Parenting
Parenting
Parenting helps to learn the beauty of the surrounding world. Pointing out things around us to the kid soon starts to pay off with kid pointing out beautiful things. An ongoing, never ending process. Hopefully.
Helicopter Parents
Helicopter parent is an excellent description for an over protective parent. If a real helicopter constantly hovers above you, you will get uncomfortable. So will a child with a parent that hovers the entire time. The best gift you can give to a child is self confidence. A confident child will be an independent child.
Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist and educator became popular for his theory of Constructivism that proclaims children learn best by trial and error.
If a child is not allowed to explore and make mistakes, adequate learning cannot happen. A parent that does all the thinking for a child will produce an adult that will always need the approval of his or her “primary brain” (the parent) and won’t be able to make their own choices and decisions.
A small child cannot identify danger and therefore the parent needs to intervene in these situations.
There are, however many other choices that the child, even a small child, can be allowed to make. They can for example choose the clothes they want to wear, what to buy or how to spend their pocket money. It might take a few months of trial and error but after a while they will understand the concept of money. As a parent, and the more knowledgeable adult, you can make suggestions but never force your ideas onto the child.
It is not always easy, as a parent, to not intervene in every supposedly wrong decision they make. Remember that what might seem as the wrong decision to us, isn’t necessarily the wrong decision for the child. If a child spend all his pocket money on an expensive game and doesn’t have tuck shop money for the rest of the month, it’s not the end of the world. Don’t make the mistake of feeling sorry for this poor child that will have to do with a homemade lunch for the rest of the month.
It’s not a dangerous situation.
Have very definite rules for important matters. If for example a child choose not to study for a test, let him be, but make sure he knows what the consequences will be if the test is failed. Be vigilant with the consequences. The responsibility of enforcing rules stays that of the parent.
The biggest mistake a parent can make is to try and force a child in a direction he or she is not interested in. Every child has a own personality, with different talents, skills and abilities. Motivate and support your children in their choices. Help them to be the best they can be, with what they have. Expose children to many different opportunities and allow them to choose. Give guidance, relate your own life experiences and wrong choices to them, warn them against evils but never make their choices for them.
Let them learn by trial and error while you keep watch on the sideline to protect them from danger.
Parenting by iPad; Godsend or iBribery?
Parenting
By Jason D. O'Grady | November 7, 2011, 12:01am PST Summary: An AP article raises the issue of parenting in the app gee ration. iDevices have loads of educational potential for tikes but are they really being used to pacify children instead? …
Parenting question by push_pin_2000: Should parents be required to take a parenting class during the hospital stay when the baby is born?
What benefits whould this have? I am writing a Thesis on getting a program started through the government requiring parents to have a parenting lecture or class during their hospital stay. Any comments are appreciated. Thanks!
Parenting best answer:
Answer by Larry B
No. We need the government out of our lives.
I wanted to say thanks for making this photo available under a creative commons license, and to let you know that I used it here:
http://www.wisebread.com/treat-yourself-like-a-child-to-be-more-...
I’m glad you liked this picture. Thanks for the letting me know.
A great image! I’ve included it – with attribution to you per the Creative Commons stipulations – on our talk show’s web-page at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/news.newsmain?action=arti... KUER is an NPR affiliate in Salt Lake City, Utah.
kuer90.1,
thanks for the info. Glad you liked the image.
Dear Leonid
I also liked the image and will be using it in an online module of a course in law for social workers being developed by the University of East London. It will illustrate a session on Parental Responsibility.
Thanks.
Lindy Zubairy
http://www.uel.ac.uk/uelconnect/staff/lindy_zubairy.htm
Thanks! Am using this in an article on stepparenting on http://www.lovingyourchild.com
No. I’m not sure how it would be enforced, anyway. Not give a couple their child? That would be a bit ridiculous.
Parenting begins BEFORE they have the baby.
There is too much going on (recuperating, realizing you now have to care for someone 24/7 for the next 18 years and beyond), setting up home and schedule, etc., to try to learn anything else.
maybe teenage pregnancys, but not anyone older
There might be a benefit to such a class before the birth, but right after the baby is born, a class is the last thing they’ll have time or attention for. (And even if they sat through it, they’re not in a frame of mind in which they’d retain any of the information.)
However, just because something “might” be of “benefit” is not adequate rationale for making it a federal requirement.
We have enough government decision making. There are many parenting classes available in my area and persons who attend willingly are more likely to learn.
Forcing parents to take a class is wrong on so many levels. First of all, in time, what they are teaching could easily be found to be incorrect. Remember when Bottle feeding used to be far better then breast feeding? What happens when these forced classes give misinformation? Who’s going to held responsible if this information that results in harm to a child?
What do you recommend happen to a parent that doesn’t take the class? Prison? Fines? How are you going to pay for the bureaucrats that administer and check on who has and hasn’t taken the test? Are you suggesting that the parents pay for it? because having a child is costly enough without tacking on this kind of unnecessary system. How many classes are enough for you? Are you going to force parents to take time off work? Are you going to compensate them for missed hours?
What problem are you hoping to solve my forcing parents to take this class? When people start looking for answers to problems that don’t exist they’re asking for trouble.
Humanity has survived how many thousand years without mandated baby classes, I think we’ll manage without them for a while longer.
Because we want insurance premiums to go up so that the mother of six can get her sixth parenting class? You certainly can’t mandate and then allow insurers to not pay for it. What about the person who decides to use a midwife instead, maybe because they don’t want to take the class for some reason. There won’t be many, but those who would do it for that reason (possibly endangering the baby) are going to be the worst parents. Can you mandate that the new mother not sleep through the class? Will there be a test following, with babies taken from the mothers who don’t make the cut? What about fathers? They aren’t patients, so you can’t very well force them. The mere action of mandating a class versus making someone pay for it, would reduce the value of the class in many people’s eyes, causing them to take it less seriously.