A Mothers Day Soliloquoy
In search of the right questions
First of all I want to say thank you Dabysan for the gorgeous flowers. You are everything a mom could wish and more. I feel incredibly fortunate. And, since you turned out so well I'm going to throw my two cents in concerning my ideas about parenting.
One always hesitates to give parenting advice directly, to people with children, but one is often moved to. I'm hoping this generalized opinionating will inoculate me from giving specific opinions where they are not wanted.
1. Always remember that your kid his his/her own person, with a distinct temperament, destiny and set of preferences. Your job is to discover that person and, to the extent possible, enable it. That person will want different things for his/her life than you do for yours.
2. Kids learn little from the lessons you consciously try to instill, but they learn a whole lot from watching who you are and how you react to life. If you want kind, happy, independent, ethical kids, the most effective strategy is to model those virtues. "Do as I say, don't do as I do," is not a winning strategy.
3. Kids do not benefit from being the center of your life. You need a life of your own just like they need a life of their own.
4. Kids need increasing freedom to make mistakes and to learn from them. When they are teenagers and young adults, you will sometimes be asked to finance these mistakes. As long as they are not life-threatening choices, you should do so to the extent you are able. The fact that Dabysan is now a quite careful purchaser of cars I attribute to the string of disastrous choices he made in his early years. That he still doesn't own a motorcycle is possibly due to the fact that I consider that a life-threatening choice.
5. Kids need to see that you screw up occasionally and can admit it and learn from it. Transparency is a good thing and is closely related to #2. They will know when things are bad, and get scared if you try to hide it.
6. Kids can be quite informative on many topics from an early age. Make it a point to learn as much as possible from your kids. Not only will you be richer for the experience, they are more likely to be willing to learn something from you occasionally.
7. Kids need unstructured time. So do you. There just isn't enough of it these days, so you may have to put it on the schedule.
8. Kids need strict limits with regard to their impact on other people. Likewise they should expect to have their own space and rights protected. The concept of "rights" is an interesting concept to raise with children. I had the actual Bill of Rights tacked to Daby's door at some point.
9. You get about as much respect as you give.
10. Never, ever give up on them. They will go through difficult phases, but if you don't stick by them, who will?
Comments
Happy Mother's Day!