FOREWORD

For thousands of years parents and teachers learned the art of raising children through grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, and neighbors who lived together under relatively stable circumstances for generations.

When changes became necessary, the value of sharing wisdom and experiences was instinctively understood by the pilgrims and pioneers who traveled together and settled communities with common values and community goals.

Suddenly, at the end of World War II there was a mass migration from small towns and farm communities into urban and suburban environments. An entire culture was dislocated due to the combined effects of the Industrial Revolution, the GI Bill, reaction to the Depression, and technology. The wisdom and support of extended family and longtime friends was lost. Soon after this dramatic shift to urban communities, nearly eleven million couples began giving birth to an average of 4.2 children each and became urban pioneers, crossing a frontier of lifestyle and technology without networks and support systems to offer an accumulation of wisdom to guide them.

Not knowing they were pioneers, these couples forgot the basic strategy that had enabled other pioneers to successfully colonize a new continent. They forgot that pioneers got together with strangers around the campfire to compare notes on the journey so that everyone didn’t have to perish learning the same lessons. Instead of following the wisdom of generations who relied on learning from one another, they became isolated.

Those who did not replace family and community support systems with networks of fellow travelers often covered feelings of inadequacy and lack of knowledge about what to do with a false sense of pride in “handling their own problems.” They adopted the belief that people shouldn’t discuss family business with strangers. It became important to them to hide their problems and handle them, often very ineffectively, behind closed doors. They traded in wisdom and principles acquired over centuries for books and theories untried and untested.

At the same time a national fantasy grew up that the only thing between Americans and a generation of perfect, super children was perfect, super parents. What a shock when many children did not turn out perfectly. The guilt, stress, and denial tore people apart. Parenting, which was once the cumulative work of generations, became a grim, part-time struggle for two or more relatives who did not have much experience in what they were trying to do.

Statistics show that the approximately 4.3 million children born in 1946 overpowered urban schools in 1951. They took the achievement tests in 1963 and reversed a three-hundred-year upward trend. In all areas of achievement, children had been improving up until this time. The children who were born after World War II started a downward trend in achievement and an upward trend in crime, teenage pregnancy, clinical depression, and suicide. Clearly, our understanding of and resources for raising and educating children was compromised by urbanization and technology.

In her book Positive Discipline , Jane Nelsen has gathered up the wisdom of many pioneers ahead of her and has created a warm campfire for parents and teachers who desire timeless principles that work, instead of theories that do not. In this book, Jane gives a very practical set of guidelines for parents and teachers who wish to help their children develop self-discipline, responsibility, and positive capabilities and attitudes.

I think enough of Jane’s book that it has been adopted as a text in our internationally recognized training program, Developing Capable People, which is used throughout North and Central America and Africa. The principles work and provide a wonderful basis for the enrichment of the family experience.

H. S TEPHEN G LENN
www.empoweringpeople.com
November 1985

Author’s Note: H. Stephen Glenn died in 2004. He is greatly missed, and it is a blessing that his Developing Capable People program continues to help thousands.