Parenting skills have declined to a point that it is a national emergency--and parents don't even recognize it.

There is a crisis in America. Its effect is the deterioration of our youth. Its cause is a gradual and insidious 40-year decline in our ability to be effective parents. Its greatest impact has been on the middle class and well-to-do. It has been so insidious that most of us don't even recognize that it has happened.

What are the signs that this is the case? By simply observing (spending 30 minutes in a supermarket or family restaurant) and calling on those who remember a different time, the answers will appear. There was a time when neighbors were encouraged to help correct aberrant behavior in our children. Thus, raising our children was a community responsibility--when a neighbor would be thanked for calling a parent and sharing observations about our child's inappropriate behavior. When our child returned home, there would be appropriate punishment. Today, when our neighbors try to help, parents often feel offended and become defensive, i.e., they take it personally--"Don't tell me how to raise my children!"--rather than seeing it as an opportunity to act.

In public places, unruly children are often seen with parents, who seem clueless as to what to do about it. Frequently, one parent will act and the other will criticize and countermand the discipline. Parents do not make decent behavior from the children the expected norm because it is the right thing to do. Rather, they reward appropriate behavior--"If you're nice, I'll buy you some ice cream,"--and neglect to punish inappropriate behavior.

Readers may remember a time:

• When parents were in charge of their household;

• When denying a child some material possession or ticket to an event was seen as an opportunity to teach frugality and discrimination;

• When not having or doing what everybody else was having or doing was seen as a good thing;

• When a trip to the principal's office put fear and dread into the student, rather than into the principal;

• When a punishment at school was followed by a punishment at home, and the teacher was always right. (Educators tell us that it is rare when a parent thanks a school administrator for imposing discipline or punishment);

• When adults often referred to others as people of good "character," yet today a group of well-educated, intelligent adults are hard pressed to come up with one or two "good" character traits; and

• When a child would not dare to scream and shout at a parent with impunity.

The list can go on but each of us can make our own list by simply observing what goes on around us.

How did we get into such a state of affairs? Parents have been told that their children needed self-esteem to be happy and well-adjusted. So, parents began telling their children how wonderful and special they were. This approach has been generally discredited by many (See two of Nat Irvin's columns in the Winston-Salem Journal). Self-esteem, per se, is not a bad thing. Our method of building it, however, has gone astray. Rather than requiring children to do something that will justify a healthy sense of self-worth, parents (and grandparents who raised the parents) have showered children with so much unjustified praise and adulation ("You're special") that children often see themselves as entitled to have what they ought to be working for. Because parents see their children in this light, they often rescue them from experiencing the consequences of their own behavior, thereby denying them character-building experiences.

Increasing prosperity has added to the parents' challenge. When America was predominantly rural, children were required to contribute their fair share to the family. These experiences were part of growing up and learning responsibility for something outside ourselves. Urbanization and prosperity have slowly resulted in the fading of the memory of the importance of having to contribute to the family. Parents who remember the importance of these character-building and maturing responsibilities are often frustrated by the lack of opportunity for their children to have similar experiences. Many adults who had difficult beginnings in life extol the virtues of having to overcome obstacles and meet challenges. Indeed, they often proclaim that what they learned in those difficult moments made them who they are--and they wouldn't take anything for those experiences. Then, practically in the same breath, they say: "I don't want my children to have it as rough as I did." Perhaps we need to rethink this mindset. Just perhaps, what we need is to find ways to provide these character- and self-esteem-building experiences that prosperity has denied our children. In the past, the economic realities provided the incentive for developing our abilities to be competent and self-sufficient. This led to a proper sense of self-esteem based on accomplishment, which further led to a successful life. This process is no longer available to our children and we must find new ways of bringing it back.

The value of this process is revealed by visits to homes in less-developed countries where children show respect to their parents and elders, and where they see that the good things in life as something to be worked for, not something to which they are entitled.

Another cause of our current dilemma is that parents have lost the sense of what is appropriate behavior. They struggle with deciding when to discipline and when not to. Often parents will disagree with one another. They excuse inappropriate behavior by saying "That's the way children are." This results in decreased expectations and denial of what children are capable of. Consequently, parents shy away from creating an environment of structure and discipline in which intelligence and creativity can be nurtured, because they don't know how to do this.

The solutions to this crisis require parents to take responsibility for the present state of affairs and not to blame it on the media, our permissive culture, work and the multiplicity of other excuses. As parents we can change the present state of affairs by demonstrating and teaching to our children a proper sense of responsibility, self-discipline, and self-control--the traits of people of accomplishment everywhere; by demonstrating and teaching to our children a proper sense of respect--to others and to ourselves; by imparting through our example and words a set of values that support the successful family as the foundation of an effective society; by demonstrating our love by making the tough choices that challenge and test our children--even when it hurts us to do this--so they can grow and develop as responsible adults; by no longer rescuing our children, thereby preventing them from experiencing the consequences of their own behavior; by refraining from blaming others and outside circumstances for our ineffectiveness; and by acting as if parenting is the most awesome responsibility on the planet at this time.

We invite you to join in this discussion.