Some children are just
born to be bad?;
It goes against the grain not just because it seems like such a grim and pessimistic judgment, but because it violates a prevailing social belief that people have a nearly limitless potential for change and self-improvement. After all, we are the culture of Baby Einstein, the video product that promised — and spectacularly failed — to make geniuses of all our infants.
Not everyone is going to turn out to be brilliant — any more than everyone will turn out nice and loving. And that is not necessarily because of parental failure or an impoverished environment. It is because everyday character traits, like all human behavior, have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment, let alone the best psychotherapists.
“The central pitch of any child psychiatrist now is that the illness is often in the child and that the family responses may aggravate the scene but not wholly create it,” said my colleague Dr. Theodore Shapiro, a child psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medical College. “The era of ‘there are no bad children, only bad parents’ is gone.”
I recall one patient who told me that she had given up trying to have a relationship with her 24-year-old daughter, whose relentless criticism she could no longer bear. “I still love and miss her,” she said sadly. “But I really don’t like her.”
For better or worse, parents have limited power to influence their children. That is why they should not be so fast to take all the blame — or credit — for everything that their children become.
Ms. Cyrus’s appeal among those age 13 to 17 has dropped, too, according to E-Poll Market Research, a brand and celebrity research firm. Of those surveyed online recently, only 24 percent said they liked or liked her a lot, compared with 45 percent in 2008. Those who track preteens are noticing the shift. Tina Wells, a market research executive who consults with Fortune 500 companies, said Ms. Cyrus ranked No. 7 in April on its list of celebrities considered cool by children 8 to 12 years old. Two years ago she was No. 1....
It is tricky for any teenage star to navigate the path to adulthood. (Britney Spears? Lindsay Lohan?) But Ms. Cyrus, it seems, is alienating her fans faster than she is gaining new ones. Partly to blame is last year’s pole dance at the Teen Choice Awards, and the recent video posted on TMZ of her giving a lap dance to a 44-year-old film director.
For some mothers of Ms. Cyrus’s fans, her wrenching transition from teen idol to sexual icon has become a teachable moment.
“I’m just impressed with kids picking up on the change and saying it’s not that interesting and they don’t relate,” said Megan Calhoun of Ross, Calif., the founder of TwitterMoms, a blog for mothers that has 26,000 members. Some have expressed dismay at the shift in Ms. Cyrus’s persona. “It’s almost as if these young stars don’t realize it is a turnoff,” Ms. Calhoun said.
Some parents chalk up her behavior to teenage angst. “It doesn’t surprise me what she is going through,” said Wendy Ellis, a mother of two from Odenton, Md. “The raging hormones. She is testing the limits of the box and what is appropriate.”
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Fans of Miley Cyrus Question Her New Path
Related:
Where morals and science collide
