Teaching essential character

Clinical Psychiatry News, Nov, 2002

In the past year, Americans have had extraordinary opportunities to include children in national debates of historic proportion--about defending this country from harm, about ensuring personal freedoms, about hatred and fear, determination and dissent.

And yet how many of us have to admit that our kids still mostly hear us fussing over who will chauffeur them through their busy activity schedules, or needling them to do their homework, or otherwise reinforcing the narcissistic notion that life revolves almost exclusively around precious them?

The challenge is for adults to dial back our role as coordinators of childhood events and again become... adults. To openly discuss our world with the children in our lives. To teach them essential character.

No advocate for young people has been sounding this call louder than Alvin Rosenfeld, a New York psychiatrist whose book on out-of-whack family priorities, "The Over-Scheduled Child," was a bible for many parents, teachers, and other adults who interacted with kids before Sept. 11. This is a job quite apart from last year's task of helping children cope with the murder of more than 3,000 Americans.

Rosenfeld's agenda focuses on the longer haul: arming children with the skills and spines they need to withstand cataclysmic events and still lead enjoyable, generous lives.

That wouldn't be difficult if children paid close attention to what parents and other adults tell them. Most kids, of course, listen barely if at all to what adults say. Instead they watch what adults do. And there may be no lesson we impart to them so efficiently as how we adults react to events that upset us, from a fender-bender to a threatening new era of conflict. What many kids too rarely witness is adults thinking through what we believe--about citizenship, about war, about how not to let concerns over far-off events snuff out ordinary kindness and joy. One practical lesson adults can teach by their actions, Rosenfeld says, is that what protects and stabilizes us in times of danger is being close to the people we care about, talking through with them what scares us and how we can react.

Exploring perils and teaching kids how to react to them doesn't have to be overly complex. The point isn't to sit children down and solemnly inform them that, "Tonight, we'll be discussing how each of us feels about Sept. 11." A talk might instead start with an adult saying, "I'm a little uneasy about Sept. 11 coming around again. How about you?" After gentle prodding, most kids will talk--and listen. As Rosenfeld puts it: "We have an opportunity here to teach kids how to be adults--how to manage fear and risk without being overwhelmed or forgetting that life is about treating others as we want to be treated. They'll need that balance all their lives."

Some children have seen adults donate money, food or clothing to help people who suffered losses, either because of Sept. it or economic recession. And they've stopped obsessing on the child-centered activity of the moment to witness adults wrestling with issues that have erupted over the past year.

The sum of what these kids are learning approximates Berger's definition of character: striking a fair, ethical balance between protecting one's own interests and having a concern for others.

Rosenfeld is drawing attention nationwide for promoting a practical tool to help one generation impart these lessons to the next. It's called Family Night, an experiment he helped launch last year in Ridgewood, N.J.

For one night, that suburb has no school events, no homework, no civic meetings. Instead, families spend time together as they wish--playing board games, going for walks, or just talking about what matters to themselves and their country Rosenfeld now is pushing the idea to community leaders and parent groups nationwide via a new Web site, www.familynightamonth.org.

The generation of children who witnessed Sept. 11 suffered a blunt emotional assault. Depending on what they learn now, they will grow up to relish--or to avoid--the burdens and triumphs of citizenship.

This excerpt was reprinted with permission from the Chicago Tribune.