The Good Child—and the Responsible Parent

A properly socialized three-year-old is polite and engaging.

She's also no pushover. She evokes interest from other children and appreciation from adults.

She exists in a world where other kids welcome her and compete for her attention, and where adults are happy to see her, instead of hiding behind false smiles.

She will be introduced to the world by people who are pleased to do so. This will do more for her eventual individuality than any cowardly parental attempt to avoid day-to-day conflict and discipline.

Discuss your likes and dislikes with regards to your children with your partner or, failing that, a friend. But do not be afraid to have likes and dislikes. You can judge suitable from unsuitable, and wheat from chaff. You realize the difference between good and evil.

Having clarified your stance— having assessed yourself for pettiness, arrogance and resentment—you take the next step, and you make your children behave.

You take responsibility for their discipline.

You take responsibility for the mistakes you will inevitably make while disciplining.

You can apologize, when you're wrong, and learn to do better.

You love your kids, after all. If their actions make you dislike them, think what an effect they will have on other people, who care much less about them than you.

Those other people will punish them, severely, by omission or commission. Don't allow that to happen. Better to let your little monsters know what is desirable and what is not, so they become sophisticated denizens of the world outside the family.

A child who pays attention, instead of drifting, and can play, and does not whine, and is comical, but not annoying, and is trustworthy—that child will have friends wherever he goes. His teachers will like him, and so will his parents.

If he attends politely to adults, he will be attended to, smiled at and happily instructed. He will thrive, in what can so easily be a cold, unforgiving and hostile world.

Clear rules make for secure children and calm, rational parents.

Clear principles of discipline and punishment balance mercy and justice so that social development and psychological maturity can be optimally promoted.

Clear rules and proper discipline help the child, and the family, and society, establish, maintain and expand the order that is all that protects us from chaos and the terrors of the underworld, where everything is uncertain, anxiety-provoking, hopeless and depressing. There are no greater gifts that a committed and courageous parent can bestow.

Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.