The All-But-Forgotten Secret to a Child’s Success in School

A child demonstrates respect for an adult by willingly—that is, in the absence of threat or promise—paying attention to and doing what said adult tells him to do. An adult demonstrates respect for a child by calmly communicating the expectation that he is to pay attention and do what he is told. When children learn to respect their parents, they are developing foundational skills that can transfer to other relationships, including their relationships with teachers. The secret to a child's success in school is respect for authority, particularly female authority, which begins in the home.

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Transcript

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Hi there and welcome back to because I said so in which I John Rosemond, your favorite heretic psychologist exposes the lies of psychology and the mental health professions in general. And in the process, do my level best to reconnect EU, my favorite listener to the simple common sense of raising a child to functional adulthood? I'm glad you tuned in. And you're going to be glad to I guarantee it unless that is you're a psychologist who like me, believed everything they taught you in graduate school, but unlike me, has not yet recovered from the brainwashing. If that describes you, then it is my responsibility to inform you according to my attorneys, that is that listening to this podcast or any of my cup podcasts for that matter, may induce a state of psychosis. By the way, if you have ideas for future podcast topics, send them to Amy It's a m y at Rosemond rosemond.com. If you have pertinent anecdotes or anything you want to share with me do likewise send them to amy@rosemond.com. And if I use your ideas or anecdotes or whatever, I'll give you my permission to take a week long trip to Hawaii. And if you already live there, well good for you. You live in one of my favorite places on the planet. I even like Waikiki in small doses. Waikiki has several really good restaurants and my favorite shirt shop. Avanti. Little known fact, I am a collector of Avanti Hawaiian shirts are really cool. Anyway, I'm going to dwell today mostly on the answer to a question. I am often asked by parents, which reduces to how can I best help my child do his best in school John. So to begin with, here is a relevant story for you. In the 1950s when yours truly was an elementary school, I started elementary school first grade, I never went to kindergarten in 1952. In the 1950s. Classes were overcrowded. By today's standards anyway, and teachers did not have AIDS, meaning no child received much individual attention. Also consider that all of the children in a given classroom were held to the same standard. In other words, there was no such thing as an accommodation back then. Except maybe for kids who had pronounced that I mean obvious mental deficiencies. Furthermore, parents raising children, the 50s gave little to no help with homework. Their curriculum was much more demanding than it is today. And most kids believe it or not, came to first grade. Not knowing their ABCs and then unbelievable. To cite an up close and personal example, I came to first grade not knowing my ABCs there were 50 That's five zero 50 children and my first grade class. Very few of us knew our ABCs on the first day of first grade. Very few of us had gone to kindergarten even kindergarten was not universal in South Carolina in 1952. I hadn't gone to kindergarten. First grade was my first academic experience. I know that with maybe only one or two exceptions. The 50 kids in my first grade class came to first grade not knowing their ABCs because I I clearly remember that our teacher and let me remind you she taught 50 children and had no aid. Our teacher spent the first month of first grade, teaching us the alphabet. And each letters sound or sounds. Despite all those disadvantages, overcrowded classrooms, a high teacher student ratio, most kids coming to first grade not knowing their ABCs even kids in the 1950s Are you listening? We finished first grade reading at a much higher level than today's kids. And we continued to outperform today's kids at every single grade level. Pray tell what explains that. Were we smarter than today's kids? No, we were not. In terms of raw IQ. We early boomers were not more intelligent than today's kids. In fact, there are studies suggesting that IQ has actually been increasing in the general population since the 1950s. So then, how did we come to first grade not knowing our ABCs sit in what today would be considered criminally overcrowded classrooms where teachers had no aids and couldn't and didn't give very much individual attention at all. And lacking mothers? Who helped us with our homework every night like most of today's mothers do? How did we early boomers outperform today's kids, kids who enjoy all of those supposedly advantages, and come to first grade? Almost all of them already reading? How did we come to outperform today's kids at every single grade level, when they presumably had all the advantages we didn't have? Well, the answer is because of how we had been raised to that point. And by the way, we were raised, we were not parented, one very significant and very relevant aspect of which was we had been raised to regard our mothers as loving people. I have to speak generally here because surely there were early 1950s moms who weren't adequately loving but for the most part, our mothers were loving people, who were also fearsome when it came to their authority. We early boomers came to school, there were very few exceptions here having already learned to respect and obey an adult female. So we respected and obeyed are mostly adult female teachers. I am a member of the last generation of American kids who came to first grade, having already learned that women were not to be messed with. When I was growing up, I knew kids who like myself tried to get away with stuff without our parents or teachers finding out but I did not know any other child who was openly blatantly and disrespectfully defiant, toward an adult authority figure. For example, I never during the entirety of my childhood, ever saw a child throw a tantrum in school. I went to preschool for one year. It's called Three Little Pigs nursery school on meeting Street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. The women have three little pigs nursery school didn't teach us our ABCs or any other academic stuff, by the way. They taught us things like how to make castles out of Quaker oatmeal cartons, and things like that. I never saw a child defy one of those women. I never saw a child throw a tantrum there either. To explain how we early boomers came to first grade not knowing our ABCs or any other academic stuff. And yet by the end of first grade, we're reading at a higher level than today's kids. Let me point out the teachers will tell you that a high IQ is not the key to academic success success. Teachers will tell you that the best students regardless of how smart some test says they are. The best students are the most obedient students. They do what they're told. And they do what they're told not because of reward or punishment. They do what they're told, because they've learned that obedience equates to a sense of well being. And like everyone else, children want to to be happy. Which is what well being is all about. The students in question have learned the relationship between obedience and happiness. Intuitively, they might not they probably cannot explain how obedience and happiness go hand in hand. They just know it. ponder this question. Have you ever known a disobedient child who acted like he was a happy camper? Think about that. The answer is no. You haven't. Same as you haven't known a disobedient employee who acts like he's a happy camper. Folks. People who rebel against legitimate authority are disgruntled. They're unsettled. People are not happy people. A lot of them discover to their disadvantage the drugs and or adult beverages make them happy. But drugs and or adult beverages will only make N happy people. Happy temporarily. And the happiness in question is an illusion anyway, it fades rather quickly. What I'm saying is that if you want your child to do his best in school, you need to discipline him or her such that he or she learns early on to obey you. If your child obeys you, He will not only do his best in school, he will be happy. Make sure you project your authority in a way that causes your child to obey. Various very simple obey you. And if he obeys you, he will obey his teachers and his teachers universally, without exception, testify. The most successful students are not the smartest according to some test. They are the most obedient now is that what psychologists and other mental health profession professionals have been telling parents for the last 50 years? No, it is not. For the last 50 years professionals and other mental health types have been demonizing parental authority. They've been doing that since 1970. When child rearing became parenting them and telling parents that parent authority causes problems for children, which is proof undeniable in debatable proof that America's mental health professionals do not know what they are talking about when it comes to children and raising children properly. If you're listening to this amazing podcast for the first time, you may not know that I your host John Rosemond. I am a psychologist. I am licensed as such by the North Carolina psychology board. They regret the day they ever gave me a license Believe me, because as you will discover, if you have not discovered already, I am a psychologist who does not believe in psychology. I absolutely know that psychology is fake science, fake science, dispensing fake diagnoses and fake therapies along with fake medicines. Psychology is a farce folks. Keep on listening to this podcast and you will find out But why? Anyway, back to projecting your authority properly? How does a parent go about doing that? How do you project authority such that your child is almost certain to obey, as very simple. Listen up here, take notes, you project your authorities such that your child is almost certain to obey. By here it comes, simply acting like you know what you're doing. I'm gonna say that again, you project your authority, such that your child is almost certain to do what you tell him to do, which is in his best interest. By simply acting like you know, what you are doing, acting like you possess complete confidence in the legitimate legitimacy, legitimacy of your authority, you should be completely confident in the legitimacy of your natural authority is apparent, in fact, because God Himself has assigned that authority to you, in the raising of your children, you are to act as God's proxy, because they are in the final analysis. His children, first and foremost, you are there for to portray him, to your kids, as well as you are able until they are old enough to wrap their heads around the concept of an invisible spirit being who rules over every atom in the universe. By the way, there's lots of adults who can't wrap their heads around that concept. Many of them because they can't wrap their heads around God, reject the very idea that God is real. As if God is only real, if they say so. Cue the laugh track, please. It's all very simple, really, this process we now call parenting, you get a child to pay attention to you, which is where obedience begins. By simply acting like you know what you're doing. Your act like you're not looking for your child's help when it comes to making decisions. But what do you think, dear, and you're not looking for his approval concerning the decisions you make. That, right there is where today's ubiquitous child behavior problems begin. Most parents today act like it's their job, to pay attention to their kids. That is, after all, what mental health professionals have been telling parents for 50 years, to wit, the more attention you pay your child, the better off your child will be. And so, because so many of today's parents believe that people with capital letters after their names, know what they're talking about. And pay therefore, lots and lots and lots of attention to their children. Their children don't pay much attention to them at all. It's a fact, in fact, that the more attention a parent pays to a child, the less attention the child will pay to the parent. I'm gonna say that again, because it's an important aspect of what I call parenting physics. The more attention you pay your child, the less attention your child will pay to you. And make no mistake, paying attention to his parents benefits a child who greatly benefits the parents to no doubt about it. But in the final analysis, the greatest benefit accrues to the child in question. By age 3/3 birthday, a child understands one or two things. He either understands, number one, that it's his job to pay attention to his parents or he understands number two, that it is their job to pay attention to him. If he comes to the latter conclusion. If he comes to the conclusion by the time he's three years old, that it's his parents job to pay attention to him because that's what they're doing every day. His discipline is going to be difficult and very frustrating. So much so that eventually his parents may get so frustrated that they take him to a psychologist who gives the child some bogus tests merely to give the impression that he, the psychologist that is doing something scientific, and then gives the child one or more bogus diagnoses, like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and the child in question, winds up taking legal speed. All because his parents acted like it was their job to pay attention to him. And as a result, he never learned to pay attention to them. And now he's taking potentially dangerous drugs. Because of it. The idea that good parenting is all about paying as much attention as one can to one's children is a post 1960s idea that was invented and marketed by mental health professionals, psychologists, family therapists, clinical social workers, mental health counselors, blah, blah, blah. In the early days of my career, I marketed it. Yes, indeed, yours truly drank the Kool Aid. Then, after about eight years, I began waking up to the fact that psychology is a fake science. It causes a lot more problems than it solves, if it ever solves any that is. And around that time 1980 I stopped marketing the new parenting ideas and began remarketing the old ones. And my colleagues in the mental health professions went nuts. Nuts, they started accusing me of things like and I quote, this is really what they accused me of encouraging parents to abuse their children and quote, They went nuts. And they turned on me like a pack of rabid dogs. My lawyer after sitting in on a discussion between me and my licensing board, told me he had never heard a more irrational group of well educated people. Irrational and believe me, my lawyer is a very intelligent guy. Other psychologists say they don't like the things I say, but it's very interesting and certainly significant. That they have never been able to prove that I am wrong about anything I have ever said. They just don't like what I say. And no wonder they don't like it. I'm exposing them for the posers that they are the pretenders that they are downright liars that they are. Although in full fairness, most of them don't know. They're dispensing falsehoods. They're only dispensing what they learned in graduate school. Okay, back to parenting matters. In my next podcast, I'm going to take what I've said today one step further. And I'm going to give you a fail safe formula. failsafe for getting children to obey. This formula will quickly persuade your child to pay attention to you and do what you tell him to do the first time you tell him to do it. I know I know, it sounds like magic. But parents and my parents generation use the formulas did their parents and their parents and their parents and so on. It's a common sense time honored formula that has become all but lost in the child rearing psychobabble of the last 50 years. So thanks for joining us. Every week on midnight, Monday night we post a new podcast please tell your friends about us. rave about us on social media and all that sort of stuff. If we work together, folks, we can change the way children are being raised in America from crazy to sane again. Remember, you could find out more about me at John rosemond.com and parent guru.com. Until next time, be well be happy and be determined