Yes! Some children are paragons of flexibility from the start. But for most, predictability makes everything so much easier for all involved! I’ve read (in magazines, books, etc) that this gives at least the illusion that the child has some control, some level of predictability to his (or her) day. Makes sense to me, and certainly made parenting a whole hell of a lot easier!
What a number of the most recent posts in this thread point out to me is this: each baby is an individual, right from the start. My husband, who never had exposure to children before he was thrust into it by fatherhood, had this strange idea that all kids are basically moldable lumps of clay until about age nine. I tried to tell him that babies come with personalities. He didn’t really believe it. Then, when we had our second kid (four years after our first) and she was so different from our first, he began to understand. Eight years later we had our third (and final) child, and she was totally different from either of her sisters. Now he’s convinced!
[Toby Ziegler]“Babies come with hats! I never knew they came with hats”[/TZ]
I think acknowledging to your kids that you make mistakes is good in another way, too: it makes it easier for your kids to talk to you about it when they make mistakes (as they, being human, inevitably will). It’s very hard to go to parents who seemingly never do anything wrong and admit that you’ve done something wrong.
Another mistake I make but not so much for my daughter’s well being but my own is that anytime she sleeps in I get freaked out. Today she slept til like 9:30 and I got really freaked out that something was wrong. I could have just relaxed but instead I got all worried about it.
This reminded me of something else. Before our son was born, my husband was determined that neither of us would get upset in front of him. That was a pretty tall order since I’m a cryer - I get mad, I cry. Sad? Waterworks. Of course, you don’t want to go into uncontrolled hysterics in front of your kid, but expressing emotion can help kids understand that everyone gets upset sometimes and expressing that is not a bad thing. Same for disagreements - as long as you’re not having a knock-down drag-out fight, having your kid see you disagree with each other can be positive provided you’re arguing in a productive manner.
Another thing a childhood educator once said to me was that she really feels like it’s a huge mistake to teach kids that they have to be happy all the time or to entertain them all the time, particularly with electronics. She commented that the former made them feel even worse when they weren’t happy because they thought something was wrong with them. The latter made it virtually impossible for them to spend any amount of quiet time alone or to find ways to entertain themselves.
Heh. This works with cats and dogs, too; feeding time, walk time, waking up and doing something interesting time, etc. No matter how much they start to cry and carry on about how they are FREAKING STARVING HERE, WASTING AWAY I TELL YOU, SOMEBODY CALL THE ASPCA, PET ABUSE IN PROGRESS!!!11! dinnertime is simply always at 6:30 pm. Because if it’s moved up to 6:25 today, the carrying on will start earlier tomorrow.
I’m another one of those childless folks who loves reading parenting threads. The only thing I can think of that hasn’t been said already is from a conversation I overheard at a cafe years ago. The people at the next table were discussing parenting, particularly those embarrassing moments when your kids points to someone and shouts (for instance), “Look, there’s a fat man!” The parent’s instinct is to immediately shush the child and tell them not to say that, but one woman in the group said that she doesn’t like that response because it teaches the child that there’s something wrong or shameful about whatever trait they’re shouting about. Instead, she dealt with those moments by telling her child, “Yes, some people are fat, and some are skinny, and some are in-between. There are all kinds of people.” I thought that was very smart and cool-headed of her.
A friend of mine used to say that having a newborn was like having a demanding pet; having an older baby was like having a doll that talks back, but smiles; and having a toddler was like having a whirlwind that screams and dances. I don’t necessarily agree with all of that, but a lot of it is seated in truth.
Learn to pick your battles. Your kids are not you, and they’re going to do some things that you won’t like. They might want to wear a hairstyle or clothing style that you think is hideous. If you try to mold them into doing only things you like, you’re going to fail, and you’re going to alienate your kid in the process. If what they’re doing that you don’t like is something harmless, like weird clothes, hair, or music, let them get on with it. Save your energy for the important stuff. It took two of my high-school friends getting pregnant before age 20 for my mom to realize that I really wasn’t so bad, even if I was a loner and dressed and did my hair in a way she didn’t like.
Don’t assume they’re they’re telling the truth about school.
I work far away, and after my long day and long commute, I would ask Jr. (9) about his homework. “Sure, it’s done, can I play at____?” I’d believe him because he’s a smart kid that gets good grades, and then his father and I would go to parent-teacher conferences and discover our precious darling hadn’t done 7 out of 10 assignments, and hidden the notes the teacher sent home. We’d ground him, but this behavior continued even though we started going over his homework every night. He’d just leave it in the book bag!
I got him a special folder for his assignments and worked out that the folder had to leave full and come home empty, plus we have the teacher email us his assignment list. Still, this kid is REALLY well-behaved and I think we were both lulled into thinking he wouldn’t do anything like this.He just didn’t want to waste time on school work that he could use to play. This could also apply to bullies or later on, relationships.
Teach your children table manners.
I can’t stand the wet sound of open-mouth chewing, so I taught mine to close his mouth early on. He also knows to use a napkin, how to say “excuse me” if he needs to interrupt table conversation, not to sniff his food, and sweet Jesus most importantly: how to graciously refuse food. I had to hammer it into him, but now when he doesn’t like something, he doesn’t comment on the smell or how gross but simply says “No, thank you.”
His cousin gets sent over to my house with express instructions on what the little darling will or won’t eat. I serve him whatever’s for dinner, and if he doesn’t eat, he won’t starve, but I’ll be damned if I’m cooking multiple entrees.
Answer all questions honestly and forthrightly.
One of the things I’m proudest of is that my nine-year-old and I have discussed marriage, divorce, relationships, homosexuality, pregnancy, the Civil Rights Movement, the Depression, cancer, diabetes, death, religion, love, marriage, divorce, sexism, ageism and politics and never once have I regretted answering one of his questions factually. If anything, it gives me insight into his train of thought and it teaches him that intellectual curiosity is rewarded by knowledge. I hope I can teach him all I know and that eventually, he knows more than I do. I also hope that our conversations mean he will be more likely to come to me with questions for the rest of his life.
Control your anger and urge to find someone to blame around your kids. You have to seek out a happy medium. Don’t be the parent who automatically blames the teacher when your kid gets in trouble at school. But if you fly off the handle every time your kid does something wrong, the result will be that, if your kid has a problem that might be partly their fault, they will go to great lengths to avoid going to you for help with it. That won’t end at age 18, either. There are things going on in my life that I would never, ever, be able to talk to my mother about, for fear she’d go off the deep end, and I’m going to be 34 this month.
Don’t punish your kid for crying (screaming and throwing a fit while crying is a different story). Not everybody can control when tears are going to well up in their eyes.
Words of advice and truth from a childless Doper! Your children are going to make observations that embarrass you in front of other people! Instead of ‘shushing’ them, it’s much more productive to observe (not overly loudly, but not ‘hushed’ either), yes, some people are big, some are small, some are in wheelchairs or walkers, some have no legs", etc.
I’ve been around enough to think that a majority of the folks that might be discussed in this manner might appreciate it. Plus, the kid learns something. People come in all shapes, sizes, colors, abilities, affiliations, etc.
It’s a good lesson to learn early on if you want a kid that’s tolerant of those who are different from him/her.
Not to be rude, and maybe I’m just uncouth, but what’s wrong with sniffing food? I might be a little obsessive about making sure I avoid eating spoiled food, but there are some things I simply won’t put in my mouth without first smelling them. A short list would include:
[ol]
[li]Milk (and other semi-solid dairy products)[/li][li]Fish[/li][li]Buckeyes
[/ol]
Having experienced food poisoning more than once, you can never be too careful. To add to your list, pushing food around the plate and scraping the utensil on one’s teeth are huge taboos at our dinner table.
One from my own childhood - always make it clear to your children that you love them. This sounds so obvious but some of the conversations I have with people shows that not all parents are as good at this as my mother was. One of her mantras as I was growing up was that she was raising me to be an adult, that I was the most important thing to her (reading this back that sounds like it could have been creepy but for a child whose parents divorced at age 5 I think it was a smart move) and that her main thing she wanted for me was a life in which I was happy (although the corollary being this was against a background of encouraging me to fulfil my potential - she didn’t want me watching TV and playing video games instead of working for my entire life). She showed in both words and deeds that my long-term interests were her main goal and that I could rely on her to help me when I needed her, but that I didn’t need to depend on her for everything either.
As a result I have an extremely good relationship with my mother, am able to relate to her as an adult rather than being “her baby” forever and am very secure in the knowledge that me having a life in which I’m happy and productive is a good thing. Contrast this to the vast numbers of people who either feel or actually know for a fact that they’re failures in the eyes of their parents, that they didn’t do what their parents wanted and all the consequences of this in the form of (frequently) low self esteem or always striving to please other people and not themselves etc.
Actually, contrast this approach with my father who like my mother would say “I just want you to be happy” but would then tack on “and I think you’d be happy if you became a lawyer” or somesuch, always making it clear that he had expectations of me and that my happiness should be tied to them. Unsurprisingly I don’t have much to do with my father now.
There was one “do as I say, not as I do” moment that my mom had that really worked.
She said to us as kids, “I can’t order you not to smoke, since I started smoking in high school myself. I did it to try to be liked by the other kids and it didn’t work. But I would be a complete hypocrite to tell you that you can’t smoke when I did. So I will just say that if you do decide to smoke, I’ll just be very disappointed.”
Neither of us smoke. That last sentence was just so understated that it meant more than any threat would have.
I don’t think this can be overstated. My own mother (who should have never been a mother, but as a Catholic, had five children) told us often that we were mistakes, and never should have been born.
When I found I was pregnant with my first child, even though she wasn’t planned, I resolved that she would never feel I regretted her or didn’t want her.
Since then, I’ve seen parents in public saying ‘diminishing’ things to their kids, and I just want to jack them up by their collars and say “do you have any idea what you’re doing to this child??”
No matter how frustrated/whatever I’ve been with any of my kids, I’ve never told them that I’m anything less than delighted to have them in my life!
I have a brother in law and he’s always putting down his 4 year old son (he also doesn’t discipline him - another issue). It makes me very angry to hear it, and I take him aside to tell him so - he’s always very contrite, but then he goes and does it again another time. I think it is just in his nature to be negative. He’s negative about himself, his life, and his son - a real downer all around, though I do not believe he’s intentionally mean.
It makes me very sad for the boy.
With our son, we are always careful to let him know that our love is unconditional (though our approval of his behaviour is not! ). We often tell him (quite truthfully) how happy we are he’s ours.
I have two kids, now grown, and two dogs. Just yesterday morning the older one woke up at 6 am and scratched on the bedroom door. I opened the door to the backyard for him, but he trotted across the house to where his food was and basically said, time for breakfast. I said hell no, and he slept in the hallway until he got fed at his normal time. Exactly the same as your oldest needing to cry it out in the middle of the night to stay asleep. It was very tough, but in four days she slept through the night and everyone was much happier.
As a parent, I’ve found this an interesting read. Would just like to add one little mistake that parents and non-parents make around children and that is under-mining the adult in charge.
An example would be visiting someone’s house and Junior wanting a chocolate bar. You, as the parent says ‘No’ but your host in a super friendly stylee says ‘Oh no, let him have it.’
Predicament for parent - let your child have something he doesn’t need ?
or risk offending your host and causing a meltdown in the child?
Just my defensive little reminder that it isn’t always the parents making the mistakes.
