Why Raise Your Kids American?

Why Raise Your Kids American?

Everyone knows the old saying, Born Stupid and Learning Nothing Thereafter. As parents, do we want to learn nothing from our past and from the past of others? Isn’t it our responsibility to raise our children in the best manner possible? Don’t we want our children to be as successful as they possibly can be? The answer, of course, is yes. Children only ever experience their own childhood. It’s our duty to give them the best childhood we can.

Why an American childhood rather than French or British or Russian or Chinese or Swahili? The answer, of course, is that America is the most successful and influential country the world has ever known. If the Chinese surpass the Americans, perhaps in fifty or a hundred years you will be reading a book about how to raise your children Chinese. I can tell you that I won’t be the one writing it.

The Americans have the concept of World View, for which there is no German equivalent. There is an American Indian saying that you cannot understand another person without walking a mile in their moccasins. So, try on my moccasins, a pair I bought at an Indian store at an amusement park in California when I was just 19, size 10 American, though they still fit, and walk a mile, or 1609.344 meters. You may find the ground rough at first since there isn’t much padding on the sole, then more comfortable later as your feet become better adjusted to the American ground they will be walking on throughout the following chapters. When you take them off, you will have a better understanding of how to raise your children American.

Americans, in just a few hundred years took virgin wilderness, sparsely populated primeval forests and created the most advanced and successful country on earth, something that took us more than a thousand years. My children are now more inquisitive, more successful at school, better behaved, more dynamic, more athletic, more ambitious and even larger than they would have been if I had continued to raise them in Germany in the German style. Living in Germany, you may not have access to all the advantages and benefits you would have if you lived in America, but with a few simple changes to your parenting style, you too can raise your children to be, if not American, certainly more American.