Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture

Diane Sawyer introduced him to me last week via a television special, and I rushed to the computer to order his book. It’s wonderful: warm, honest, funny, candid, sad. Full of advice both sage and heartfelt. Practical, human, earnest, wry. Lovely in every way.

Perhaps my favorite musing of his was on the value of “earnest” over “hip.” Yay, someone voiced what I’ve always thought! I’ve never been hip, never been interested in being hip, never will be hip. What the hell’s the point? It’s an exterior value, not an interior one. But earnest, and telling the truth: ah, now those are qualities I can get behind. Those are qualities I revere. I have certainly been in trouble a million times for being earnest and truthful. Ever try speaking up to point out that the emperor has no clothes, when the politically correct thing is to admire his well-tailored suit? Not appreciated! In this demented world, which I believe is infected with the moral relativism of a rhetorically abusive psychotherapy, “hip” is preferred to straight on candor.

I strong-armed my middle daughter into watching the youtube lecture, because Randy says things that I’ve been trying to teach my kids forever. These are old fashioned values that have fallen out of favor with the advent of the psychotherapy-inspired philosophy that “everyone is wonderful and whatever you do is great and super.” 

For example, the importance of writing thank-you notes by hand. This middle daughter, who is a feisty, funny, sweet girl, good-hearted and full of both honey and horse radish, fought me ferociously over writing thank you notes for her myriad bat mitzvah gifts. A mother less tough and determined than me would have surrendered this battle early on, because my middle daughter screamed and yelled at me over every single note. It was so unfair that she had to write them! I was the meanest mother in the whole world! So-and-so’s bat mitzvah was a week before hers, and that other girl hadn’t even started her thank you notes! But I hung in there. My daughter wrote those thank-you’s. And she lost her computer privileges a bunch of times for mouthing off to me with unacceptable disrespect. She really has to stop swearing at me.

It’s not easy to be the kind of mother who will go toe-to-toe with a screaming 13 year old and insist that she do the right thing. Pausch writes, (page 168), “It’s been well-documented that there’s a growing sense of entitlement among young people today. I have certainly seen that in my classrooms.” But it’s not all the kids’ faults, and not all of society’s fault. The blame falls also on parents who won’t hang tough and insist on better manners, better behavior. On parents who won’t respect their kids enough to tell their kids the cold, bitter truth: that self-esteem is earned from the inside, not granted from the outside, and that it comes after hard work, self-discipline, perseverance, and painful failures that have to be rectified. See how unhip I am to believe this?

And this is one of the reasons why I don’t have a high opinion of current psychotherapy. My two older daughters both see therapists: their parents had a rotten divorce, and there is a serious difference in the values now espoused in the two homes. The therapists are both decent, well-meaning people. I like my older daughter’s therapist for her tact and ability to negotiate compromises. She’s good at it. And I like my middle daughter’s therapist for his intelligence and honesty. He’s really good at calming people down and cutting through the bs to get to the kernel of a situation.

But neither of these intelligent, well-meaning, competent people live with my kids. Neither of them is going to face the screaming battles, the 2:00 am phone calls, the emergency room visits, or the slobbiness in the home. Neither of them is going to be the one to drop everything and rescue, help, problem-solve for, or otherwise take care of my kids: that would be me. And they hear one-sided versions of events.

My middle daughter’s therapist took me to task for the way I discipline her. He’s worried that it’s too severe and will damage the relationship. One of my favorite methods of discipline is to have her write sentences. Eg, “I will not curse at my mother,” 1000 times, or “I will complete my assignments on time and if I lose an assignment, I will replace it immediately,” 100 times. I like this method because I don’t get aggravated, so she doesn’t get a charge out of my charge, and because I firmly believe that the words go from her hand and eyes into her brain.

“But she hates you when she’s writing them!” the therapist told me.

“Of course,” I said. This is the thing that so many parents don’t want to face and tolate: sometimes, if we’re doing our jobs as parents, our kids hate us. It just isn’t easy to teach kids to do the right thing, so that the kids don’t grow up to be entitled jerks.

In addition to hating me in spurts, my middle daughter also loves me. I let her off after 400 hand-written “I will not curse at my mother” sentences, because mercy is important, too. Though if she keeps yelling the ‘f’ word at me, I’ll hold her to 1000 times.

And she loved “The Last Lecture.” She came to me with her eyes damp and a wide smile on her pretty face, thanking me for having her watch it. “It was so great mom! It was all about living, and, oh, everything!” she enthused. Sometimes having an earnest, unhip mom who wants you to do the right thing isn’t all bad.