NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota
State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
June 11, 1998
Kim Bushaw, Parent Line Program Specialist
NDSU Extension Service
The "Andy Griffin Show" was a favorite of mine in the early years of my television watching. I loved the warm, small-town appeal, the low-key lifestyle, and Sheriff Andy. He was the voice of reason with a sound sense of how to run his tiny town. I could barely stand to watch Barney Fife however. He made the show what it was, of course, and since there were no really bad guys to shake things up, they needed a Barney. His frantic tirades made it clear why Andy wouldn't let him keep that single bullet in his gun.
Besides his flighty ways, Barney wanted everything done right now. He used one memorable phrase every time Andy's son, Opie, did something that Barney thought needed changing. It's a phrase that I still hear regularly from parents today.
It varied little but went something like this: "Nip it in the bud, Ang. It's the only way that boy is gonna learn."
Nipping a plant in the bud would stop that bud from becoming a full bloom. And of course it was Barney's hope that Andy could settle things down at home quickly and get back to the work at hand. Fix the problem and move on was Barney's philosophy—his magic single bullet.
Barney, a nervous little man who to my knowledge had no experience raising children or formal training in that area, wanted Andy to get right in there and show his son how wrong he was and make him pay dearly for his mistake, at times through tears and humiliation. Andy, on the other hand, was the detective. He wanted "to get to the bottom of this" and uncover all the evidence before he pointed a finger. I don't remember every episode nor do I have 150 channels to find a rerun: I simply remember the two distinct styles these characters portrayed.
Parents sometimes operate this way. One parent jumping to conclusions while the other sits back and waits for the child to return to the scene. At times the more easy going parent may even become more lenient in response to the other parent, who is trying harder to nip the mistaken behavior in the bud. At the same time, the other parent becomes even more quick to judge. Before parents find themselves at this place, it's time to talk.
A book written by Anita Meehan and Eileen Astor-Stetson from the University of Pennsylvania cites Diana Baumrind's research on different parenting styles and her look at "how well adolescents resisted peer pressure, how well adjusted they were and what delinquency problems they had faced." Meehan and Astor-Stetson say Baumrind found that adolescents faired best when "parents are emotionally warm to their children but have clear rules, limits and controls." That, of course, was Andy's approach to the situation.
Pruning out all of the temptations would keep a person busy, even exhausted, and perhaps too tired to see the good that is also taking place as children learn from their own natural consequences. When a 5-year-old tells another to play his way or go home, the host sometimes finds himself alone. What a good way to learn how far one can go with threatening a friend. Worrying that this child will grow up to be rude and lonely, Barney would probably ground him from his friends. Now the 5-year-old has learned to be angry at Barney, rather than to treat his friend better next time.
Nipping a situation in the bud would be to take care of the problem once and for all. There are few times when this could really happen because children learn by testing. Life and learning is an ongoing process and probably few of us could boast not making a mistake of some sort this month, or week or day or hour...
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Source: Kim Bushaw (701) 231-1070
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136