“It hurts me more than you,” and “This is for your own good.” My mother used to say so years ago when I had to learn Latin, clean my room, stay home and do homework.

That was before we entered the permissive period in education in which we decided it was all right not to push our children to achieve their best in school. The schools and the educators made it easy on us. They taught that it was all right to be parents who take a let-alone policy (不干预政策), We stopped making our children do homework. We gave them computers, turned on the television, left the teaching to the teachers and went on vacation.

Now teachers, faced with children who have been developing at their own pace for the past 15 years, are realizing we've made a terrible mistake. One such teacher is Sharon Klompus who says of her students-“so passive”- and wonders what happened. Nothing was demanded of them, she believes. Televison, says Klompus, contributes to children's passivity. “We're talking about a generation kids who've never been hurt or hungry. They have learned somebody will always do it for them. Instead of saying 'go look it up', you tell them the answer. It takes greater energy to say 'no' to a kid.”

Yes, it does. It takes energy and it takes work. It's time for parents to end their vacation and come back to work. It's time to take the car away, to turn the TV off, to tell them it hurts you more than them but it's for their own good. It's time to start telling them “no” again.