We all love to stand on our own self made stages and pontificate - especially to children. "You will because I say so!" That works with little kids up to the age of about four. At four a child reaches a little age of reason, and can actually differentiate between a parent who is full of words and not a lot of actions, and a parent who means business because they have the actions to back them up. At this point, the child loses a certain respect for the adult in charge who is merely a "pontificater" yelling directions from an armchair.
Want to know why a child begins to forge out on his own to accomplish his life? Because as the child sees it, he's never going to get what he needs from the armchair parent. It's a wide and common point of view. "Mom and dad are too busy with their own life and their own recreation, so I'm going to take charge and do what I want."
Parents think it's natural for their words to be sacrosanct. Words are only sacrosanct if a parent can back it up. "Clean your room," yells the angry parent. The child looks at the parent in the armchair watching TV. The house is a mess, the kitchen piled with dishes, the laundry cascading over the side of the sofa. What is one clean room going to do for this chaos? muses the astute child.
"All you eat is junk," screams the parent to the child who is eating the last of the cookies and ice cream." Well, if you didn't buy it, the child couldn't eat it. And why did you buy it if not to eat?
"You're getting fat," denounces the parent to the child, and the child wonders what the last three nights of restaurant food was all about if mom or dad was really interested in the child's weight. The child also eyeballs the parent who is cascading out of a larger size.
It begins in very early childhood when parents make mistake after mistake with their child - right in front of the child - as if the child is brainless and won't see or know what is happening or why. In our life as models we have to review the picture we are creating for the learning child.
Look at religious models. Pomp and circumstance railing from the pulpit about the abuse of riches and the need to give to the poor; then they get back into their Cadillac and Lincoln or Mercedes and drive back to the five bedroom homes in the best part of town. It sure doesn't work for me.
When Mother Theresa brought people to her point of view, she moved quietly into a neighborhood and did good deeds quietly. She and her sisters went about like invisible soldiers making things right, feeding, nurturing, giving selflessly to the poor.
Like Mother Theresa, our job as parents should be just as quiet, just as soldier-like, and just as selfless.
When you tell a child to listen, do you really have something to say that is going to build him up, to make his life better? Or is what you have to say simply critical and negative. Do you scold without teaching? Do you nag without a plan? Do you demand without an arsenal of successful deeds in your own court?
Looking back on our own arsenal of deeds, what successes can we boast of that would be models that our children can use as stepping stones to success in their own lives? Was I faithful to the promises I made and to whom? Was I careful in matters that unified my family and made it stronger? What were my life goals, and how did my children see me working to make those goals come to life for the sake of my family?
Rearing children is letting the child - when the child is ready. It means pulling back on the care taking at the right time and letting the child begin to enter the world a little at a time until he has the ability to care for himself. He will rise and fall in his trials, and that's where good parenting comes in. If a parent gives a child a task, the parent can only expect that the child will succeed a little at a time...and this becomes a teachable moment.
And letting a child fall on their face is fine if the subject is minor like the failure of a new recipe or buying the wrong size dress. These are easily fixable and easily forgotten. But letting children be publicly rude, fail repeatedly in school, hang out with questionable friends is not teaching...it's letting the whole child go. It brings nothing but heartache for the child.
When parents miss the big steps with young children, they will also miss the big steps with the adolescent child. A child wants to drop out of school, drive the family car without a track record of responsible behavior, date a steady boy or girl friend who has questionable values and the parent just caves.
Just caving in is a learned experience that comes with allowing very young children to misbehave and laughing it off as "independence." Then it's on to letting young children do what they want. By the time a child is sixteen, the child is ready to fall so hard on his or her face that pick up takes years instead of minutes to recover from; that's neglect.
Rearing and teaching children is no easy or simple task. Ask anyone who has done it for more than six weeks. But when the years are counted, it always comes out as the best work any person will do who has children. It is the most important job anyone will do in their life time. And like Mother Theresa's quiet soldiers, it takes a constant falling and rising from the parent as well as the child to succeed. It begins with a positivism that says I can do this. And it continues with a do rather than say mentality.
2 comments:
This one just smacked me in the face! I have been scolding a lot lately for poor behavior, but not discussing with her. Thank you. I needed this one!
Good article. Unfortunately, many parents begin raising their children having had no real nurturing in their own upbringing. It's a do the best you can with the information and experience that you have at the moment. How do you explain the parent who seems to have done all the right things only to have her child resist and rebel, arriving at a lifestyle totally foreign to which he was raised?
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