TODAY’S WORRY
If you eat your dinner, you can have dessert. I’ll pay you $5 for every A you get on your report card. If you clean up your room, you can stay up late tonight. How many modern parents have uttered those words? When did we start rewarding normal, expected behavior? Why is there a treat for the child who doesn’t get up and run around a restaurant? What does this teach them? We have ended up with children who are brats and parents who can’t cope. We have a workforce of dissatisfied, or worse, underachieving employees. So, when our nephew, Andy, responded to all the accolades and gifts that were being showered on him upon his graduation from college, he looked a little abashed and said that he had only done what he expected of himself. Andy, you are a real mensch.