This is why White recommends that you approach the parents first. Raise your concerns with the parents if they’re there and ask them to deal with it,” she says.
Asked how to approach a parent in this situation, psychologist Meredith Fuller answers:”Explain your needs as well as stressing the importance of the friendship. Preface your remarks with something like: ’I know you’ll think I’m silly but in my house I don’t want…’”
When it comes to situations where you’re caring for another child, white is straightforward: “common sense must prevail. If things don’t go well, then have a chat.”
There’re a couple of new GREy areas. Physical punishment, once accepted from any adult, is no longer appropriate. “A new set of considerations has come to the fore as part of the debate about how we handle children.”
For Andrew Fuller, the child-centric nature of our society has affected everyone:” The rules are different now from when today’s parents were growing up,” he says, “Adults are scared of saying: ’don’t swear’, or asking a child to stand up on a bus. They’re worried that there will be conflict if they point these things out – either from older children, or their parents.”
He sees it as a loss of the sense of common public good and public courtesy (礼貌), and says that adults suffer form it as much as child.
Meredith Fuller aGREes: “A code of conduct is hard to create when you’re living in a world in which everyone is exhausted from overwork and lack of sleep, and a world in which nice people are perceived to finish last.”
“it’s about what I’m doing and what I need,” Andrew Fuller says. ”the days when a kid came home from school and said, “I got into trouble”. And dad said, ‘you probably deserved it’. Are over. Now the parents are charging up to the school to have a go at teachers.”
This jumping to our children’s defense is part of what fuels the “walking on eggshells” feel
