What is Not Seen in Parenting

I’ve been thinking a good deal about the concept of “what is seen” vs. “what is not seen” as presented in an essay on economy by Frederic Bastiat. Of particular interest to me in my current phase of life is parenting and this concept has organized in my mind some ideas that I have had about effective parenting. For one, I think that so often because of our natural inclinations we parent for “what is seen” as this gets the most satisfactory now reaction. By now reaction, I mean what our children do immediately in reaction to a disciplinary act.


For example, let’s say (following the example of the essay) that immediately after James Goodfellow’s son broke his window that our dear Mr. Goodfellow reacted to his anger and gave his son a sound paddling and sent him to bed or even just shouted and threatened. The now reaction he would most likely get would be a lot of tears and maybe some apologies. This might appease Mr. Goodfellow; he may even fool himself into believing that his son learned his lesson and wouldn’t be so careless in the future. “What is not seen” is that Goodfellow Jr. is going to make sure that his dad’s back is turned when he decides to kick the ball inside again or worse yet, he will lie when the broken window is found; even further than that, he may feel angry and try to break more windows on purpose! So, from that course of discipline you may have a humble now reaction but in the future what damage this decision (usually compounded with other similar disciplinary decisions) has done to Jr.’s character (lying, explosive temper or feelings of revenge and sneaky behaviors). Even from a totally selfish standpoint, Mr. Goodfellow only gained in the end, more of a headache!

Now, if Mr. Goodfellow thought about the possible repercussions of his little outburst (maybe gave himself a little time out), maybe planned better beforehand for such a scenario (taken into account the “what is not seen”), then he would be more likely to think of a consequence that would build his son’s future character rather than tear it down. He may even rejoice in this opportunity for his son to learn some important lessons now on his dime rather than learning much harder lessons in the future. Like BLANK said in Teaching Your Kids Self-government, “Home should be the safest place for making mistakes”.

So with “what is not seen” in mind, where do we go from there? That is pretty much up to the parents. There are so many parenting styles and techniques that sometimes it’s very easy to feel inundated with information. However, I think in any style we can try these three steps; 1) stop and get away if you can (pray) , you do not have to have a ready-made consequence for every behavior (This is totally impossible anyways, who knew your kids would crawl out on the roof in the middle of the night, in the rain!?), 2)think of different consequences and follow them through from “what is seen” to “what is not seen” and 3) dole out the consequences with love (keeping in mind mercy and consistency). What success we could have! Now, if we could just figure out how to control our now reactions- we would be on our way to parental greatness!