Singapore brats are a sign of the times

THE knives have been out ever since the Straits Times ran that report last week about a man who slapped an eight-year-old in a bookshop because the kid was noisy.

Horror stories have spewed forth from readers, about little emperors, young barbarians and pint-sized hooligans rampaging through trains, supermarkets, restaurants and shops. No place is safe from them.

Let me say upfront that I think the man who slapped the kid is a coward for hitting someone else's child and fleeing the scene, no matter how badly he might have been provoked.

But to many people who have spoken to the Straits Times or written to the Forum Page, he is a hero who deserves a medal because there are just too many badly-behaved horrors out there.

Parents have been thrashed soundly, too, for being indulgent soft-heads who have lost control of their monsters.

The children you see in public reflect a great deal about the kind of place we live in, the priorities set by working parents, and the state of many families today.

You are mistaken if you think children today know no control. Stop the next brat you see and ask him what his schedule is like, weekdays and weekends. Check his time-table for homework, tuition and the gamut of "enrichment" programmes from abacus to music, speech and drama, computer, swimming, tennis and so on.

Check the words many children read and spell, their clean penmanship and the arithmetic mastered before Primary 1, and you get an idea of the drilling that goes on in pre-school years -- we're talking ages three through six here.

Like it or not, the new parenting -- often in nuclear units where Mum and Dad both hold jobs and work long hours -- focuses on giving the kids a headstart in school, not life.

It is no excuse for raising brats, but something has to give and the brats you meet tell you that in some homes, it has.

To everyone who has muttered "Why, when I was young...", I say, childhood has changed immeasurably from what it was in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Our teachers did not hassle our parents from term one of Primary 1 to make sure we improved our grades because we were holding back the class with our low scores in the 80s. Our parents thought 80-something was good!

It is possible to raise children who are not brats, and many parents succeed. But it calls for enormous effort, and not everyone is willing to invest the time and trouble or make the sacrifices demanded.

I bet, too, that there are many mums and dads who won't know where to start.

One Saturday last year, I attended the launch of a parenting booklet written by two mothers who spoke to a junior college lecture theatre of parents.

You should have seen the mothers in the audience, and the stream of questions they had about raising their children right. Many were sure of one thing: they did not want to bring up their kids the way they had been raised themselves.

In many homes, the family rituals today's adults could take for granted in childhood have been abandoned.

The family meal, cooked by a family member, served and eaten at home, taught children to behave and leave a clean table.

Today's hawker centre meals are a great way to teach kids to leave a mess for the foreign worker to clean up. Many already know that from home, where the maid deals with every mess.

In our busyness, too many of us have tossed aside the ritual of having friends and relatives over regularly, or of visiting them in their homes, not in restaurants.

It has deprived children of early opportunities to practise mixing with adults other than their parents, to learn when to speak up or pipe down, and to differentiate between what adults find cute or offensive. In some homes, there is no bedtime ritual even. Anything goes, and that is why you see children at totally inappropriate late-night movies.

So why is anyone surprised that there are children who misbehave in public? This place has changed so much so quickly, even adults have trouble behaving properly in public.

Entire campaigns have not taught some adults how to react to a buffet spread, to wait when the lift door opens, or to say thank you to the stranger who holds the door open.

If there are some places where children should not be seen or heard, it is for the cinema operators, theatre companies, restaurant owners and shops to declare their premises off-limits to small people all the time or at specified times. Force parents to take it from there, and leave other customers in peace.

For the single and childless who have been most vehement about the need to draw and quarter every brat and his parents, my wish is that you, too, will experience the joy of parenthood some day. It will change you in ways you cannot imagine. I promise.

The writer is News Editor of The Straits Times.

Published in the Straits Times. April 22, 1998