Jake Piderman
Parenting Generation Y through Emotional Support and Supervision The time-out has lost its place in many American mothers’ holsters. The principle of punishing undesirable behavior with time-outs and rewarding positive actions with affection and small gifts is much more rewarding to the child’s character in the long run than them believing that they should have won the talent show before they even choose a talent to display. By leaving the current self-esteem model behind and using emotional disciplinary action more than object-oriented discipline a more genuinely capable and rightfully self-confident next generation can be formed. Despite the grandiose efforts of schools and parents, the self-esteem boosting efforts have proven to be a failure because they do not make for a more capable youth, but merely a narcissistic self entitled one. Many parents today try too hard to meet …show more content…
In Jean M. Twenge’s book Generation Me she acknowledges that as a result of countless schools considering it their mission to establish children’s self-esteem many schools have stopped posting honor rolls with the fear of making children feel bad (292). Meanwhile, blatant grade inflation and universal trophy distribution are making most children feel excessively above average, making this sense of superiority the new norm. Instead, competition should be promoted and children should experience the rewarding feeling of climbing their distinct figurative mountains. In order to foster genuine self-esteem children need to feel proud of themselves for accomplishing a rare goal. Twenge states “There is no need to shelter kids from the differences in abilities among people” (292) considering this is an inevitable truth that will shock them when they are older, they should rather learn to respect one another and appreciate the scopes of everyone’s