Child raising: The child is the exception – for good or ill

If a bad behavior is condoned in other children by their parents (“isn't that cute”) but not for their own children

• the child is likely to view the rule as unfair and adopt an everyone-for-themselves attitude.
• They also will tend to hide things from their parents

On the other had if bad behavior is viewed by the parent as ok for the youth but not for other children

• the child is likely to view themselves as exceptions to all rules.
• As I've commented elsewhere, if a youth worker is a parent of a child in the group, they have to be very careful not to apply rules more strictly on their child or to make their child exceptions. This is incredibly destructive to all parties.
• One reason I've always been hesitant to turn to a parent when a youth is “out of control” is that I can never be sure what the parental response will be: take the kind home and beat him/her, to blame me or someone else, or both, and, always, pull the youth out of the program.