Let’s say you’re picking up your teenager at school. You’re doing him a favor; ordinarily he’d take the bus, but he asked and you liked the idea of having a bit of time together in the car. As you approach the building, smiling with anticipation, you see him stalk out. You stop smiling.
When he throws his backpack into the trunk and gets in the passenger seat, you can almost feel the waves of sullenness rolling off him. There’s no, “Hi, Mom,” or “Thanks for the ride.”
“What’s for dinner?” he says sulkily, his eyes directed straight ahead.
“Roasted chicken and vegetables,” you say, turning to look at him with mild incredulity. You hadn’t been prepared for such moodiness.
“Ugh, can’t you make anything else? It’s, like, chicken every night. I’m sick of it!”
What would you do, if one of your children spoke to you this way? If you are anything like me, you’d probably a) snap at him, and tell him he’s lucky to have anything to eat at all. You might scold him for b) rudeness or c) ingratitude, and point out that since you’ve taken the trouble to fetch him from school and cook supper the least he can do is speak civilly.
All these options ran through my friend’s head as she regarded her hostile, preoccupied son.
But to her own surprise, guided either by instinct or intuition, she found herself choosing, d) none of the above. She didn’t say a word. She engaged the transmission and pulled away. And she let his insolence hang in the air all the way home.
When they arrived, her son turned to her. His expression softened.
“I am so sorry, Mom,” he said, and he meant it. “I was just feeling mad about something at school. I didn’t mean to take it out on you. I love your cooking.”
When my friend reflected on this episode later, she realized that by not immediately reprimanding her boy for his bad mood (and worse tone of voice), she had unwittingly given him the space to reproach himself.
She had let him fail, in a manner of speaking. This can be highly constructive for children. If we never let them screw up, we rob them of the chance to develop the depth of character to take responsibility for what they’ve done — and to fix it.
Usually this comes up in a child’s academic life, with homework. Every parent who has ever nagged, hectored, threatened, bribed, or otherwise tried to get a child to complete his assignments on time has, at some point, heard the mantra: “You have to be prepared to let them fail.”
Could the same thing be true in children’s emotional lives? Not that they should get a pass on rudeness, but perhaps silence might sometimes be more productive than a rebuke. It’s an interesting theory. Now all I need, personally, is the depth of character to sit quietly while some punk insults my cooking. I sure don’t have it yet.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
