Episode 11: Parenting

 I would like to start off by saying that my teacher takes his wife on a date I think every other weekend and he always tells us what he’s planning, and it is the most precious thing.

Anyway, this week's topic is parenting, and the first thing we talked about was the parents' response to a child's mistaken approach. We started talking about this by addressing a child's needs. Children need contact or a sense of belonging. They seek attention. The parent should acknowledge that the child needs contact and offer it freely. Pretty simple right? Well, when the child is young, it is pretty simple. When the child gets older it can get more complicated. Stats show that girls who don’t have a proper father figure, are much more likely to have sex about two years earlier because they seek that contact and don’t know how else to get it. Another thing that children need (because they are human) is power. We like to have control of our environment. I used to work at a daycare and one thing that I used to entertain all ages of children, was building a tower with them out of blocks and then I let them run and knock it down. They loved it. Something interesting though is when I would build my own tower or another child would build their own tower, they would find joy in knocking mine or the other child's tower down because they had control over someone else's environment. Why did they enjoy making another child upset?  More often than not, the child's mistaken approach is rebellion. A good way to handle this is to provide the child with choices and the consequences to each choice. This helps the child develop response ability. Parents love their children very much. I’ve heard many times that you don’t really know how much you can love someone until you hold your first child. Parents just want to save their child from any heartache, pain, or consequence. This can be very harmful to the child though. If we are always saving our children from difficult experiences they are presented with, what is going to happen when they move out? They won’t know how to respond to stressful situations. I don’t have any children, but I do have people in my life that I love very dearly, and for a lot of them I would save them from a difficult situation if I could because I love them. It’s a very natural response because we don’t like watching people be in pain. Another child’s mistaken approach is revenge. At what point in getting revenge do you win? The need that causes the child's approach is protection. Someone hurts you so you need to hurt them back, usually harder. A good parenting response to this is to teach assertiveness and forgiveness. When my teacher said assertiveness, I was confused because I had mistaken it for aggression. The definition of assertiveness is “a social skill that helps you communicate your opinions and needs clearly and respectfully”. Another child's mistaken approach is undue avoidance. Sometimes we need withdrawal. To help with this, we can teach our children how to take wise breaks. When something is presented in small doses it is much easier to handle sometimes. Being a kid is hard sometimes. A lot of things don’t make sense and it’s frustrating.

We also talked about when it's ok for natural consequences UNLESS it’s too dangerous, too far away, hurts others. Children make many mistakes. It’s important that as a parent you are willing to let them make those mistakes and also be forgiving with them.