How Good Children Go Bad.

First bell of the day rings and David strolls into his fourth grade classroom. Today, he is not in one of his better moods, but rather one of his "I'll do what I want, when I want moods". He sits at his desk and knocks on it with his pencil while he talks to his neighbors, and rustles through his bag. Ms. Davis gives him warning after warning that he needs to pay attention and to stop bothering the class. On the third warning, David decides he has had enough with his teacher's bothering him, goes to the back of the classroom and climbs under the table. After repeated verbal attempts to get David out from under the desk, Ms. Davis tells him to go to the office. David finally pushes the table, gets up, and storms out of class while yelling profanities at Ms. Davis. David and many children of today lack the respect that was instilled in children when I was growing up.

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Examples like this, and others like them, reveal that many of today's kids do not grasp the bottom-line fact that adults and children are not on the same plane, and that adults must regularly make non-negotiable decisions that kids have to live with. One reason kids have trouble with this concept is that parents today feel a burning need to be liked by their children. Relationships with our own parents have been defined by a certain formality or distance, and we hope to forge a stronger, warmer connection with our kids. Moreover, because many of us do not get to spend as much time with our children as we would like (and we often feel guilty about it), we try to compensate by being friends with them. Unfortunately, being a friend rather than an...