Saturday.  The kids were loud, rambunctious, and whiny.  The six adults with them, though, didn’t seem to notice.   They each had a glass of wine and were doing their best to talk over and around the children.

My friend Jean recently wrote a great post about a restaurant outside Pittsburgh that now forbids children under six from eating there.  Jean sympathized with the restaurant, lamenting the lack of parenting that leads to out-of-control kids in public.

I understand her perspective; after all, I was annoyed at the parents who did nothing to help their children have a fun dinner without screeching and climbing all over the furniture.  But I think the idea that we are too indulgent of our children is only half the story.  Our culture, I think, has become hostile toward children and families.  And the two problems, permissive parents and a hostile culture, are actually symptoms of a bigger problem.

That problem, I think, is a great anxiety that we are missing out on something that will make everything better, something just around the corner and just out of reach, that will ensure our children’s success, the success of our marriages, the meaningfulness of our lives.

It’s a bit of a stretch – that anxiety leads to both permissiveness and hostility – but try it on with me.

Our children should be engaged in meaningful, exciting, purposeful activities. When they are not busy reaching their ‘full potential” (a phrase I can’t stand), they should be choosing the family van based on which entertainment center they most prefer.  “Educational” toys, intense marketing from Disney and the Cartoon network, best selling books, enrichment programs, pharmaceutical companies, and pre-school admissions consultants all promise that they will make things better.

A similar array of enticements makes the same offer to adults.  Schools that offer prestigious degrees, gyms that promise taut bodies, and pastors that remind us to have regularly scheduled date nights. We should spend lots of time at important jobs that make the world better and lots of time having quality time with our kids.  And when we aren’t doing all of that, we have to take luxury vacations to unwind from our stressful lives — all so we can get recharged to go back to our meaningful lives.

So we chase after the promise of meaning, and importance, and the good life.  We push our kids to do the same.  And when we are not chasing that, when we are tired of chasing, or when we have a sneaking suspicion that all of the chasing is after our own tail, we pour a glass of wine or turn on the television or start training for a marathon.  Or maybe we join the kids as they zone out in front of the t.v. or a video game and call it family time.

We’re raising kids that are stressed out, rushed, pushed, and, paradoxically, un-parented.  We’re tired after running them all over town, so we let them play with our iPhone in the car and head for their Wii as soon as they get home.  And kids who are running high speed after something they can’t quite name,  and then “relaxing” with overly-stimulating media, are not fun to be around.  Kids who get an hour less sleep per night than in generations past, and who, for all our talk of quality time, actually spend less down time with their parents than ever before, are not fun to be around.

In fact, you may not want them in your restaurant.  You might not want them around at all.  And when they are around, they better be exhibiting signs that they are grateful for everything they have been given.  Don’t they know how hard kids used to have it?

Besides, I work so hard.  Don’t I deserve time away from kids?  When I actually bother to shave my legs so I can go to dinner with my co-chauffeur, shouldn’t we be able to have a quiet dinner without disruptions from the brats at table five?

So we end up, perhaps all of us to some degree, an itty-bitty hostile.

You don’t believe me?  Take your kids on the train and see how many people smile when your son delights as the conductor makes an announcement.  Some passengers will smile, but many will put on their headphones.  Let your kid pay for his own clothes at Target, and see how many people tell him what a good job he’s doing as he spills his money on the counter and slowly counts out the right change.  If you’re still not sure, head overseas.  Your children will feel welcome there.  When’s the last time you felt that?

Is it possible that we could just let our kids go to kindergarten without worrying about where they are going to go to college?  Is it possible to let our children be quirky or ill-tempered or bad at math and not work frantically to fix them?  Is it crazy to think that our society will ever slow down enough to both parent and enjoy its young?

What would happen if we sat still for awhile with all the fears and anxieties that come up when we slow down, really slow down, without the aid of our favorite numbing device, be it our Blackberry or video game or pint of Hagandaaz?  What might happen then?

I thought that homeschooling would help us do just that.  But as you can tell from a year’s worth of posts, it’s just as easy to fill up the schedule, chase an elusive answer, and push too hard when you are at home as it is when you drop them off somewhere six hours a day.   You can spend all day with them and still under-parent in meaningful ways.  You can love the crud out of ‘em and still find yourself put off by the noises and questions and clumsiness and typical breakdowns of young people.

What do you think?  Is it all me?  Or do you sense that we are becoming more permissive and more hostile simultaneously?  And what do you think accounts for the change?