Everyone has an opinion on how best to raise children since most of us have children and all of were children at one time. I think that the two main schools of thought are strict disciplinarians and then there is the approach taken in the article below which has been described as bohemian parenting. I'll just say right now, I'm not a fan of either approach. I find that many conservatives are advocates of the strict disciplinarian approach while more liberal parents tend to take a hands-off approach to raising kids. Both are generalizations of course and I think many of us are in the middle somewhere. Liberal parents can end up raising very conservative adult children and conservative parents can end up with very liberal adult children. What do you think the best approach is to raising happy well-adjusted adult children? Mom Ditches Conventional Parenting By Letting Her Kids Skip School, Eat What They Want, And Pick Their Own Bedtimes Sep. 26, 2019 An unconventional mum whose children never go to school, choose what they eat and pick their own bedtimes swears by her bohemian parenting methods – insisting her brood are budding entrepreneurs who are caring and love learning. Finding mainstream education “controlling" when she was young, author and speaker Dayna Martin, 46, now advocates “unschooling" – where children learn only what they want to. So, rather than toiling in a classroom like their peers, her offspring Devin, 20, Tiffany, 18, Ivy, 14 and Orion, 11, wake up whenever they like before deciding how to fill their days, selecting what they are interested in learning https://www.comicsands.com/mum-lets...K&tse_id=INF_b5761460e13d11e9b433ab68d22425b2
Raising a child requires the right balance of discipline and free choice. There are rules, and there are choices that children deserve to make themselves.
I learned a valuable lesson about raising kids. See, I grew up quite poor. I had a single mom that worked two jobs and schooled all night trying to make something of herself. I had to provide all my own extracurricular activities at my own expense. My oldest boy and my daughter both grew up when I was living paycheck to paycheck. They didn't do without, but there wasn't much fluff stuff that I could provide them with. They have both grown to be fully self sufficient and absolutely adorable adults. Now my youngest son came along when I was starting to do a little better. I started having a bit of expendable income then. Conversely, I was at work much more than I was being a dad. I compensated by buying him things. As a result, I handicapped the boy in adulthood. He never learned how to be self sufficient. I'll never forgive myself for that. As far as being a disciplinarian, yes there is a time and place for that. I don't want my kids so fearful of me that they cannot tell me that they made a mistake. However just as in the real world, they do need to pay for their mistakes. I do not hover over my kids. I expect them to earn their own bumps and bruises. But dad will be there to help patch them back up. I have a liberal daughter, a moderate son and a son that couldn't care less either way.
A long time ago, I heard someone say that if a child knows that there is at least one person in the world that loves them, they have a far better chance of growing up healthy and happy. It sounds so simple but there are kids that grow up that do not have a person that loves them and in turn, they don't know how to love others. I remember in grade school being shown one of those class films, reel-to-reel of course, called Cipher in the Snow from Brigham Young University. Not entirely sure how they decided to show us this movie but it had a profound effect on many impressionable kids I'm sure, I was one of them. Here is a link to it in case you might also had seen it: The point of the movie was that this kid was raised without anyone to love him and one day he stepped of the school bus and just fell over and died. Talk about a tear jerker! I guess it was one of the first attempts to address the problem of bullying in schools even though it focused more on the family. My three boys were tall and capable of taking care of themselves while growing up. The two younger ones are 6'-6" and the oldest one isn't that much smaller. I can't imagine any of them ever bullying another kid for any reason. In fact, they protected some of their smaller friends. That is how they were raised. They are kind, loving, wonderful adults and I couldn't be more proud of them. Were my wife and I raised this way? Hell no. Our parents couldn't have sucked more. Racism, all kinds of abuse (psychological and physical), divorce, addiction, substance abuse, cheating,...Let's just say neither household was the ideal place to raise children. It was a lot to overcome. The point is that we have to do better by our kids than our parents did. And hopefully, they will do better by their kids than their parents did. All parents make mistakes. We make some of the same mistakes our parents made and we also make different mistakes. Hopefully they will for give us.
Funny thing in thinking about this thread. My wife was an orphan and did not grow up in any sort of family unit other than a housing unit full of other orphaned kids. I only wish I were half the father that she is a mother. All in all, I think the path we set forth for our kids comes from our own sense of right and wrong.
Coincidentally, my father was an orphan and grew up in a catholic orphanage from the age of 4. It was unbelievably cruel and roughly over half the kids died before they reached adulthood. There have been books written about this particular orphanage and horrors that took place there. My dad did not know how to love. For him, it was us or them. I guess that I had a pretty low bar to hurtle to be a better parent than my father.
Had an odd situation yesterday that had me thinking about this thread. When I was a boy, jumping on my bike and zooming off somewhere was a daily occurrence. Never once did I think about helmets, pads and the like. Well, I have a nine year old girl in the house now. Yesterday afternoon one of her little friends mother invited her to go biking in the park. She came over and as I thanked her, I loaded my baby girls bike in her Jeep..... Then there was an uncomfortable silence and I saw the concerned look on the young mothers face. I broke the silence and offered a little cash should they want to get drinks or something..... She said no, but where is her bike helmet? Then it occurred to me.... I was being negatively judged by the young mother.... Now my baby girl is ethnic and she has one one large mass of braided ethnic hair that we determined sometime ago that a bike helmet simply wouldn't accommodate. I offered that explanation and off they went..... But dang, I was left feeling like some careless dad or something..... I know we live in a different time and age than when I was coming up. But don't our kids learn from the bumps and bruises they collect on life's path? Am I really that terrible of a 21st century dad?
It's not that kids are in any more danger than they were in the past. It's not that kids today are any more clumsy than they were in the past. It's not that kids get hurt at a higher rates than they did in the past. It is just a precaution that we have developed like seat belts, better sports helmets and pads, car seats, and any number of safety devices we regularly use today that never used to exist. oddly enough, many of these devices are the result of insurance companies pushing laws that limit their own exposure to unnecessary financial risks. One of the good by-products of the insurance industry I guess.
I just had a glaring shock. I raised a daughter in the 1970’s. I was in the Army overseas then so my former wife did most of the rearing and I must have missed this. Now I am a sixty year old man raising a young daughter again. I just woke her for school and she is in her little nighty. My Lord..... She is nine years old and .... Well.... She is developed! Suddenly I am mortified. Dear heavens, not at NINE!! I do not even know how to approach this with my wife! I may not survive the teenage years..... I am sick to my stomach....
Never had daughters, just 3 sons. I did have 5 sisters so I feel that I've paid my dues in the hormone department. My niece is also 9 years old and puberty has set in. She is already a handful and I am scared to see what her parents will go through the next couple of years. I think that I will cut off visiting them until she goes off to college.
So I am all dressed up like I am preaching a sermon today. Why you ask? Because I am taking a nine year old to a father/daughter dance this afternoon. Now we are talking about a guy that has never danced a step (except maybe when I was lubricated and couldn't remember and that was a looooong time ago). I have the body rhythm of the white guys that all the comedians mock..... I do five & six figure deals daily in my office without fear. And here I am mortally terrified of dancing with my baby girl this afternoon and embarrassing her!
You will do just fine, Randy. I always get nervous about stuff like that too, but the main thing is that you're there with her. Everything will just fall in to place..........go with the flow.
The youngest of children have an amazing capacity for learning. They are like brand new computers, less software and data, and they are incredibly programmable. Just like water and electricity, it is human nature to take the path of least resistance. If young children are given what they want in exchange for little or even no effort at all, that becomes their expectation . . . the norm, in their minds. There is no more important time, than when children are very young, to stretch their attention spans and teach them that everyone gives up something to get something else, and should expect to do so. Sometimes what they give up is merely a bit of time, sometimes a little comfort, other times a favored activity. To "suffer" a reasonable sacrifice in the way of a couple of minutes of boredom, a temporary minor discomfort, or missing a TV show or video game in exchange for something else more rewarding can be a pivotal point the child, if only one can get them to that realization. Realizing the benefit of delayed gratification can be a life-altering moment for some. Once there, it becomes easier to repeat the lesson and reinforce the mindset. I can't stand the cop-out so often blurted by Spock adherents, that Johnny or Jane is only X years old. If they haven't already learned patience and a little acceptance by the time they go off to school where they learn more from friends than from family, the parents unwittingly become the problem. To delay the lessons of patience and sacrifice in favor of easily quieting your whining or, yes, even your screaming child, does a disservice to both of you. Do yourselves a favor, and make both of your lives easier, not harder. Don't be harsh with them, but don't be their buddies either.
