Posted on 10/15/2011 1:38:04 PM PDT by Kaslin
We may now have scores of sophisticated books written by highly esteemed PhDs and a well-tread, lollipops over Castor oil, time-outs over spankings parenting path, but our progressive march through human history has ultimately produced adults that are… well, still childish.
Worse, we’ve managed to add an extra decade to adolescence.
How could this happen? It’s one of the most confounding aspects of raising children: the sheer unpredictability of the endeavor. Success is far from guaranteed. After all, everyone can name someone that was raised by “bad” parents and turned into “good” adults and vice versa.
Nonetheless, with parenting (as in all of life) it’s the seemingly insignificant that makes the biggest impact on a child’s life. You don’t have to be a “bad,” unloving parent to really mess up your kids — just clueless will deliver sufficient damage.
4. Try to use reason as a parenting tool.
Mom cracked the bathroom door open just enough for her to see me, but not enough for me to see she was there. She’s always been sneaky like that.
I guess she could see me in the mirror, or something. Whatever — she caught me.
Every night she says the same thing, “Go brush your teeth, it’s time for bed. I’ll be in to check on you in a minute.” But she never does. She just keeps talking to Dad, or something — except tonight. She saw my secret.
Ok, so I hate brushing my teeth. So what? No big deal. I just wait for her to say, “Go brush your teeth.” Then I climb up on the sink, get my toothbrush, turn on the water, and get it real wet. That’s it.
Then you have to sit there for a little while, or she’ll think you didn’t brush them. Did you know I can make my tongue touch the bottom of my chin and the top of my nose? I can almost touch my eyeball. Someday I’ll make it — just like Johnny down the street.
That’s when mom slammed the door open. She really scared me. I almost fell off the sink. Mom said that if I don’t brush my teeth, they would all fall out one day.
Fine. Then I’ll never, ever have to brush them again.
Sufficient reasoning ability is rarely found in the under ten crowd. And yet how often do we attempt to use logic and reasoning as our primary parenting tool? This ultimately fails because a child’s rationale has two major flawed components.
First, all information gathered has one primary purpose in the mind of a child: “what’s in it for me?” The information gathered is not used to weigh pros and cons, but rather to answer the question “how does this new information best serve my needs?”
Second, it is by nature severely impaired. There is no wealth of experience to draw upon. The younger a child is, the deeper these two perspectives skew their ability to properly reason. A parent that allows a child to flex his reasoning muscles by negotiating a request or rule may feel like he is using his superior intellect in order to get the child to comply in a kinder fashion. However, reasoning with a child while attempting to gain his compliance rapidly deteriorates, and then morphs into little more than manipulation.
In the end, all this misguided parent does is teach his child to be a master at manipulation — by modeling it.
We parent by example — intentionally or unintentionally.
PFL
bump
whatever.
I do like the pic of the little girl in shiny wrap though. Funny.
Shouldn’t that include allowing them to occupy things? You know, port-o-potties, parks, cities, third world countries?
later
This is the best parenting article that I’ve ever read. Given what all the experts keep saying, I suspect that even a lot of FReepers can learn A LOT from this. It pretty well sums up what’s wrong with parenting in Western Society.
Parents were just as weenies 3000 years ago.
Proverbs 23:13
If it'll cause grief, either don't do it or be ready to handle it, but don't give in to it.
Number three can be overdone in both directions. Children should eat what the family eats - but they should also have the choice once they have tried something a couple of times. Of my three kids, only one likes cooked spinach. They all enjoy spinach raw, in salads, but the frozen cooked kind is strongly disfavored by the oldest two.
So, after they had tried it, we didn’t make them have it when it was made for me and the youngest. This only works with side dishes, IMO, however.
They all have meatloaf when we have meatloaf - even though it’s “not their favorite”. LOL
3 out of 4 things in that article are just plain stupid things that some parents do (especially #4). I’m on the fence about “reasoning.” I have a kid that will comply as long as he understands why something’s important.
Later
My parents allowed each child 2 things that they didn’t have to eat. You could pick any 2 things you wanted, but you had to eat everything else.
It worked very well.
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