What’s with all these spoilt little brats everywhere? It’s time to cut back on the dog-trainers and start training our children instead.
Is there anything more depressing than being on a bus while having to bear the antics of an attention-starved seven-year-old all hopped up on soft drinks and junk food, fake-crying to his mother in a desperate attempt to be taken seriously, please, mom, please, mom, mom, mom, please? As if being 36 years-old and still having to ride the bus isn’t loserly enough, I have to mentally wrestle with a fat hyperactive human tub of high-fructose-corn-syrup-fueled evil that’s tangling up tighter and tighter into my nerves with every repeated tug at his mother’s shirt. Blow in a big fat bubble of Global Warming from North Africa and insert about two-dozen fellow passengers sweating out a steady diet of garlic/onions/tea, and we end up with an enormous bucket of What-the-fuck-am-I-doing-on-a-bus-in-July?
The children aren’t to blame of course (even though they should be made to feel like they are). Parents are the ones who bear the real onus of shame for the existence of so many Splats (an admittedly pathetic portmanteau of ‘spoilt’ ‘little’ and ‘brat’, which is even actually a redundancy, but it’s really hot and I can’t think so piss off). Why are parents responsible? Because once you decide to breed, your job doesn’t end with giving birth and then paying for and feeding your offspring; your job also requires that you train your children in the ways of civilised behaviour from as early an age as possible so they don’t annoy you, everyone around you, and – most importantly – me. Think of it as an unwritten law that will eventually benefit us all when we find that that Splat didn’t turn into just another Mama’s Boy.
So where do we Turks go wrong and how can we turn the Splat tide? The problem in Turkey is that, for many, having children is still considered a societal obligation rather than a matter of choice, and so once one has given birth to the children expected of them, they continue to think of children as an obligation, as something to be bought toys, given things when they cry, to be ignored when they start wanting more and more attention, and to be shut up with any old answer – or none at all – when they ask inquisitive questions. In other words, pedagogy rarely goes further than production and maintenance of progeny. A common phrase is ‘Çocuktur, yapar’, meaning ‘They’re children and children behave like that, so it’s normal that they run around screaming and breaking things’. Wrong. Children only act like that when they are not given the time and consideration to receive answers to their questions, thus showing that they are taken seriously as a person and not just treated as a child. They act like that because they are left starved of mental stimulation and instead given an overdose of affection, which, when unaccompanied by the former, has little character nutrition value other than creating a sense of emotional dependence in the child (often at the expense of genuine respect) which lasts well into adolescence and beyond.
This whole attitude leads to kids growing up with a lack of ethical sense, of rules of right and wrong which would give the child a sense of responsibility for one’s actions and consequences that result from those actions, thus bringing in a self-discipline mechanism which develops further the earlier it’s fostered and brings with it added social intelligence and awareness. But a child that has no sense of annoying people, no awareness of other peoples’ discomfort or infringement of their rights, who thinks screaming, shouting, breaking and begging for things is acceptable, grows up to be the same person who doesn’t mind cutting ahead of you in a queue, who nearly runs you over at a pedestrian crossing, doesn’t pay you your money on time, thinks the world revolves around him/her, and generally becomes the sort of person well-bred people hate.
So here’s the new rules for training kids: 1) listen to – and answer – their questions, 2) treat them like they’re adults (or at least ‘fellow people’ rather than just kids), 3) don’t allow them to drink or eat crap, 4) buy them toys when you want to, not when they want it, 5) let them get dirty, 6) laugh sympathetically when they hurt themselves and cry (no more of this ‘Ooo, my poor little Sultan!’ shit everywhere), 7) set certain regular times and limits for treats, TV, and video games, and stick to them, with some kind of a punishment/reward system to back it up, 8) get them used to fetching their own things around the house instead of asking for it from mommy, 9) train them to greet your adult friends and let them exchange words with them, even if it’s short and perfunctory, 10) if you’re a mother and can’t do all of the above, then you seriously need to find some other way to satisfy your own need for validation instead of fostering the emotional dependence of your child for the sake of your own unconscious egotistical gain; and if you’re a father who can’t contribute his equal share to achieving all of the above, then you’re a dick. If we could engrain these rules nationwide, we’d finally be rid of the Splat scourge. Now if only we had a decent education system.
