Agreed.
Also teaching that-- as a basic boundary condition-- one CANNOT roll over other people using aggression or manipulation...
that's a really necessary explicit lesson (well, okay-- a series of them) for some children. It's also a really exhausting challenge for parents!! The very worst mismatch is when a fairly aggressive child is being parented by a submissive and gentle parent-- because the innate tendencies of both parties lead to the CHILD being an authoritarian/dictatorial presence there.
I realize that this is a fundamental difference in parenting philosophies... and that there are people who truly believe that ALL children will naturally blossom out without any guidance, and that altering their innate tendencies in any way is "wrong" because it prevents them from doing what they are 'destined' for... and my apologies to anyone with that outlook, but I have to say that I don't think it is okay (societally) to let kids with certain traits develop those traits without alteration to that natural trajectory. Some kids are not destined to develop into very nice people without some parental
shaping of natural personality traits. Leaving kids completely 'au natural' does concede that some of them will turn into manipulative, exploitative individuals. It's a particular risk with kids who are exceptionally gifted in some way
and lack empathy. Golding didn't invent
Lord of the Flies out of thin air, YK? It resonates
because it describes something fundamental about human nature. I don't think that most parents would like that for their kids.
Leave certain tendencies unaddressed, and those kids can become nightmarish for everyone around them when they are a bit older, because they don't all "naturally" develop empathy, impulse-control, and tolerance. Some do, of course... but not all. There really isn't anything personally advantageous in The Golden Rule. KWIM?
Aggressive kids who are age-appropriately self-centered and asynchronously advantaged in their ability to gain what they want often need VERY strong parents. Not
harsh parents, but parents who are willing to say "NO. You must not do that. You need to consider others, and recognize that their needs are just as important as your wishes are." Until they can develop empathy, (and even that may be a matter of fairly deliberate parenting in some cases) they need us to help them... as firmly as required.
It's
really hard to redirect some kids into more prosocial patterns, but it does pay dividends down the road.
Neglect to do that, and you can wind up in a far, far different place. I know several friends with teen/adult children who deeply regret their assumption that
modeling reflective, compassionate, and gentle behaviors would be enough to teach those things to kids of ANY disposition. Some kids, not so much-- they take that as confirmation that they ARE, in point of fact, very much entitled to anything they want, at any time that they want it, and that their opinions, desires, and needs will automatically take precedence over those of others-- no exceptions. These are not particularly happy children, either-- because those antisocial behaviors leave them isolated as peers figure out that they are a bit, well, sociopathic.
Gentle parenting can work with those children. But
passive/permissive parenting cannot; that merely teaches them that the world exists to do their bidding. I think that most developmentally healthy kids believe just that at some point (around 2-3yo) if they have been lovingly nurtured, but it's not good if they
continue to believe it. LOL.
PS. I
was a child very much like this. My parents were VERY firm about not permitting selfish/exploitative behavior from me, and insisted on coaching prosocial thinking. My BIL, a
very similar child, was never coached that way (on the contrary, he was coached to be self-centered and aggressive, or at least that there wasn't anything wrong with that because he naturally deserved whatever he liked), and he
is sort of sociopathic. I do credit the permissive parenting he experienced with his complete lack of compassionate perspective-taking. Neither of us was parented in a particularly "gentle" manner, though-- so I know that one can't conflate gentle with permissive. My DH is nothing like his interpersonally exploitative younger sibling, so it wasn't that his parents were "bad" parents-- just all wrong for a kid with my BIL's needs.
Non-permissive but gentle is rather like "What would Ghandi do here?"
