Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As I have been thinking about responsibility, the PDS value for March, and the children’s amazing responses to my question “What is responsibility and what does it look like?” at the recent Beakos, I thought of The New Yorker cartoon from about 10 years ago by Roz Chast entitled “The Dream Remote.” Pictured was a remote control full of buttons related to many day-to-day responsibilities. Beyond buttons for “wake up,” “brush your teeth,” “take out the garbage,” “clean room,” and “do homework,” there were those related to some of the finer points we try to instill in our children – “write thank you note,” “stop picking on your brother or sister,” “pick that up,” “put that down,” and “leave that alone.”
Of course as we try to teach our children about responsibility, there are no such simple devices. A substitute simply does not exist for a parent’s consistent and steadfast efforts to model, teach, and ultimately instill responsibility. In fact, when we neglect this kind of critical teaching or try to find ways to make it easier for our children to learn and meet their responsibilities, we are short-changing them in the long run. It is only by providing age-appropriate opportunities for this kind of practice that we lower the risk of creating “responsibility-impaired” teens and adults (A decade or so later than the Chast cartoon, what does this February 16’s daily cartoon also from The New Yorker say when it shows a dejected Spiderman sitting at a bar with a man who says, “Listen kid – in the real world, great power comes with no responsibility whatsoever”?)
By the way, opportunities to learn responsibility should not be accompanied by the lure of a reward. We need to build on the intrinsic satisfaction our children feel as they meet their obligations and help themselves, their family, or others. After all, we don’t want our children to become dependent on a reward in order to do the right thing.
Though a simple push of a button on “the dream remote” is indeed tempting, there are no shortcuts to developing responsible, dependable, reliable offspring. Plus, we’d probably have trouble keeping track of the remote anyway.