The lessons of consequences

March provided some interesting stories in the media on the parenting front and, surprisingly, international celebrities seem to do better than us ordinary folk.

We had the two young rowers who rode the luggage carousel into a high security area at the airport after signing a good behaviour contract co-signed by their parents.

I note that the parents pulled out of continuing the legal action against the school once their sons had finished competing and returned home. Mission accomplished.

Sense of entitlement fulfilled.

I wonder what lesson about consequences the boys learnt from this?

I also noted more than one comment along the lines of the boys being punished enough by having parents such as theirs.

Interesting that Rod Stewart's son was reported as being arrested for doing the same thing.

The closest that his father came to rescuing him was to put up bail.

Presumably he'll now allow the law to take its course.

That's a lesson about consequences without a sense of entitlement.

We read that the mother of a talented young Kiwi teenager who tragically died of cancer wants access to his stored sperm because, she is reported as saying, she is entitled to have grandchildren.

Entitled to have a reasonable quality of life.

Entitled to warmth, food and shelter, but entitled to have a child?

As adults we can be blessed or privileged maybe to have a child, but not entitled.

Sad consequence.

When David Beckham's young son felt entitled to own a pair of brand-name sneakers his father helped him find a job so that he could earn the money to purchase them.

Earn the cash, you get new sneakers of your choice.

Then we have another New Zealand mother saddened that her son had died as the result of an assault in prison.

She was reported as describing the attack, among other things, as a cowardly action on a lovely young man.

I'm sure she is grief-stricken, any parent would be.

But her son had been convicted of three serious assaults himself, one regarded as a cowardly attack on an elderly man.

Moreover, both he and his father had also previously faced a joint murder and manslaughter charge.

I guess he had felt entitled to dish out a beating or two without consequence.

Consequences.

Entitlements.

We all want things and we all do silly things and life throws all sorts of things at us.

And they all have consequences, even if some seem unfair at the time.

Lessons about good and bad consequences need to begin very early in life.

And I'm not talking thrashings as advocated in the book controversially held by the Auckland Public Library.

Just age-appropriate, natural consequences.

- Ian Munro 

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