Day 7

Name: Angela Devecchi

Profession: Parent

Location: Belmont Day School auditorium, Dr. Richard Weissbourd visit

Question: Why did you come here tonight?

Answer: To satisfy my curiosity.

After a $2 subway ride, a $4.25 train ticket, and one mile uphill in the snow, I arrived at Belmont Day School just in time to hear Dr. Richard Weissbourd speak about parenting and morality in today’s achievement-hungry social climate. The Harvard professor’s book, The Parents We Mean to Be, hit the shelves last March and addresses topics such as social and emotional awareness skills, moral motivation, and managing destructive emotions in children.

Among the crowd of forty-something Belmont parents was Angela Devecchi, a parent of two students who was simply curious about the night’s events.

“It was an intriguing topic, and something I’d thought about. I was interested in it and I heard good things about the research and the book,” she said.

Among other lessons, keeping an open dialogue with children to understand why they make moral choices was something that was stressed throughout the lecture. Weissbourd reminded parents that why certain values are important should rule over the values themselves. Empty repetition and praise can leave youngsters feeling patronized by their parents and are generally ineffective tools in directing moral growth.

“A lot of it was confirming stuff that I’d been thinking of, and you know, has been sort of intuitive to me, and so it didn’t seem completely surprising to me. But it was very elegantly put,” Devecchi said.

The night ended with a discussion between the audience and speaker: Parents shared personal stories and presented hypothetical situations, while Weissbourd backed up their ideas with his research and findings. While he had plenty to say on these topics, Devecchi had one thought to add.

“I think primarily that kids are capable of much more sophisticated thinking than parents think. I think that kids really like to engage in these kinds of conversations about moral questions and about good versus bad, and talking about things that happened in the classroom with their friends,” she said. “It’s better to dialogue with them than to lecture them, because they tune it out. And so much can come out of that. So much. And it feels less satisfying, because it’s not as absolute, what’s right and what’s wrong. But it’s much more subtle and rewarding in the end.”