It is helpful at times to reflect on when we were children and teenagers. Maybe one or two of you were the perfect little kid, but most of us were probably not. Most of us were not interested in helping with the dishes or mowing the yard, unless we were pushed to by our parents, threatened or other such things. In a sense, Buddhism does teach that all children are born with this kind of selfish attitude, me, me, and most people keep that selfish attitude their whole life - it is me, me, mine, I want, I am going to get, and so on... In a way, we are born into this realm with a selfish kind of attitude built into our Kamma or basic personality and it is very difficult to get out of it.
One of the biggest roles of a parent is to teach their children how to actually let go of selfishness. It's not easy. The kid has this in their character. And if you have ever been around little babies, what do they do when they want something? They have only one weapon - they cry their heads off. That is all they can do, they can't move their arms and legs much yet, but they can cry. That drives some parents crazy and then the little kid gets what it wants. So the kid learns that when their stomach hurts and they cry, they get fed. Or for example, when their bum hurts they cry and they get a new diaper/nappy. Or any other sort of thing, they learn this correlation, that they only have to cry and they get something.
If you have ever been around 2 year olds, in English we call it the "terrible 2s". When a kid is 3 years old they can communicate quite a bit and they become a little human, but when they are 2 years old they haven't reached that point yet. They are still very, very selfish and they have learned when they cry they get what they want, often. So the terrible 2s can be a terrible time period for the parents, they can "pull their hair and beat their breasts", etc.
So in dealing with this - there is a firmness, there is a compassionate intention that the parent needs to have, but the firmness is important. You don't want to give your kid everything that they want. You have to show them by example though, it is not good trying to teach the kid not to be selfish and then being selfish yourself.
At one time, we were invited to eat breakfast with some people that weren't really friends, they were just acquaintances, a husband and wife with a child of about 10 or 11 years old. When we arrived, they had already ordered and the first thing that came to the table was a bowl of fruit that was cut up. I was amazed when the husband grabbed the plate really quickly, took five or six pieces really quick, and then gave the plate to his wife and daughter. Huh, bad news, right? What is it going to teach the little kid, that if you are fast and grab the plate more quickly than everybody else then you can eat as much as you wish before giving the plate to others. That was very bad, very unfortunate. Even more unfortunate, is that this person was supposedly a meditator and actually a famous teacher.
A parent trying to help a child to let go of their selfishness has to show the child by example, and being firm with them and not always giving them what they want by giving in to the crying and yelling.
One classic example is trying to train a little baby how to sleep through the night. Initially they need feeding every three or four hours, so you try to get them on a schedule and then comes the big challenge of getting them to sleep through the whole night. The kid isn't used to this so it wants to get fed every four hours and cries when this does not happen. They are very upset when they have to miss a meal and then wait eight hours before getting fed.
Now most of you probably don't like missing a little meal so a little kid who is used to a regular schedule and the comfort of the mother through feeding, cries a lot because they doesn't understand why their need is no longer being met. And the parents can go through a little bit of hell listening to the kid cry. The kid cries, and the kid cries, and the kid cries and initially the parents can't handle it and they go and feed the kid but then they don't train them. Eventually the parents get the hang of it by being firm to help the kid and the kid gets trained and sleeps through the night. This firmness is in order to help. What we are talking about is the stronger face of compassion.
From these examples you can see that the kid and the teenager with selfish attitudes both benefited from the parents' firmness based in compassion. Now personally I am very happy I don't have teenage kids at present. The minimum age at Wat Kow Tahm is 20 years old. We currently have a young fellow in retreat, only 18. Here in Waldhaus we are accepting that and he has his birthday soon, which is nice. But we actually don't want to work with teenagers that much. This practice needs a fair bit of maturity.
But parents with young teenagers today need firmness to help counteract the negative influences of friends, TV, computers, drugs and music, as the whole thing is so negative and much of it opposite to what we are doing here. So if you have kids or you have friends who have kids and you have to babysit them once in a while or whatever, you want to be firm out of love for them, and you also have to show them by example.
Years ago I was a social worker, prior to being a Dhamma teacher, and I was working with a church and state organization, a combined group, working with alcohol and drug addictions in teenagers. We were supposed to help these kids with their problems. We went to a seminar in Sydney and they explained a whole lot of information on how to work with these teenagers. But one of the instructors of the seminar was actually more or less saying that what he was explaining was ridiculous. This guy was a professional, he had studied the whole works, a psychologist probably, knowing everything, and he was basically saying what they were teaching us was ridiculous. Because as long as the parents are going to drink alcohol and occasionally get drunk and show that that is fun, then how are you going to show the kids wanting the same fun, whether it is through alcohol or drugs. How do you stop it as long as the parents are doing it? He had seen for himself that it was kind of a losing battle. But what a difference it would make if you can show your kids a whole different way of living, if you can teach your kids how not to be selfish.
Some of our old students who have kids occasionally tell us what they are doing with their kids and it is very nice to see. It is hard work, it is extra hard work and the hardest part of it is when the kid is starting to go to school, bringing back the other conditioning into your house. As much as possible you have to keep showing your kids the better way of life. The better way of living. To have more control you have to share experiences with them, you have to spend a lot of time with them, it takes a lot of work.
Now on another side, the bit about kids who dislike helping in the household, can you actually make it fun for the kids to help? Can you actually make sure that they enjoy helping and understand that it can be a family get together as well? Funny thing is most people don't like to clean toilets. For some reason, I have no idea why, I didn't mind, it was part of what I did on a Saturday morning to help cleaning the house. Cleaning the toilets, sweeping, vacuuming under the beds and things like that. For some reason I didn't mind the toilets. Maybe that is because in past lives I was a Buddhist meditator, too, I don't know. But maybe my mother taught me the first time in a fun way, and there is a trick there, there is a big trick in making kids have fun when they work.