In the last few weeks I've had a lot of fun writing about the kids rehearsing and getting ready to perform Theatre Orangeville's Yule season's production - A Christmas Story.

During my initial conversations with director and Theatre Orangeville's Artistic Director, David Nairn, the message he gave me over and over was that discipline is a very important part of producing any theatrical event. Without being completely focused and involved in the moments of the action, no actor can hope to do his part. This rule applies, regardless of age.

So, no matter what their routine is elsewhere, when the children come into the theatre, there is no "or else"; there is just towing the line.

Mr. Nairn has assured me more than once that "the kids totally get it — and they love it." Sometimes, he has remarked, the parents are surprised at how well behaved their little darlings are, but that is because they have forgotten that it is perfectly okay to say "no" to one's off-spring and, frequently, "no" is the best thing for the young person.

I blame the 1950's. It was the first decade of the wide spread employment of "babysitters" — and television. Parenting in the middle classes went through a transition from which this most important of occupations has never recovered. Parents were able to hand their children over to someone else: a babysitter (usually an indifferent teenager who wanted little or nothing to do with the children, in an active way) on Friday or Saturday evenings and the television, in front of which they could plop their youngsters — no matter how young, too — to be mindlessly entertained while mother did the chores and cooked the dinner.

Gone were the days, when the children went to granny's house or other family so the parents could take an evening off.

Now, they were left to the unskilled attentions of a person, probably in her early teens, who had basically nothing to offer the children except to keep the household legal with her presence.

Gone were the days, when every child had a chore, was obliged to assist in the running of the house, making dinner, cleaning, tidying.

Maybe, in some ways, it was slower work to start with for the mother who had to deal with the questions and help small hands figure the work.

There were likely days when the youngsters objected to the obligations but if there was no "or else", those objections were soon quashed. In the long run, though, the responsibility and ownership of those chores added to the confidence and knowledge of the young persons and created individuals with an understanding of work early on.

It has been a slippery slope since the 50's though, with less and less participation in the home on the part of its young citizens. Families eat fewer meals together while the children take their dinners into their own rooms to commune not with the fellows in their families but with the fellows on the idiot boxes in their rooms.

More than ever, strangers or at least non-family are raising our children while the parents dump the majority of their responsibility of parenting in favour of outside jobs.

Because our attitudes toward the amount of time we need to spend with our kids have slipped, we are forever trying to compensate with giving. This started back in the '50's too. The idea that stuff, toys, things could make up for the time we do not share with our children is a lie that was born in the 50's. Sometimes, the children know the lie but sometimes, they just buy into it.

Stuff and indulgence. When there was the need for the kids to help Mom with the chores, the dinner, the babies; when there was, of a necessity, discipline, no one questioned it. The kids dug in and they did it and they were better off for it.

Now, there is day care, cleaning ladies, every kind of toy you can think of and working, distracted parents.

I had a long talk with Al Pace the other day about his North Canoe Adventures. He told me about taking teenagers up to Norman Wells, from where they set out on wilderness adventures.

He talked about discipline and the absolute necessity for it during those trips, when every traveller has to do his/her bit, all the work, the cooking, the digging on the campsites, the whole business.

"The kids get it," he told me. "And they really love it."

Hear the echo?

When my daughter used to bring her friends home, they understood the ground rules in our home right away. There were no free-for-alls in the house. We ate dinner together. Once in a while, I suggested to a young person on how to hold a knife and fork properly or how to set a table nicely. I encouraged them to come into the kitchen and give a hand with the dinner. Cleaning up after was a group effort.

They always wanted to come back.

If we don't set up fences for our children when they are young, how will they ever set them up for themselves later?