Tough parents are good for kids

Navarrette's Sunday column should really be on the front page. In a world where 30 percent of our youth have stolen from a store and 64 percent admit to cheating and 77 percent say that they are better than the people they know, I think we should be less worried about our children's happiness and more concerned with their character and ethics. They are responsible for their own happiness.

To continually try to make them happy robs them of the belief that they are intelligent and self-reliant enough to find their own happiness.

He cited psychologist Aaron Cooper as saying that parents who want to be best friends to their children and give in to all their whims can be destructive.

I can tell you from my experience with behavior disordered children that parents who lie for their children, who indulge their every whim to make them happy, need to understand that children really feel good about themselves when they have parameters, but are self reliant, are respectful to others, and most importantly are not rescued from every failure. Failures are what will give them the resilience they need to cope with future pressures. Parenting is the most difficult job I have ever had.

But, if we want our children to grow up to be successful, contributing members of our society we must hang tough.

Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

Susan Merle Hoerauf

Prospect Heights