We did this on a larger scale, moving from NYC to the 'burbs of Boston which are well known across the nation for their excellent schools. We haven’t been here long enough for me to see the benefits for her play out but I have a feeling that a few years from now this move will be added to the list of Best Parenting Decisions for us.
Raising all 4 off them as 'Free-range Kids". I think parents these days are crazy worriers, and very over-protective… they just rarely give their kids the freedom to explore the world on their own.
I’ve had this conversation so many times where a parents will mention something daring they did as kids which was a wonderful learning experience, but then they immediately say they would never let their own kids do such a thing. There is less crime now than for many, many decades, and if you don’t let your kids do things on their own now, what are you waiting for?
All 4 of my kids bike to school (ages 9, 11, 13, and 16) and yes they all have to cross some major streets to get there. But you just teach them how to do it safely, practice with them several times, then let them do it on their own. Nothing is 100% safe, but I think they are much better off knowing how to interact with the world, than being forbidden from doing so.
I often get complements that my kids are very mature and responsible. I think this is because they have been given real responsibility from a young age. People seem to think that kids somehow become magically responsible, then you start giving them responsibility. But that’s backwards. Kids learn how to be responsible by being given responsibility.
And let your kids run free to the park, to the neighbor’s house, to the local store… it will improve the lives of the parents and the kids.
Single best thing I’ve done as a parent…
When my oldest began second grade we told her that her bedtime was the same…but that she could stay up as late as she wanted providing she was reading. Didn’t matter what, just reading. Turned her into a ‘read for pleasure’ within two weeks.
It worked so well that when her younger sister hit second grade she made sure she got the same deal.
The choice thing worked very well with us.
Choosing also works when we go shopping. Most Wednesdays, we go to a large Goodwill store nearby and he may pick out one toy there. The rule is one thing and one thing only. So even when he was four years old, I could see him thinking hard what he wanted more, the truck or the dino.
One time, he had chosen a plastic dino and on our way out, we passed a dollhouse. My son greatly admired the dollhouse -it had a garage with it- and it was dirt cheap, but when I said: “do you like it?” my son replied: “Yes mommie, but not as much as my dino”. My son has learned to want something, and yet be perfectly fine with not having it. I’m so proud.
Shopping for toys at Goodwill is another of my great parenting decisions anyway. The big advantage over a toy store is:
- Kid can try everything out, and doesn’t have to rely on the promises on the box
- Everything that breaks easily or little parts that get lost have already been broken or gotten lost, so you can see exactly what you will be playing with.
- Everything is dirt cheap, so if the toy magic wears off or it isn’t your kids thing, back to Goodwill it goes.
- Allows for the kid to try out much more toys then he would otherwise have, at a super low budget and with less clutter, because unused stuff goes back.
My “children” are thirty-seven and forty. In their twenties they were boomerangs. We’d toss them out into the world, well-prepared we thought, and before we knew it they’d be living in their bedrooms again “just until I can get ahead a little bit.” Often the world’s flotsam and jetsam came along. You know the kids. The ones kinda floating along, aimlessly.
I like young people and like to help. But there came a time when it seemed I had given them as much mothering as they needed and it was time for them to claim their independence. So we set a time for eviction and sent them out one more time to sink or swim. Then we remodeled the bedrooms.
You whose children aren’t that age yet have no idea how much courage it takes. They can give you a lot of reasons to fear they won’t make it (and it will be your fault.) They stumble and make mistakes and it hurts to watch them learn the hard way but they are becoming very strong.
And we don’t have anyone banging around in the kitchen at 3:00am making pizza!
Despite our moderator’s note, I just want to voice agreement with this: doing this ‘parent’ stuff right is hard work, and if your heart isn’t in it, then it’s not for you. In that case, the best parenting decision you can make really IS not to be one.
For me (and I’d expect, for most of the participants in this thread), the best parenting decision my wife and I made was to have kids - in our case, to adopt the Firebug, once it was clear that biology was not working in our favor.
Second best: a general attitude of ‘short of letting him run into traffic or fall and break his neck, give him room to run.’
Third: Had the Firebug diagnosed and treated for ADHD.
That guidance was in one of the assorted pieces of paper sent home by either the doctor or his day care or someone a few years back, and it works for us.
The takeaway for others here, I think, is that ‘everybody’ isn’t raising your kid; you are. You’re the one who sees him and spends time with him, day in and day out. It may happen sometime that someone else sees something important about your kid that you’re missing, but most of the time it’s going to be the reverse. Nobody has the sort of comprehensive understanding of your kid that you do.
I’m gonna have to try this on the Firebug, at whatever point this year he gets to the point where he can really read on his own. Right now, he can read, but it’s a word-by-word sort of thing. But then, he’s just beginning first grade.
My kids are young teenagers and grown men now. They were kind of free-range kids too–I am not a hoverer. I can think of a couple of things offhand that seemed to work.
When the older ones were in their teens, I made a rule: everyone 16 and up had to be in school, working, or volunteering full-time, no exceptions. I had 3-4 teens in the house at various times–some worked, some volunteered, one moved out so he didn’t have to do either. And everyone in the house helped with housework, pet care, and babysitting the two younger kids.
With my daughter, possibly the smartest thing I did was give her permission to beat up the 5th grade bully at her school if he hit her. She was terrified of him until we sat down and talked it through and she realized that she actually could probably smack him down. She never had to do it, but she knew she could if she had to.
Some decisions I’m happy with:
Introducing him to a variety of food and not allowing him to just eat off the kids menu for the most part. In other words, if we were at a Thai restaurant, he could choose the kids pad thai meal, or something off the adult menu. He was not allowed to have chicken nuggets or a burger of the kids menu.
Letting him grow his hair out long. He was like 7 or 8 and wanted long hair. I said fine as long as you take care of it and you are polite when people mistake you for a girl. At age 11 he cut off 18 inches and donated to Locks of Love. Now as 15 it’s down past the middle of his back and the most gorgeous hair you’ve ever seen.
Letting him dress how he wants within reason. He has to be neat and clean, and event appropriate, but he can wear all black all the time if that’s what he wants.
Homeschooling him for 2nd and 3rd grade when traditional school just. wasn’t. working. He was stressed and frustrated and anxious. Homeschooling let him get caught up where he was behind, explore areas of interest and just relax for a couple of years. He went back to public school for 4th grade and beyond and has done very well since.
Giving him freedom and responsibility. Letting him go places and do things on his own (or with friends that I know well) at a much younger age than I was allowed to go out. It was hard, what with all the stranger danger, your kid will get abducted stuff you hear, but as a result I have a smart, savvy, confident teen who is equally comfortable going to the bank by himself and managing his finances as he is joining the local comic book store’s Magic: The Gathering Friday night group on his own.
We always read to our daughter at bedtime. This started the first day she came home from the hospital. When she observed us, we were reading. She became an avid reader. Her third grade teacher had a contest. If you read more books than the teacher during summer vacation, she would take you to lunch. Our daughter won!
Reading is a good thing!
The picking a good school district was a winner for us. My husband tolerates a long commute so his eldest can have a great education. She’s gifted and she’s getting the education she needs in a small classroom with teachers I mostly really like very much.
Also agree on the free range kids thing. I try not to hover over her which annoys the helicopter parents around here. She’s fairly self-sufficient as a result. She reads a lot on her own. She’s also comfortable doing some of her own cooking with my supervision.
She and her little sister are just a daily delight most of the time. My eldest is turning into this most delicious person – ridiculously good at math, well read, a vegetarian who won’t eat meat because she loves animals so much and just a really nice kid who still likes to have belching contests with me even though she’s growing breasts and I fear puberty is about ten seconds away.
Oh, such hair! I’ll bet it just glows in the sunshine.
It seems very early in the game to take too much credit for parenting decisions, but at 2 1/2, things we’re happy about are:
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Both bedtime and mealtimes are extremely matter-of-fact, we never treat them like potential issues so I don’t think it’s even occurred to her that they involve a lot of options. We do the same thing as pbbth, and only describe food using positive or neutral terms (it’s crunchy! it’s healthy! it’s yellow!).
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On the flip side, we let her make a lot of other decisions about other aspects of her day. This is easier because she’s an only child, but she can play however she wants, color the entire book with only the green crayon, whatever. I kind of let all that be very self-directed. That’s on purpose, because I have a tendency to be a bit of a control freak, and I KNOW the first time I start suggesting colors, it will be a slippery slope until I myself am hoarding her coloring books and filling them in with detail and precision after she goes to bed. At our public library, they have a lot of kids’ craft programs, and my daughter always has the crappiest looking crafts (she said, proudly) because I don’t help her unless asks specifically or seems to be getting frustrated (very rare). I’ve noticed by the end of craft time, a lot of the other kids have drifted off because mom or dad is essentially doing the entire craft, while my kid is still having a great time coloring a giraffe purple, and gluing three googly eyes on its butt.
To balance this out, one area where we’re not doing so well is too much TV time (usually really a DVD or the ipad). We’re good on appropriate content, but I got WAY too lazy about letting her watch a show when I have a task that I really need to get done. She likes to “help” with a lot of household stuff, but when I have something to do that I need to crank out without her (like cleaning the bathroom – our bathroom isn’t well ventilated, and the smell of the cleaners bothers me, so I really don’t want her in there with me), now TV is the only thing that she’ll really do on her own. She won’t play with other toys independently for any considerable chunk of time. I resolve to do better … but then I need some time and hey, Dinosaur Train is right there. This might be improving a bit on its own, I think her natural attention span is SLOWLY getting a little longer as she gets older.
I still think a lot of it is luck of the draw, I think we got lucky and got a good sleeper, for example. We would have had to have actively tried to screw that up.
Mine has just turned 18.
The very best decision I made was boarding school. That isn’t a sarcastic answer.
Things at home were not working. Home school was not an option and it was his behaviour in and around the house that was the problem in any case. He was headed for a life of misery, and possibly jail.
We have made a heap of sacrifices to keep him there but boarding school has changed his life for the better in so many ways. I had to defend the decision over and over again to people convinced I just wanted to get rid of my child somehow, but fuck’em, it was nearly a miracle.
Good for you!
We’ve done private school, public school, and homeschooling at various points, because they were what we felt was best at the time. You deserve praise for “doing what was best”, regardless what ‘other people’ thought. I’m glad it’s worked out well for you.
Must play sports. I have a girl and the last thing I wanted to be dealing with was teenage body image rubbish. You play sports, your body will be fit and you will learn good nutrional eating habits, have control over your weight, use time management and feel positive about yourself.
No ‘eat everything on your plate’ rule.
Gleena good for you. I had a couple of friends whose kids were intolerable - no point angsting over who did what wrong or whatever - get them into a boot camp - it’s not all about you.
It worked it similarly well for my nephew. He was 16 when he went and things at home were rocky. He successfully graduated high school, went on to college, did ROTC and is in the Air Force. He is 26 and doing very well.
Miss DrumBum is in her second year at university and we think she has turned out quite well. I attribute this to:
Encourage reading early on. We surrounded her with books and read to her constantly. When she started to read and asked what a word meant, I had her look it up in a dictionary. This was a method my dad used with me and like me, it was initially met with some resistance, but eventually resulted in a good vocabulary.
My line of work took us to many different countries and she was able to experience many different cultures, foods, and languages. Kids seem to be able to learn and retain language skills far more quickly than adults, so she can still speak Arabic, Portuguese, and a fair bit of Hungarian. Moving around also made it easy to make friends more quickly.
Since Miss DrumBum is a “Miss” and there are some things that mystify dads, a major part of the good parenting decisions that made Miss DrumBum the fine lady she is can be attributed solely to Mom. I doubt very much that I could have done this on my own.
Good luck, RT!
I’ll point out that <activate proud parent mode> that my oldest, the one you knew as ‘Baby Kate’ all those years ago, is now doing high school work in 8th grade, took the SAT last year and scored higher than 63% of high school seniors in South Carolina, is transitioning into the International Baccalaureate program, AND is about to get her black belt after 10 years of training.</PPM>
Both my kids grew up in the 1970’s, and my best decision was to not have a television set in the house during that time. They both became voracious readers, and have remained so ever since.
Doing proper time-outs.
It’s amazing how many otherwise capable parents have no idea how to do a time out.
Everyone knows that it works, and when you do it right it’s amazing in the results it gets. So most people at least try. But they lack the discipline or just don’t know what they are doing so it fails.
We used One Two Three Magic, but there are other books. The SuperNanny show on TV also does a good job of explaining it.
It’s not rocket science, and it works wonders.