Parenting is also a verb. It is an activity that if you choose to participate in you parent as long as you have the child. If your child has behavioral issues it is your fault and I also firmly believe that we are over-medicating a whole generation of children because of neglectful parents. If your child is five and you can not stop a behavior with a "look" you have a serious problem.
Parenting is also a skill that a lot of people have not acquired by the time they have children and do not think they need. They think their children will raise themselves or that they will just grow out of the questionable and unacceptable behavior. Behavior that might seem "cute" as a two year old is not so cute when the child is eight or twenty. Your child may be the center of your universe but he is not the center of mine. While punishment never works; consistent discipline taught at age-appropriate levels is a gift to your child. When your child is thirty it won't matter whether he learned to read at four or seven but it will certainly matter whether or not he learned to control his temper and use his feeling words at an age-appropriate time. Children without self- discipline struggle in all aspects of their lives.
Children need to know what is expected of them and what the consequences will be. They need to know you expect "restaurant-behavior" and "walking-feet" and "inside-voices" and if you do not get that behavior you will follow through with the consequences. You must calmly explain to them before an event and then calmly follow through. Two people throwing a tantrum is not helpful.
So if you have to leave a cart full of groceries and go home once or twice that is what you have to do. You might have to pull the car over and wait for the tantrum to be over. The later you start the rougher it will be, but you are doing it because it is what is best for your child.
We are not born with the knowledge of how to read, it is a skill we acquire. Why are we so hard on ourselves because we need help with parenting. Society has completely changed the way we lived over the past fifty years, we don't have the generations living together. We need to acquire our child development knowledge from different sources and hopefully our improved parenting skills will help our children be more successful people.
by Lisa Koski
Writing on the side of saying the child is to blame is not exactly correct. After raising three children of my own, helping with nine grandchildren and having worked in a daycare center, there is support on both sides of this issue.
Up to the age of accountability - that is the age at which a child learns right from wrong and has applied that knowledge to his/her life, then the responsibility of helping the child to behave properly lay on the shoulders of the parent. For most children that age is around 10 to 12 years of age. Why so young? Look at the age of the children we put on trial in our court systems. Certainly we are holding them accountable for their bad behavior, or the parent would be on trial. Up to the age of responsibility then the parent is accountable, and we show that by fines and penalties and even jail time if the child doesn't go to school.
If I tell my child to go to school and he grabs his backpack or books or whatever, does he know what I have just told him? Does he understand that he is to go to school? If the answer is 'Yes', then he is accountable for his behavior and the decisions he makes from that point on with regard to this issue. As soon as he understood that I meant "go to school", it is his responsibility to get there - unless you, of course, are his transportation.
If I tell my 2-year-old to shut the refrigerator and he walks away munching on something he has retrieved from the inside, has he disobeyed me? No, at this point he needs to learn what I mean when I say shut the door. So I walk him by the hand over to the refrigerator and as I say, "Shut the refrigerator door," I use his hand to shut it. Now he is learning, and once he shuts the door when I tell him to, it is at that time he is held accountable.
The main point is consistency in training and teaching. How can we hope to teach our children self reliance and responsibility if we aren't consistent? We want them to know, learn and understand right from wrong in every situation. And in order for them to catch on, we as parents must teach our children on a daily basis "walk the walk and talk the talk". It's not hard to see how our children can spew forth appalling language when some of the adults and parents I see and know speak as though they live in the gutter. Don't expect one lifestyle for yourself and one for your child. In order for a person of youth to make a conscience decision to break bad parenting habits, and it's very hard to do, they will grow up to be just like their parents and on down the line.
We must teach our kids to be good, decent, reliable, honest, and caring people. The ones who make the differences in the world because they are strong as a child and become even stronger adults.
by cyndihaltom52
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