Lately, many people worry about the way humanity has taken. Perhaps it is because of the series of terrorist attacks around the world. Perhaps it is because of the tone of the presidential campaign. Maybe because many of us suffer from a severe lack of empathy because of the horrors people are causing each other at a frightening frequency.
Perhaps it is because of the data that tells us that today's students are much less empathic and more narcissistic than their predecessors.
We lack our humanity, whose traits determine the most positive aspects of our species. And these are characteristics like empathy, judgment of how one's behavior influences others, resolving conflicts without conflict, looking through the eyes of the other, and honesty. As David Brooks writes in The Way to the Character, it is very easy to lose the importance of these characteristics in our busy, distracted, stormy world, obsessed with achievements and social status.
And it is easy to forget that our children need us to give them these skills, model them, and give them many opportunities to practice them.
Are the ways in which we care, learn, discipline and communicate with our children - the next generation of human beings - that educates and shapes these skills? Many of the common parenting strategies - such as those involving parental consent - which many parents apply almost automatically - do not work in this direction.
Strategies such as punishments, counting to 3, blackpoints, earning and losing privileges are unilateral because they bring to the forefront the subjugation of parental directives and the reliance on force to achieve goals.
Is there another way? I advocate changing the way parents influence their children, from strength to cooperation. To give the child a voice for his personal affairs and to solve the problems that affect his life is actually a wonderful preparation for the real world - much better than blindly following the authority.