Opinion
Why are teachers struggling? Because your children are awful
Jenna Price
Columnist and academicThere was a time in my life when the only badly behaved people I knew were all adults. They were utterly entitled and completely uncivilised. I can give you chapter and verse of shouting, harassment of all kinds, extreme bullying; and all done with a smile and “she’ll be right, mate”. These people saw themselves as the centre of the universe.
Then nearly six years ago, two academics – Sander Thomaes and Eddie Brummelman – foretold the future. “When we think of narcissists, we typically think of adults, whose personalities are rather crystallised – perhaps a charming but manipulative ex-partner, or a self-absorbed and authoritarian boss. We do not typically think of children, whose personalities are still in flux.”
We all want to stick up for our kids, but they are not always right. Credit: iStock
Here’s the killer from these two: “Narcissists do not just begin to love themselves at their 18th birthday; they typically develop narcissistic traits from childhood onward.”
Now the kids are behaving badly. They monster their primary teachers, they badger their high school teachers and, by the time they get to university, they argue the toss about every single grade, they whine about group work and they want extensions because they don’t wish to be inconvenienced (although, let me say, there are also those who get extensions for real reasons).
I’ll defend active parenting and standing up for your children when they can’t stand up for themselves – but there are limits. Here are mine. Your child should not be abusing a parent who comes in to help with reading groups. Your child does not need your advocacy to get them into the top sports team at school. And your child, kill me, does not need you to call their university tutor to argue a mark on an assignment.
It was a wonderful moment in my life when I was able to tell such a parent (I’m pretending here it was a single occasion; it wasn’t) that I couldn’t discuss her child’s university progress with her for privacy reasons. And, no, it made no difference (at least to me) that the mother was paying the university fees. I used the same answer when explaining to another mother that she needed to talk to her own child about whether he had actually submitted all his work. He hadn’t, no matter what he told his doting ma.
As Brummelman and co wrote in 2015 in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “We demonstrate that narcissism in children is cultivated by parental overvaluation.” They found narcissism levels are increasing among Western youth and contribute to aggression and violence. Yes, there is a direct line between the kind of parenting we do and the kind of children we rear.
Let’s be clear. We all want to stick up for our kids. We have our own ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong. And I’ve certainly been to see the class teacher and even the principal when things went badly wrong. I’ve been to meetings where my own (ever so slightly imperfect) children’s behaviour was called into question. I am no angel, neither was their father and I guess it’s genetic. But this constant indulging – even protectiveness – of entitled behaviour has to stop. Your child is not always right.
It’s not just rudeness or a lack of cooperation or even respect. It extends all the way to violence. We have record levels of assaults at schools and violence both within and outside school – and believe me, it is not only the behaviour of students with significant trauma in their lives for whom we must make both excuses and support mechanisms. We know now that private schools have their own – significant – issues around assault and violence.
The problem with these budding narcissists is that they grow into adults who for so long have managed their parents, they now know how to manipulate their bosses, with no thought for their colleagues. They are the centre of their own universe, always right and their bosses appear to reward this relentless narcissism.
Look, I doted on my children and genuinely believed – and still do – they are wonderful human beings. But you must have some rules and some boundaries about what’s acceptable behaviour and what’s not. Charles Darwin University academic and expert on narcissism Danushika Sivanathan tells me Australians are less narcissistic than, say, the people of the US, Sri Lanka and China, but we all sit along a spectrum of having a sense of entitlement.
The good news is our bad parenting is curable. Psychologist and author Michael Carr-Gregg says he’s been thinking a lot about what parents can do to prevent narcissistic behaviour in their children. Encourage empathy, appreciation, gratitude, to think about the needs and feelings of others and not just think about themselves.
He thinks it’s ridiculous that we imagine a boundaryless child is a happy one. He says we have to get in early unless we want to flood the ranks of the entitled and unbearable. Guide them through problem-solving. Teach them to take responsibility for their own actions. We all struggle with these to some extent because we think loving them is about unconditional support.
And, confession, here’s my own weakness: Carr-Gregg says we should model humility to our children. Now I’m done for.
Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and a regular Herald columnist.
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