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Raising Everyday Heroes

Acknowledgments

My warmest appreciation goes to my parents, José and Jacqueline Ribelles. Thank you for recognizing and encouraging the hero within me. Without your faith and insight, I’d probably be sitting on a park bench picking lint out of my belly button instead of doing what impassions me so deeply.
I would also like to extend my gratitude and respect to my fellow parents. You’ve all spent countless moments, just as I have, worrying about or even obsessing over the needs of your children. We’ve rocked our croupy babies in steam-filled bathrooms until mildew began to sprout from every skin fold. We’ve rushed up to school to kiss and blow jungle-gym-inflicted boo-boos. We’ve crawled on hands and knees, looking frantically for that lint-covered binky as if it were the Holy Grail. We’ve dug Gummy Bears out of the drink holders in our cars, swept up bushels of cracker crumbs, and tied millions of shoelaces. And when our children reach adolescence, we’ve still been there for them. As our child-focused life passes before our eyes, we’ve clutched the dashboards of the two-ton steel missiles our brand-new teenage drivers seem to aim at every mailbox and pedestrian. We’ve endured breakups and breakouts, bad dates and no dates, and everything in between.

I thank you from the depths of my heart and soul for wanting to be the best possible parent for your child, because as you and I both know, there is no job we’ll treasure more. No job bears greater consequence to humanity’s future. No job is more deserving of our blood, our sweat, and our tears.

My warmest appreciation to all those who worked so tirelessly to transform this project from rock to diamond: To Laura Foster, Supreme Commander of the Editing Universe, I am so deeply grateful, not only for your expertise and professionalism, but also for your willingness to offer advice whenever I’ve careened off-course like a runaway train as I’m so often inclined to do. To Cindy Black, my very patient publisher who must suffer the barrage of anxiety-laden e-mails and hold hands with an author who is still on the uphill side of the learning curve. To Marvin Moore, Elizabeth Morrow McKenzie, Bill Brunson, Sylvia Hayse, Richard Cohn, Julie Steigerwaldt, Jenefer Angell: without you, this book would not be what it is now.

I would also like to extend my deepest admiration for those experts in the field who so willingly gave their insights and expertise: George Dehne, Alfie Kohn, Claire Raines, Diana Zuckerman, Pete Hinojosa, Gwen Francis, Virginia Leiker, Diana Haskins, Vivian Eberhard, Linda Reed, Wendy Andreen, Winona Emerson, Beverly McDaniel, Elayne Kuehn, Chief Chuck Brawner, Chief Dave Barber, MSG George Pate, Liz Kronick, Annette Griffith, Paullette Hightower, Anna Nowlin, Neisha Saxena, Vinh Troung, Deonnia Times, Kathy Vazquez, Kelley Walker, and all those who chose to remain anonymous—you know who you are! Thanks to you all, together we may well help parents, educators, and children pave the way to a brighter future.

Introduction

I remember all too well the day I decided to write this book. One of my teenage daughters handed me a letter she wanted mailed. Did she not know how to lick a stamp, thrust it bravely on the upper-right-hand corner of the envelope, and carry it out to the mailbox? Or had she just broken her leg and neglected to mention it to me?

Less than an hour later, a seventeen-year-old friend of one of my teenagers loped into the kitchen, all six-foot-four-inches and 195 pounds of him, and stood before me with a puzzled if not vacuous look on his face. After a befuddled pause, he asked, “How can I get a drink around here?”

Mind you, this kid has been in and around our house for at least two years. In fact, he’s so much a part of our family that he somehow wound up in last year’s Christmas photo. During those two years, he’s rummaged through the refrigerator, the pantry, and every kitchen drawer and cabinet countless times. By now, I figured the very least he should be able to do is generate a map of each and label their entire contents with individual GPS coordinates.

I found it shocking—sad really—that this nearly grown man could not fend for himself when he was thirsty! I didn’t know whether to look at him with pity or disbelief. So, returning his same blank expression, I pointed out the cabinet where the cups were and always have been and always will be until the house becomes a dig site for future archeologists, and I told him, for the hundredth time, where the drinks are kept.

I thought, “Two helpless kids in less than two hours. How could that be possible?” Eventually I shrugged it off as an odd twist of fate and went about my mundane daily routine. But thanks to my now heightened awareness, I noticed throughout the day that lightning can indeed strike again and again.

My twelve-year-old needed help getting the stapler to work without jamming. My nine-year-old couldn’t find his favorite pair of pants—probably confiscated by the FBI as a possible bioterrorist weapon. My eight-year-old needed help picking out her breakfast. My sixteen-year-old wanted a special key ring for her backpack and didn’t know how to go about finding one. My fifteen-year-old didn’t know how to call tech support to fix a problem with her new computer. Were my kids that dependent on me? Where had I gone wrong?

Then I started observing the behavior of other kids—at school, in public places, and in the neighborhood. Over several months, I asked scores of teenagers if they knew how to do things like boil an egg, sort laundry, mow the lawn, give directions, ask for directions, balance a checkbook, and perform other practical life tasks.

I found their age-appropriate level of competence so lacking that I sought confirmation from a variety of experts: teachers, child psychologists, generational experts, school counselors, school principals, and parenting consultants. I spoke with others who interact with young people on a daily basis: campus and city police officers, military recruiting officers, college admissions officials, employee supervisors, human resource managers, grandparents, and of course, other parents. Together, we came to the unsettling conclusion that kids today are far less self-reliant than my generation had been at the same age—in fact, they are helpless!

What was stunting that part of our children’s development? Are we, their parents, to blame? Do we rescue and shelter them too much? Are we not preparing them for life as adults? In examining my own behavior, I found myself indefensibly guilty. The chores I had my kids do consisted of little more than breathing and passing gas. And when I helped them with their homework, I’d answer some of their math problems for them—at least until fourth grade, when their grades started to nosedive as a result of my questionable know-how. Yes, I was the one who cleaned up their messes, made their school lunches, settled their conflicts, bailed them out of their mistakes, and, well, practically lived their lives for them! After all, it was so much easier than trying to get them to do it just as well!
Many of my friends were guilty, too. I know several parents who single-handedly complete their child’s book reports, construct their dioramas, design and build their science-fair projects, and write their college-admissions essays. These are often the same parents who bail their kids out of every kind of trouble. Not long ago, one of the teenage boys in the neighborhood wrecked his car while driving under the influence. Not only did his parents argue with the arresting officer, but they paid for the repairs and drove him to school every day until the car was fixed! I know several other parents who think nothing of threatening and making demands of teachers—even college professors—to see that their children make better grades than they deserve and get by with doing less work to get them.
From all these observations and my perspective as a physician and mother of five, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is an increasingly common tendency for adults to rescue children from adversity: from want, from responsibility, from interpersonal conflict, from boredom, from self-assessment, from frustration, from challenge, from problem-solving, and from the consequences of their poor choices.

As you’ve seen, I, too, have been far from guiltless in what I initially regarded as my own selfless maternal acts of love and compassion. Of course, the desire to shield children from hurt seems a natural, even admirable, intention for any well-meaning and loving parent. Protecting offspring is one of our most basic instincts. Picture the she-wolf that sacrifices herself as she fights to protect her young from danger, and you’ve pictured every caring parent in the world, including me. Despite its noble foundation, however, the dangerous—and clearly unintended—consequence of this parenting style is that children who are rescued from every conflict fail to develop the tools they need to rescue themselves.

In fact, we end up with the opposite of our desired outcome, leaving many of today’s youth ill-prepared for adult life. Many are unable to cope with adversity. Many lack creative problem-solving and practical, self-management skills—not to mention plain common sense. Many are reluctant to assume responsibility for their actions. Many look through the eyes of others, especially peers, to assess themselves, to form their identity, and to establish a sense of self-worth, whether low or high. Many abandon moral absolutes to adopt a “conditional morality” by which it’s OK to make poor choices if there’s something in it for them, if “everyone else is doing it,” or if they don’t think they’ll get caught. Many have an over-bloated sense of entitlement, an artificially inflated self-esteem, and unrealistic expectations for their future.

In short, many of today’s young people—currently nearly 80 million strong—are proceeding through life without essential skills or a reliable inner compass. The result: They rely ever more on outside beacons for guidance. So, their choices are externally directed; that is, they are shaped by the standards and expectations of the outside world rather than by their own personal experiences, their own needs and principles, their own inner sense of right and wrong.
And there’s no shortage of external opinions for them to absorb. Western children endure a continual onslaught of outside messages—channeled through song lyrics, movies, television programs, the Internet, advertisements, peer groups, and other sources. Every one of these messages tells them who they should be, how they should act, what they should wear, what music they should like, how much they should weigh, what food they should eat, and what drugs they should take. In a 2002 survey conducted by Public Agenda, 79 percent claim it is much harder raising kids today amid the barrage of harmful messages they receive. In fact, a majority cites “trying to protect your child from negative societal influences” as a bigger challenge than “trying to find enough time to be together as a family” or “trying to keep up with the bills and the cost of living.”
The most disturbing part is not the attitudes or values those messages convey—which may be positive or negative—but that so many kids today react to them mindlessly instead of consciously. They become pawns on the chessboard of life, moved from square to square by the caprice of mass consciousness, rather than becoming players who choose their own moves.
Small wonder many kids aren’t able to act responsibly. They haven’t had a chance to practice the necessary skills. When they aren’t given opportunities to practice in the safety of their homes under watchful and loving eyes, they stand a greater risk, when out on their own, of making choices with dangerous, even disastrous, consequences.

Take a look at the heroes children have today: rock stars, sports stars, movie stars, even villains—public figures whose heroism is defined not by courage, integrity, and compassion but by image, physical beauty, fame, the size of their bank accounts, the length of their rap sheets, and the number of times they’ve been written up in National Enquirer. I find this more than a bit bothersome, because heroes tend to be paradigms of the person we ultimately aspire to become. That said, children today are not aspiring to the greatness that lies within them. Shaquille O’Neal and Avril Lavigne may be virtuous pillars of the community, but that’s not why children idolize them. They do so because society’s definition of success and virtue has changed over the last fifty years. Heroes like prolific inventor Thomas Edison, daring aviators Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh, dignified athletes Knute Rockne and Jesse Owens, civil-rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer were revered for their willingness to take risks and make sacrifices for a greater good; to endure criticism, skepticism, and ridicule; to persevere along a path riddled with failures and setbacks; to do what they thought was right and honorable, elevating humankind along the way.

But now that success is measured by superficial qualities, the heroes our children look up to are limited to those who have any or all of these. Their admiration springs not from character traits like integrity, courage, perseverance, and sacrifice but from this new notion of success.

In addition to parental perfection, we adults are also pressured to strive for personal perfection: to keep our weight down, our skin tan (yet somehow wrinkle-free), our bank accounts healthy, our houses big, and our material possessions plentiful. As if that weren’t a tall enough order, society demands we strive for this perfection in an era when time is a rare commodity. We must constantly choose between career success and child-rearing success. We must constantly battle the temptation to take parenting shortcuts to avoid being inconvenienced or over-stressed. To make matters worse, we, too, are up against a formidable foe: the swelling sea of pop culture and media influences that threatens to drown our children, our families, and ourselves.

I’m awe-inspired that we parents have managed to keep our heads above water so well. We should all be declared heroes ourselves for our struggle against those many factors that work against us—factors whose roots, as we shall see, began to take hold centuries ago.

This generation represents our future. While cultural influences are unavoidably and inextricably enmeshed into the fabric of this generation’s lives, the question becomes: How will the culture affect the way our children—our future leaders—make decisions as adults? Without an inner compass, are these children equipped to run homes, businesses, and the government?

Fortunately, it’s not too late to turn things around. Doing so requires us to make three adjustments. First, we need to redefine heroism. A hero shouldn’t be someone who earns millions of dollars playing a sport and then flouts the law, knowing that his team will always bail him out. Shouldn’t a hero be someone who chooses to do the right thing even if that means doing the unpleasant, the frightening, or the difficult? Shouldn’t a hero be someone who is willing to climb the steep wall of criticism, ridicule, and rejection that often accompanies bucking a trend, because they know that freedom of expression is an inalienable right? Shouldn’t a hero be someone who is willing to accept the sacrifices that many moral choices demand? This definition of hero seems to be the definition of what many of today’s kids are not.

Second, as adults, we need to recognize the inner hero—that potential for greatness—which resides in all children. They come into the world with a limitless imagination, an undying enthusiasm for life, and a sense that no obstacle is insurmountable. But over time, pessimism, paranoia, and the ever-present lack of faith in a child’s potential begin to forge the chains that strangle their inner hero, robbing it of the breath it needs to do great things.

Can we release that hero from his iron chains, just as Hercules did for Prometheus? This, our final task, is the essence of this book: empowering parents to raise heroic children—children who deserve our respect and children who could serve as role models for others instead of children who are the mediocre products of a corporatized, homogenized, pleasure-grabbing culture.
We are, perhaps, the first generation of adults capable of reversing what decades of media bombardment has created. Why? Because we are willing to do just about anything for our children. Our devotion to youth, along with our deep sense of responsibility, our open-mindedness, and our gift for collective action, makes us uniquely qualified to empower children so they can shepherd the world down a higher road.

In this book, you’ll find solutions and suggestons that are useful to everyone: parents, schools, workplaces, communities, and even society as a whole. There is truth in the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child,” and if we unite behind this goal we can raise a generation of children who are truly responsible, not only for themselves, but for their world.

This huge step will be the first of many toward building a world whose inhabitants are free to choose according to what is right rather than what others deem acceptable. This, a society run by self-directed citizens, is the world our children deserve