Wednesday, June 8, 2004

Seems to be tilting at wrong column

In response to Mr. Hoffman’s letter, he is correct. I am confused, but not in the way he meant. I’m confused by his perplexing letter.

I fail to see how providing information to parents is “misguided.” If providing information is misguided, then one might also suppose that he is misguided and confused because he notes that children might naturally disobey their parents, smoke, drink excessively, or slack on their homework.

I’m confused by his leap in logic that acknowledging something as “natural” is synonymous with “good” or failing to guide a child.

No place in my article did I ever say or even imply that what is “natural” is good or that we must accept it, an assertion he makes throughout his letter.

My reference to “natural” was in terms of normal development, just like the writer notes that children will naturally be disobedient.

Also, he mistakenly equates “natural” in terms of normal development and “natural” in terms of cultural expectations. I never referred to the latter.

Nowhere in my column did I imply that we should tell our children to “sow them wild oats either by yourself or with whomever comes along.” He states himself that “the desire to have sex is very strong amongst teens, as we all know.”

I appreciate him making the same argument I make in my column, but this appears to either defeat the point of his criticism or that he is arguing against himself.

I’m confused by his tangent on smoking. On what does he base the statement that the desire to smoke is “natural”? Just the opposite is true.

Smoking is very unnatural. It is the desire to be accepted or try new things that is natural, not smoking. Here he uses an errant statement of fact to validate something he calls hypocrisy.

He argues that one should back up one’s position on such issues with “firm assertions of right and wrong.” This is a moral argument, not a psychological one and I leave moral decisions to the reader.

However, I do not deny its importance as demonstrated by the summary statement in my article that said, “Good relationships between parent and child and open channels of communication enhances the probability that your children will maintain behaviors that are consistent with your family’s moral position.”

Mr. Hoffman points out that “the whole point of parenting is to teach children to curb natural desires and to do what is good.” One might wonder if it ever crossed his mind that this might be the very reason that I wrote a parenting column on this issue.

The logical conclusion is to assume that this critic has confused my column with some other thing he read somewhere since nowhere in my column is there any evidence of any of his assertions.

Gregory K. Moffatt, Ph.D.

Fayetteville, Ga.

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