Raising a Child in Five Easy Lessons
Of course, I'm not serious about the message in the title. It takes hundreds of lessons more than that to raise a child into a responsible young adult. And lots of luck, millions of prayers, laughs, and hours of clenched teeth.
Actually, I can't tell any parent how to raise their children, because, as it happens, I'm only pretty good at raising one of my own. It goes without saying, that there's so much to be said.
Before I get any further, I should confess that I'm not a board certified pediatrician, or a clinical psychologist, or even a trained school psychologist/counselor. I could have been the latter with a few additional semester hours in graduate school psychology courses, though it's likely that that difference in my education would have made little difference in my ability to be a parent and to talk about parenting. However, I've studied psychology for a number of years, have been a classroom teacher, and a college level instructor of some psychology courses, including several in child development. And I've been a father for almost 19 years.
One other point I'd like to make is that it's probably a historical trend that parents are very likely to raise their children in much the same ways that their own parents raised them. Otherwise, where else would parents get their information about acting in such a role? It has only been in the past few decades that there was any kind of self-help book or guide for parents for caring for their children, and one of the earliest and most significant was that of Dr. Benjamin Spock, published some fifty years ago.
So, it's very likely that parents, before the days of Dr. Spock, learned most about raising children by following the examples of their parents before them, and of course by observing how other parents dealt with their respective kids. Thus it can be hypothesized that parents raised in a caring, loving home tried to act likewise for their children. And other parents, raised in unhealthy and more tumultuous settings did similarly for their children as well.
A maxim in human learning theory is that we learn from what we experience, for better or for worse.
Every day or so I participate in this one, other website's functions of trying to answer people's questions: questions about themselves, their children, their depression, anxiety, and all that. There are always questions from parents about how they need to have better control of their children. For example: "What can I do about my daughter's talking back to me?", or "Help, my six year-old son is out of control!!" Whatever the specific question, very many of them are about how to control, discipline their child. It seems as if many parents assume that a "good child" is a "controlled child". Or, that a child that "behaves" is what they want.
Latest Articles