Did you miss the first three reasons? Start here!
I’ll get straight to the point about the fourth reason we should boycott purchasing Christmas gifts. Christmas gift giving is not only a blindly followed tradition but it is counter-intuitive and counterproductive to raising children.
Christmas Gifts Are Just Counter-intuitive and Counterproductive
All over the country parents, teachers, social workers and the like are asking themselves how to deal with disobedient children. It seems all too common today, that we hear stories about children who are defiant and abusive rather than stories about children who are well-behaved and respectful. In fact, when we hear about well-behaved, good intentioned children it normally gets reported as a shocking national news story.
For the record, I can assure you that I’m not attempting to be a scrooge. I’m sure that there are more well-behaved children than there are disobedient children but rarely would you know it by watching the news. One such recent example of a disobedient, defiant child is the well-publicized Affluenza case.
Affluenza Made Me Do It
The case of Affluenza is the incident where a drunk young man from a wealthy family drove his Ford F-350 with seven passengers and hit and killed four pedestrians. It is a situation where the young man was disobedient – refusing to comply with the laws of the land. A case where the same young man was defiant in his opposition to doing the right thing – waiting until legally permitted to drink and avoiding driving while intoxicated altogether.
Now the world has been introduced to Affluenza – the newly manufactured defense for parents who have raised disobedient children. A professed mental disorder that parents can now offer to defend the unlawful actions of children; children raised by parents who themselves – like many American parents – are intoxicated on materialism and overconsumption.
Affluenza may be the today’s terminology for parenting gone wrong. However, Affluenza is actually an outgrowth of something that has been going awry for many years – plain old-fashioned parenting failure. In case you are not familiar with parenting failure, parenting failure exists when not only do parents not know how to parent but parents sidestep rolling-up their sleeves to do the dirty work that parenting requires.
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
The focus on Santa Claus and Christmas gifts is just one illustration of the growing sickness in a society that now uses Affluenza as a defense for taking the lives of others.
“Society’s emphasis on Santa Claus and his gift giving acerbates and perpetuates the parenting failure pandemic.”
Each year, parents bribe, negotiate and plead with their children to behave – to be good for goodness sake. This plea is coupled with an irresponsible quid pro quo inducement. A social contract enticement that is predicated on some ridiculous mythical fable that a child’s behavior will be scrutinized by some plump guy living in the North Pole. Based on the hefty man’s supernatural behavioral evaluation of ALL the children around the world – sort of as if Santa was the Director of the NSA – a child may be rewarded with gifts on December 25th.
“Santa Claus is coming to town” becomes the imprudent jingle utilized to persuade children – not to be contributing members of society but as the song implies with a lesser directive – to just “be good for goodness sake”. Additionally, “be nice not naughty” is the motto parents utter with greater emphasis as retailers begin the annual Christmas advertising campaign. A crusade that begins right around the 4th of July and one that is deviously constructed to make us all indentured servants.
“Be good for Santa” is the common plea of parents with unruly children. “Santa Claus is watching you” is the routine utterance of parents in a department store near you. “Santa knows if you’ve been bad or good” is the response de jure should any action by a child be found to be displeasing to the parent.
Nuttin’ For Christmas
Is the threat of not getting a Christmas gift the best we can do? Is pleading with our children to be good for Santa the answer? Is ascribing NSA like powers to Santa the best way to monitor behavior? Will long-standing folk-lore continue to be the guide for modern parenting? I think we can do better than this.
Instead of begging, pleading and negotiating, how about demanding our children be good because it is what is required? What about insisting that our children are expected to positive contributing members of society? Why not remind our children that they carry our name and make a compelling argument for why our names are not to be tarnished? And when all else fails particularly if our children appear dissuaded, what about pulling out the old faithful expression – “I brought you into this world and I’ll take you out”?
I Brought You Into This World
Parents if you make Santa Claus part of your parenting methodology, you should not be shocked when the day after Christmas little Ethan or Miley says or does something unlawful or disrespectful. Those who ascribe to “Parenting by Santa Claus” should never pretend to be surprised when your child ignores your requests or acts defiantly in public. Remember you raised them to be insubordinate the moment you directed them to reverence Santa Claus and Christmas gifts and not you.
Moreover, you told them that Santa Claus was watching. You told them that getting gifts was dependent on Santa’s evaluation of their behavior. And more than likely, despite ignoring authoritative instructions, disobeying you and disrespecting others all year-long – there was still a full stocking over the fire-place and numerous gifts under the tree with their names on them.
What’s The Point?
So what’s the point of being obedient and respectful if good old Saint Nick is going to fly on over to your house, slide through the chimney and drop off everything you wanted but didn’t deserve. What’s the point of obeying REAL parents and ACTUAL rules when an obese guy from the North Pole always decides who is naughty and who is nice? What’s the point in driving the speed limit, waiting until you’re the legal age to drink and calling a cab if you have had too much to drink if your parents will never hold you accountable? And what’s the point of being a parent, if at any point you try to make an imaginary obese dude from the North Pole your child’s disciplinarian?
There is no point – it is all counter-intuitive and counterproductive to raising children. Then again, maybe there is the one thought that if the parents will train children to reverence and celebrate the existence of an imaginary chunky guy in a red suit who is alleged to be the final arbiter of good and bad perhaps those same delusional children will grow up to become jurors and judges who will continue to suspend reality and believe in an imaginary illness that negates a drunken teen’s responsibility in the death of four people. Nah! No way the children of current generation would perpetuate the nonsensical, counter-intuitive and counterproductive traditions of their parents generations. Right?
Are you perpetuating counter-intuitive and counterproductive parenting traditions? Have you ever asked your child to do something for Santa Claus?
Great perspective. Recently a colleague told me that she has a magical elf that she moves around the room and tells her kids that the elf reports back to santa. She reminds them every time that they do something bad that the elf is watching them. They stop the behavior not because she tells them to stop but because they are worried the elf will tell santa.