So I might have mentioned a few times that my roommates and I might have a slight problem with watching too much Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. I may or may not be watching SUV right now as I am writing this blog…. Don’t judge us, we’re college students coming up on finals. It’s better than reaching the breaking point and throwing candy at each other for a solid 5 minutes. Not that we’ve done that or anything. Not at all...
Anyway, if you haven’t heard of or seen SVU before, it’s a show set in New York where the detectives solve crimes mostly of a sexual nature, rapes and such, with its fair share of dead bodies. Why am I bringing up this show? Partly because I’m out of ideas of how to start this blog and partly because of how we react to some of these episodes. We will start to yell at the t.v because of how stupid someone is being or because of the stupid choice they have made, or even something really stupid they’ve said. (We probably yell at the t.v on average 2-3 times a episode.) And sometimes as we yell at the t.v (no greater way to strengthen those roommate bonds) I can’t help but think that if they had a better parents, parents who aren't afraid to put their foot down or even be there in their kids lives, they wouldn’t be in that situation. Now I’m not dissing all parents, far from it. But I think we can all agree that if some people had better parents, they would become better people.
Which is why for this blog post we’re going to talk about parenting.
Parenting is so much more than just keeping kids away from sharp objects and yelling at them to do their chores. The purpose of parenting is to protect and prepare kids to survive and thrive in the world they live in. To protect and prepare. To survive and thrive. We can’t just do one and not the other. We can’t just protect our kids from all the evils of the world and expect them to be ready to be on their own. How will they know how to protect themselves? We can’t just teach our kids to survive in the world because then they will never thrive in the world they live in. If we don’t protect and prepare our kids to survive and thrive in the world they live in. We already knew that parenting isn’t easy and it takes a lot of courage, but if we can begin to parent our children so they they will survive and thrive in the world by protecting and preparing, think of how much better the world would become. How many more problems would be solved.
How do we do this? I know it sure sounds and looks nice on paper, but can we really do this?
Parenting has has a lot to do with teaching your kids. Yeah, I know it’s a no brainer but it’s more that just teaching them how to talk and walk and not run into the street. And it is so much more than just cracking the whip (metaphorically) when they do something wrong. It’s allowing them to have natural and logical consequences when they do something wrong. This is the best way I believe to create responsible adults because it allows them to really learn from their mistakes.
That’s why they call it response-ability.
First, natural consequences. Natural consequences are are outcomes that happen as a result of behavior that are not planned or controlled. They happen automatically. Like if you leave your bike out in the rain, the natural consequence would be that the bike will get rusted. Or if you put your hand on a burner that's turned on, the natural consequence would be that you’ll get burned. (My roommate has quite a few stories with that one, the sad thing is that she was an adult when she did it...) But while natural consequences are a great way for kids to learn, there are times that you need to step in for the consequences. Don’t do if, one, it’s too dangerous. If your child could get hurt, you need to step in if at all possible. You might not always make it in time; your too far away before you realize what’s going to happen or if they do it behind your back. Second, going along with the first, don’t do if someone else will be affected.
Next are logical consequences. These logical consequences are consequence that are discussed ahead of time and are logically connected to the bad behavior. This is not the same thing as a punishment or reward. In order for it to be a logical consequence you have to discuss the bad behavior with your child and the consequence has to be correlated with the behavior.
Now you don’t need to use a cannon when a fly swatter would work, meaning you don’t want to just scream at them to stop or you’ll blah blah blah. Make a polite request for them to stop. If they continue, send an “I” message. (See two posts previous to this one.) After that if they continue to do that behavior, make a firmer statement. Not yelling, but state that if it doesn’t change that there will be consequences. Then talk with them about what some consequences could be if they continue with that behavior. But in order for it to be a logical consequence, the consequence has to be correlated with the bad behavior. If they play video games instead of doing their homework, a logical consequence would be that you take the video games away. That is a logical consequence because it has a direct correlation to the bad behavior. The big thing is to remember to talk with them ahead of time, and to have the consequence be related to the bad behavior.
Will doing these things help you to create a perfect child? No. No it will not. Will it help to create more responsible kids? It depends on the kid. “Well if it won’t do that why should I do it? I want to know how to get my child to do exactly what I want!” Well there was a divine being who also wanted that…. (It was Satan).
Look, being a parent isn’t easy. Somedays you just want to pack them in a box and give them to someone else. I took a parenting class in high school and while I loved the class, we had to take home the fake baby for a few days and to be honest was the whole reason to take the class. I was a senior and a room full of freshman and a few sophomores, and I had taken the two child development classes before hand and was currently taking a college level child development class. I was ready for the baby! Bring it on! I’m a full fledged babysitter who deals with crying babies all the time and have so many classes under my belt that this is going to be a breeze. Wrong, I hated that baby sooooooooo much! Honestly the baby could have been worse but it was nothing like a real baby and I had to pull over while driving because it was freaking hungry or had a diaper that needed to be changed and if I didn’t do it it would count as a miss and while I only missed it a few times and it didn’t affect my grade, I was wanted perfection and didn’t want to have any misses at all.
Why tell you this story? One because it’s funny. Two, because I really hated that fake baby and wanted to rant about it for a bit. (It really wasn’t that bad but it was nothing like caring for a real baby.) Third, it shows that if caring for a fake baby is hard and frustrating, a real child is 10 times more emotionally exhausting and it only increases as the child grow up.
But if we become purposeful parents, doing our best to protect and prepare children to survive and thrive in the world they live in, we’re doing something right even if it feels like we're getting everything else wrong.
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