Avram in MD: “Lilmod Ulelamaid, What an excellent post!”
Avram in MD, thanks so much for the compliment.
Yekke: That’s a pretty good summary of my points. Thank you! I would just correct the end of the last sentence: “they can’t take anything negative”. Since I did say that there is a time and place for “hakheh es shinav” even today, I obviously didn’t mean that no one can ever take anything negative, but that in general, most people can’t handle too much criticism.
“Is the only reason they are more fragile simply because we have changed the way we deal with our kids? Is it a direct consequence of our forgiving patient model of Chinuch?”
I don’t know. I think there is truth to Avram’s answer, but there may be other reasons as well, and what you write about may or may not be part of it.
But I’m also not sure how relevant it is. For one thing, once a kid is already older and already overly sensitive and fragile and can’t handle criticism, it is irrelevant if this was caused by a lack of firmness when he was younger.
On the other hand (and this is where there is some relevance to your point) it might be kidai for parents to be more firm when their kids are young so that they don’t get to that point (which perhaps was your point). I do think that (at least to some degree) parents should exercise more firmness when their kids are young and less firmness once their kids are adolescents and older. Often, parents do things the other way around, but I think that is backwards (although I’ve never been a parent, so I may be wrong).
Part of the problem though is that a parent can’t be strict unless he knows how to do it with love. And many people today don’t know how to do that. I have a friend who is super-nice and does not know how to discipline her kids. Once when one of her boys got in trouble in Yeshiva for being chutzpakid or something, she explained to the Rosh Yeshiva that it’s her fault because she is too lenient with her kids. He told her that he has seen both ways (parents who are too lenient and parents who are too strict) and the first way is better. L’maaseh, her kids seem to be turning out pretty good, so he is probably right.
There is another reason your point might not be as relevant as one would think (although it does have some relevance as stated above). That is that to some degree this may just be the reality of our generation. We are an emotionally fragile generation (and I am talking about the entire generation, not just Jews or Frum Jews). We are products of the world around us, and while we have to try not to be influenced by certain things, we also have to deal with the reality that we are products of time and places that we live in to a large extent. We have to take that reality and figure out what the Torah response is to that reality, but to a certain extent we have to accept that that is our reality.
In other words, even if the cause of our emotional weakness is the fact that parents are too lenient, that doesn’t necessarily mean that that is something that can be completely changed. The parents at this point are themselves too emotionally weak to know how to discipline. I guess what I’m saying is that: 1. There isn’t one simple reason for our emotionally weak state. It is based on many factors inclucing the galus, and the goyish influence, etc, etc. and 2. At this point, it is the reality of our generation, and I don’t think it can be changed. Every generation has its own identity and this is ours. I’m not sure how much the cause matters.
I didn’t respond to all your points yet, but this post is long enough. Feel free to summarize it for me. You seem to be pretty good at that!