Scary Parenting: Part Two

Forget everything modern psychology has spoon-fed us; I'm here to resurrect the time-tested, authoritative methods that breed not tyrants, but well-adjusted, respectful, and ultimately happier kids. This episode is a daring call to reconsider the role of obedience and fear in child-rearing, as I dissect the misplaced belief in permissive techniques and set the record straight on why a little bit of 'scary' goes a long way in fostering desirable behaviors.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:41

Well, hello and welcome or welcome back, as the case may be to, because I said so. I'm your host, john Roseman, and we are, I maintain, the only podcast on the entire worldwide web where you will hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about America's mental health industry and the damage they have done to this country and children and families in particular. And you will hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about children. And you will hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about raising children, everything that we have been calling parenting since around 1970. So I'm glad you joined us and I hope you enjoy it and the experience that is, and I hope you continue to join us.

Speaker 1: 1:42

A few weeks back, I did a podcast on what I call scary parenting, which is my copyrighted and trademarked response to the unmitigated stupidity and insanity of what is being called gentle parenting. I maintain that if everyone was a scary parent, the world would be a much, much better place and children would be much, much better off. In fact, it wasn't that long ago that nearly every parent in America and quite possibly worldwide, was a scary parent. That was certainly the situation when I was growing up in the 1950s, your parents were scary parents, your teachers were scary teachers, your neighbors were scary neighbors. Parents in general were scary and so, unlike the case with gentle parenting, there is historical precedent for scary parenting. It's what people did before. Psychologists said it was bad. It was bad for child mental health, and so people stopped scary parenting because they thought and still do. Most people anyway. That's psychologists know what they're talking about, and I am a psychologist and I can tell you on the authority of my degree and my license psychologists do not know what they are talking about. They are floundering around in some pseudo-intellectual darkness. Anyway, scary parenting is what people did before. Psychologists said it was bad for child mental health and so people thinking psychologists know what they're talking about, stopped scary parenting and child mental health went into the toilet, where it remains today.

Speaker 1: 3:58

Anyway, at the close of that podcast of several weeks past, I promised to follow up with Scary Parenting, part 2, in the following week, but I didn't. I lied, I didn't mean to lie, it just happened. So, in any way, I didn't deliver on my promise. I became distracted by other things. That happens to me a lot. I have an idea and, by the way, I have ideas for all manner of things involving words. I'm a word smith, which is why you are listening to this fascinating podcast and when I have an idea, I tend to dive into and down that particular rabbit hole, whatever it is. And that's precisely what I did. My brain generated several new rabbit holes and they cried out to me and I couldn't resist diving into them and rambling around in them for a couple of weeks, but I'm back on track now. By the way, it's probably obvious to certain of you out there that I qualify for a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and that is correct. I fit the profile, but I like having attention deficit disorder and would never use it as an excuse. Add is the sand in my sandbox and I have fun playing in my sandbox Anyway.

Speaker 1: 5:28

So, without further delay, here is scary parenting, part two. The first question to be asked and answered is why should I stop trying to be a gentle parent and become instead a scuddy parent? The answer is you should become a scary parent for four reasons, the first of which and these are not in any particular order, but the first of which is children understand fear. They take advantage of parents who are struggling to be gentle parents because, to them, gentle parenting methods are a form of weakness which they exploit at every turn. So, because children understand fear, scary parenting methods work to bring about the behavior that all parents secretly want. And what is that behavior? Well, I'm glad you asked. It is in a word obedience. Parents want obedience. Obedience is the key to every other proper behavior. Furthermore, as research has demonstrated numerous times, obedient children are happy children. I've told you, folks, that very thing many times, but it bears repeating Obedient children are happy children. You have never known a disobedient child who acted like he was a happy camper. And so scary parenting methods, which I will explain in next week's podcast, bring about obedience. Therefore, scary parenting is good. It's good for parents, it's good for children, it's good for everyone.

Speaker 1: 7:50

The second reason you should become a scary parenting is because scary parenting, unlike gentle parenting, comes naturally. You don't have to read long boring books and long boring online articles to master scary parenting. There's a scary parent inside each and every one of us, just waiting to be liberated. Scary parenting comes naturally, whereas gentle parenting does not come naturally at all. If it was natural, then human beings would have been doing gentle parenting all along. But the fact is, gentle parenting has only been around since—around 1970. Since then, it's been called various things, including collaborative parenting and democratic parenting, both of which failed miserably. Gentle parenting is nothing more than putting snake oil in a new bottle and calling it miracle oil. Anyway, because it isn't natural, gentle parenting has to be forced.

Speaker 1: 9:14

Everyone—and I mean every single human being who is a gentle parenting practitioner—knows deep down that what I just said is the absolute, indubitable truth. They don't want to admit it, of course, most of them anyway, but they know. It's true. Gentle parenting must be forced. It must be forced because it's contrived, it's unnatural. Scary parenting, on the other hand, comes quite naturally. What I'm saying is you were born to be a scary parent. Embrace your God-given birthright, free yourself from the judgment of other moms. Break Freddie Mercury's advice and break free.

Speaker 1: 10:10

The third reason you should become a scary parent is because scary parents are in touch with common-sense realities concerning children. Gentle parenting advocates are not in touch with those realities. When you sign on to become a gentle parent, the common-sense module of your brain instantly shuts down. Gentle parents don't really understand children. They intellectualize them, they romanticize them, they idealize them, but they don't really understand them. For one thing, gentle parenting advocates and practitioners don't understand something as basic as why children misbehave. They think children misbehave because they don't know any better and therefore can be reasoned with Well, what a laugh. Young children don't accidentally misbehave. They misbehave because they want to misbehave. They get a kick out of it.

Speaker 1: 11:20

Children are not inclined by nature to do the right thing. They are inclined to do the wrong thing, to be rebellious, narcissistic, destructive, selfish and so on. I can prove that to you in less than a couple of minutes. I'll ask you a question Do you have to teach a child to be selfish? Do you have to teach a child to be selfish? No, you don't. Selfishness comes naturally to a child. Do you have to teach a child to be disobedient? No, disobedience comes naturally to a child. Do you have to teach a child to throw tantrums when he doesn't get his way? No, do you have to teach a child to be violent toward other people, including other children who don't give him what he wants? No, you don't. You have to teach a child exactly the opposite. You do not have to teach anti-social behavior to a child. This is a very important understanding, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to say it again you don't need to teach anti-social behavior to a child. You don't need to teach anti-social behavior to a child. You need to teach pro-social behavior. And because a child's natural disposition is toward anti-social behavior, you must force pro-social behavior before you can begin actually teaching it. You have to teach well first, force and then teach children to be generous, to obey, to display good manners, to display good emotional control.

Speaker 1: 13:35

Children are wonderful gifts from God, ladies and gentlemen, but God gives them to us in an untrained state. The infant is cute, adorable and all that, but the infant is also a sociopath waiting to happen. That is what the terrible twos is all about, by the way. It is all about the sociopath, the inner sociopath, bursting forth out of the child at around age 18 months and beginning to terrorize the world. Take a two-year-old who is throwing a hand from him because you won't give him what he wants. If, while he's in the throes of his manic episode, you pick him up to calm him down, he will begin attacking your face. If he was fully grown, we'd call him a homicidal maniac. We'd lock him up to prevent him from killing people Playing with his parents, then his siblings, then he'd go next to her, and so on and so forth.

Speaker 1: 14:45

Children are maniacs, folks Maniacs by nature. They come to us in an untrained state. They come to us ready to be next year's sociopaths. Preventing them from becoming sociopaths requires firm, insistent discipline of a sort not approved of by gentle parenting advocates. You may have noticed that when gentle parenting advocates say they believe in discipline which is what they say oh yeah, we believe in discipline what they mean by discipline is talking and reasoning. They think children are rational and therefore can be talked and reasoned into behaving properly, which is why gentle parenting really ought to be called dumb as a rock parenting, gentle parenting. People don't understand what makes children tick, and you must properly understand children and what makes them tick or you can begin to discipline them effectively. You can't reason with a young child. You can't sweet talk a sociopath into behaving properly. The young child is an emotional terrorist who understands one thing, and the one thing he understands is fear.

Speaker 1: 16:28

Now there are some of you out there in listener land who misunderstand what I'm saying. When I use words like scary and fear, I'm not talking about parents terrifying children by acting like maniacs themselves. I'm not talking about parents screaming at the top of their lungs or chasing their children through the house, snapping belts over their heads. That's crazy parenting. Scary parents are not crazy, they're not maniacs. Scary parents never, ever, lose their cool. They never scream, they never yell. They might raise their voices ever so slightly on occasion to emphasize a point, but that's about it, as I'll explain in a moment. Scary parents don't threaten, they don't get red in the face and launch into long lectures. Well, I said I'll explain it in a moment. I'll explain it next week.

Speaker 1: 17:34

That description Scary yelling, never screaming, never threatening, never getting red in the face, never launching into long, tedious lectures that description may sound pie in the sky, but, folks, when I was a child, that description was a description of the average parent In the 1950s and before parents were adults. They looked like adults and they acted like adults. Consider, back then children were afraid of adults who never lost their cool. That's what I mean by scary parenting. It's actually rather a paradoxical term, because scary parents are the epitome of aplomb. If you don't know the word aplomb, it's spelled A-P-L-O-M-B. Look it up. Okay.

Speaker 1: 18:42

So the fourth reason why you should become a scary parent beginning today is because scary parenting is fun Initially. Whenever you do your scary parenting thing, your child will hate it, but he will eventually begin to appreciate and it may take a few years, in fact, but he will eventually begin to appreciate the sense of humor behind it, the cheer-making his childhood. More interesting by far and more memorable by far and more enjoyable by far than the tyrant children of gentle parents can even imagine. They, those kids, the tyrant children of gentle parents, have no idea what they're missing. Okay, so I'm going to wrap this podcast right there.

Speaker 1: 19:40

Next week I'm going to continue this series on scary parenting by telling you exactly how to become a scary parenting. I've given you the reasons why you should become a scary, and next week I'm going to tell you how to actually do exactly that. Folks, I'm glad you've joined me today. My websites are at parentgurucom and johnrosmancom. I've got a sub-stack in addition to this weekly podcast, a weekly sub-stack. You can find it at substackcom. And thanks for listening. And remember keep on rockin' in the free world, folks, because if we don't rock it, we're in grave danger of losing it. See you next week, hopefully, anyway.