Ten Things We Should Never Say To Kids | An Introduction

If you ask me, raising children is a drag. Don’t get me wrong—I think it’s terrific when they’re young. But parents don’t want it to end; the ones who invoke cheery sayings like, “Once a Dad, always a Dad...” and, “She’ll always be my little girl...” I don’t know; that creeps me out a little.

Seriously. Don’t you find it the tiniest bit needy when parents conspire to keep their offspring dependent into their twenties? Because if you don’t, you may not be wild about this book and my advice is, turn back now. Pass it along to someone whose kids are so crazy you don’t want your children associating with them. Just be aware, if someone gave you this book, it may mean she doesn’t care for your children. The exception to that would be if you received it from your parents, in which case it probably means they are newly sober and still hoping that making amends is available in a handy book form.

For some time now, I’ve harbored the suspicion that the whole point of parenting—THE WHOLE POINT—is raising adults. Right? Our finished product is people who, under our influence, bit by bit, stop acting like children and start acting like grownups.

         How that happens—that raising adults thing—is the subject of another book called, with significant flair for the obvious, Raising Adults (look for it at Amazon, or wherever you found Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids). If it turns out you like what’s in this book, trust me when I say I believe you’ll love that one. Raising Adults is the kinder, gentler, empathetic, hugging, handholding, sister to this book.

         This book is about ten things that get in the way of raising adults—ten declarations, attitudes, assumptions, habits and patterns, the unintended consequences of which are, to quote a friend, paralyzing to kids. Would you knowingly do something you had reason to believe was likely to leave your child physically paralyzed? Certainly not; stupid question. How about knowingly saying things with the likely outcome of emotional, spiritual and relational paralysis?

         This isn’t Ten Things You Can Say to Get Kids to Do Things Your Way. This is Ten Things that Drive a Wedge Between Children and Parents; Ten Things That Make Kids Want to Smoke, Drink Huff, Cut, Vomit, Sleep Around, Lash Out, Run Away, Give Up & Die Young. Hence, if it’s not too big a stretch, I’m thinking we ought to stop saying these things. Or, better yet, never start saying them at all...I’m looking at you, pregnant person.

         Mr. Editor is peering over my shoulder, suggesting I could dial back just a smidge on the caffeine. Fair enough; I can do that. But it won’t lessen the urgency of what I sat down at the Macintosh to write.

         That urgency springs, I think, from a sense of justice delayed.

         I spent nearly 20 years in sympathetic, daily contact with adolescents as a church-based youth worker. If you think that means I taught Sunday school, you’re slightly right. The rest of my week was engaged in designing non-formal learning experiences, developing peer leadership perspectives and skills, creating prevention programs to keep healthy kids healthy, helping parents learn to understand and nurture their children and, more often than I would have imagined when I began, participating in crisis interventions with adolescents, parents and campus communities. And lots of hanging out, lots of listening, lots of simply paying attention to kids.

         This was the main substance of my working life from 1972 (as rank amateur) through 1991 (as embarrassing middle-aged ponytail guy). I’ve spent much of the next two decades developing more than 200 short movies for people doing what I used to do.

         One pattern that holds steady decade after decade is the great number of adolescents who are not treated very well by adults. It’s not just that they feel misunderstood. I believe they are, in fact, misunderstood, and feared, and on the whole, disliked by their parents’ generation. Do you find that remarkable? I do.

         But there it is, coming out in the disrespectful way adults talk about kids when they’re not around, not to mention the disrespectful way adults talk directly at kids. Don’t tell me you didn’t resent that when you were young. Most of us despised the worst adult offenders and revered the wonderful exceptions—the adults who lifted us up when so many others put us down. (Do we remember the ones who stood by passively while their peers hammered away at us? I suspect not.)

         And today? Look around: Only the haircuts have changed.

         The modest proposal of this book is to start by stopping. I think there are things we should never say to our kids so, of course, I think we should stop saying them. The trouble is, we learned these things from our own dear parents and teachers (and they from theirs’) and it seems like most adults repeat what we hear without thinking and without seeing the damage done.

         We can do better. I know it; you know it; our children don’t know it but they suspect (and hope) we can.

            All right, then. Consider this the lowbrow literary equivalent of being sent to our room to think about it. We can come out when we’re ready to behave.
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