
When Richard and JoAnn Greenberg took their youngest child to college in late August they returned home to an empty nest for the first time since 1980.
During the ensuing 33 years since Aaron was born (followed by Ben in 1983, Coby in 1989 and Emily in 1995), Greenberg has learned much about parenting, enough to write a book, “Raising Children That Other People Like to be Around,” with the hopes of helping other parents through the complicated and difficult process of raising a respectable human being.
The subtitle of the book, “Five Common-Sense Musts From a Father’s Point of View,” gives a sampling of what’s to come in this pragmatic book. For example, Greenberg doesn’t understand how parents can let their kids run around in restaurants.
The five Musts he writes about can be remembered as SMART: Set an Example, Make the Rules, Apply the Rules, Respect Yourself and Teach in All Things.
Greenberg is not big on overly-permissive and helicopter parenting, and really dislikes “parents who ask permission from their children to do things,” believing there are times when parents should just make decisions and not give kids a choice. “Parents are too subservient to children. They need to understand that you’re the boss,” he told the Palisadian-Post.
He was in first grade at El Rodeo School in Beverly Hills when he met JoAnn. They first went steady in sixth grade, and the two reconnected years later at UCLA. They moved in together at age 20, got married at 24 and had their first son, Aaron, when they were 26. He and JoAnn have lived in their house near Marquez Elementary since 1979, and for 22 straight years there was a Greenberg child at the school.
The second-generation native Angeleno has spent a lot of time reflecting on his own childhood, trying to recreate things he liked and change things that didn’t work for him.
“My parents always criticized me–even in success,” he says. “My mother used to say to me, ‘You know Richard, you’re just the flower that never bloomed.’ She was telling me that until I was 40. I finally figured it out and said to her, ‘Maybe you weren’t using the right fertilizer.’”
He went to boarding school, partially to get away from his father’s constant criticism. His older sister Jan Levine, who also lives in the Palisades, is a retired judge, did well academically, while Greenberg was more creative, which his parents didn’t really know how to support.
“That criticism was couched in the terms of ‘We’re doing this to make you a better you.’ And it didn’t help me become a better me. It made me very critical and very analytical.” Also, it made him realize he was not going to be that kind of parent.
“This book isn’t about how to discipline your child, it’s about how to discipline yourself to be the kind of person you want your child to be,” Greenberg says.
“If you set an example of a kind person, and a courteous person, and a friendly person, chances are that’s who your kids are going to become.”
Long ago he realized his parenting abilities were not faultless, but he, along with JoAnn, a landscape designer, always strived to have harmony in the home. “You’re being monitored all the time. You have to be aware of that,” he says. He has always been proud that his kids behaved well inside and outside the family home.
Perfection isn’t in Greenberg’s vocabulary when it comes to child rearing. “Everybody makes mistakes with their kids. No matter what you do, no matter what a great parent you think you are, your kids are going to end up on the couch one day telling a shrink what you did wrong.
“In our day, if someone else disciplined your child, it was humiliating. If I got disciplined by someone else, my parents were mortified and embarrassed. Now if you discipline somebody’s child suddenly you’re the bad guy.”
He tells a story from his book about a little boy who was playing rough with a puppy at a party. While talking to other people, Greenberg kept an eye on the kid, and finally had enough when the kid picked the puppy up by the tail. “Put that puppy down,” he said forcefully to the child.
“His mom and dad come out to discipline me because they didn’t think I should be doing that. I said, ‘The puppy couldn’t tell him.’”
While he believes children should try new things, he is firm about commitments. If a kid wants to play baseball for the season, for example, Greenberg wants to make sure the kid follows through, noting that it’s not just about the one child’s needs but the needs of the entire team.
Though he gets angry, having come from a family that did the same, Greenberg has learned through the years to listen to JoAnn. Though the two always have presented a united front in regard to their children, she often offered him feedback on how he could have made his point in a better way.
“I’m much more tolerant now of certain things than I was earlier because I’ve seen what matters to me and what doesn’t matter to me,” Greenberg says. “At the end of the day I want a kid who is respectful, who treats other people nicely and who tells me the truth.” He didn’t want discord in his home over small matters like unmade beds or changing the color of one’s hair, realizing that one day the kids would care enough to clean their own rooms.
He has strived to be a patient, accepting parent, avoiding the constant criticism he endured as a child, but some rules have always been non-negotiable: “Be honest with me, always; Don’t talk back to me, I’ve got more experience than you do. Respect your environment. Be kind to your mother.”
Greenberg likens parenting to being in a cab. “When you get in a cab, the driver should know where they’re going,” he says. “Your kids are in your cab, and you’re the driver. You create an anxiety in them by not knowing what you’re doing. Even if you don’t know how to get to the airport, you can’t tell that to your kid.”
Another goal of the book is to give people the confidence to believe in their parenting abilities. “I want people to have self-confidence, believe in themselves and understand that they need to take control and teach their children how to be good citizens. I’m trying, one reader at a time, to take back the sense that we’re all responsible for each other, that we aren’t all such wonderful individuals, that it’s at the expense of our community. What we do affects the people around us, and what the people around us do should affect us.”
He has “naches” (Yiddish for joy) that his children are close, and constantly ask each other for advice. He and JoAnn taught them early on that they were a unit, and that out in public they always had to stick together.
His day job for 30 years has been in post-production, and he has taught the subject for 12 years at UCLA Extension. He also writes and produces on air-promotions. The self-confessed “nerd” loves working on computers.
He is clearly proud of the adults his children have become, noting that they are all liked by peers, bosses and coworkers. Not surprising for Crossroads alums, they all are in the arts.
“I’ve learned from my children, which is a huge evolution of being a parent. You don’t stop growing and they don’t stop growing.”
He plays the drum in the town’s OomPaPa Band, has run the Fourth of July race since the second year and performed in “The Music Man” at Kehillat Israel in 2011.
“Yeah, it’s taken me a long time to write the book because my kids have had to grow up enough to prove that the theory works.”
He hopes that people who read his book “can be as happy with their children as I am with mine.”
Now that all the kids have left the nest, it is a treat for all six Greenbergs to be home at the same time. “Any day we have all of them together is a great day,” he says. “Even now, when all four kids are with us in the house, it’s heaven.”
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