Why are so many kids obnoxious noisy brats?

By Michelle Quinn
Knight Ridder News Service

Children today behave more poorly than those in earlier generations, experts agree, but a single reason isn't clear. Advertiser library photo • 2001

And you've wondered: Have kids always been this way, and I'm just getting crankier? Or are today's parents spineless saps producing an inordinate number of brats?

Talk to parenting experts, school principals and teachers and you'll get an earful. Most think children behave more poorly than they did in the past — some even call it a crisis in discipline — but disagree on why. Theories range from the absenteeism of working parents to the loosening of morals, to the violence and flippancy seen on TV shows.

However, there's one area of agreement: Many parents have abandoned the top-down, authoritarian style of past eras, but they haven't found a sure-footed way to discipline their children that always seems right.

"I'm not sure about everything," says Kandi Praska, a Santa Clara, Calif., single mother of three. "I'm looking at them as children under my care and supervision who need to be disciplined, but I don't want to go too far in the discipline so that I encroach on who they are as people."

Child-rearing experts add to parents' insecurity. No two agree on how to raise children. And new parenting theories pop up every year.

Spanking is bad. Spanking is good. Teach your child the word "no" early and use it often. Saying "no" will stifle your child's creativity. Even yelling is over-analyzed. According to one researcher recently, yelling is "psychological aggression."

"There's too much information out there," says Karen Friedland-Brown, parent education coordinator at Parent's Place on the Peninsula, which offers parenting classes. "And maybe kids are pushing more and pushing harder because there aren't models of extreme authority. That's good, but it makes parenting harder."

Parenting angst leaves schools having to play a greater role in disciplining children, says James

McDonald, principal of Britton Middle School in Morgan Hill, Calif. "We're finding ourselves, as a school, taking on the roles of parents."

So what is at the root of parental ambivalence over disciplining? Dr. Robert Shaw, a Berkeley child psychiatrist and author of a new parenting book, thinks American parents left the shores of sanity in the 1960s. That's when the "epidemic," as he calls it, began. "There's a lot of intellectual conviction that you shouldn't over-regulate your kids," Shaw says.

"The most pernicious part is that parents aren't doing what they feel is right," he says. "They are always thinking, 'What ought I do?' They are looking for the politically correct way of being. They are alienated from their inner guidance system."

Of course, other child-rearing experts disagree. Martha Heineman Pieper, another author of a parenting book, thinks people discipline their children too harshly. "They are trying to socialize children way too young," she says. "It's based on the idea that children should act like mini-adults."

Some say today's parents pick extreme parenting styles, from permissiveness to rigidity, often in response to the upbringing they had. Other parents whipsaw between poles. Many just go with their instincts, eschew consistency and yet wonder if they should have some overarching philosophy to follow.

And maybe a middle-of-the-road approach has some benefits. "Parents are too permissive in the name of love and too controlling in the name of love," says Jane Nelsen, author of "Positive Discipline." "The key is to be kind and firm at the same time," she says.

But that reasonable advice doesn't always jump to mind in the trenches. When one of Praska's daughters talked back recently, Praska sent her to her room. Then came the worries: Maybe she made a mistake. Maybe her daughter was trying to communicate something was wrong. "I don't want to hurt her," Praska says.

Second-guessing is, of course, just another job hazard of parenting these days. Self-doubt often hits outside of the home, where parenting can turn into a spectator sport — the public watching the live event of a child's meltdown and how it's handled.

Not surprisingly, parents are often on the defensive, especially in public settings. "When I started as a principal, I would call a parent and they would thank me and be right here to help with the discipline," McDonald says. "Now there's a growing number who say, 'It's got to be the teacher's fault.' Or. 'It's not true.' "

In the San Jose, Calif., home of the Castle Pietrzaks, two parenting philosophies are at work and sometimes at odds. There is common ground: Both parents are opposed to spanking, prefer the term "consequences" to "punishments," and want their children to feel they can speak up. But there are differences. "She believes that fear has no place in a relationship between a child and a parent," says Michael Castle Pietrzak, the father and a painting contractor. "I believe in healthy fear."

These parenting beliefs sometimes collide, with the couple's three older children, ages 10, 12 and 14, from Stacy Castle Pietrzak's first marriage, and with their 16-month-old daughter. The parents talk constantly and feel they are inventing parenting as they go. "Most people think, 'I was parented, I'm OK. I'll do what comes naturally to me,' " Stacy says. "You can't. It's such a huge responsibility that we take so lightly."