…if you clicked on this title to gleam some expert tips on the best way to raise your kids..

Well, you’ve found the wrong place.

What you have found though, is a young, somewhat-still-inexperienced 25 year old mommy who wants more than anything to raise her kids in the best way possible.  But what does that mean, exactly?

There are so many schools of thought out there about what “raising a child” means, and each side has their critics and supporters who use their own praising or derogatory verbiage to get their points across…

Spanking (”Corporal punishment”) vs. Non-Spanking (”Spoiling”)

Dictorial (”Discipline for adulthood”) vs. Self-Freedom (”Running Wild”)

Restricted / No TV (”Too much filth”) vs. unlimited TV viewing (”"training for real world”)

Public Schools vs. Private schools vs. Homeschools

Allowance vs. No Allowance

Chore-based Allowance vs.  Free Allowance

Rules vs. No Rules

Chores vs. No Chores

Scheduling vs. No Schedules

Breastfeeding vs. Formula

Co-sleeping vs. Crib sleeping

…and so much the more.  If it crosses your mind as a parent, you can be assured that millions of other parents out there have a theory about it and you can be darned tootin’ that they fully believe their system is the only way.  In fact, some get down right angry if your don’t raise your own kids the way they say to! But how do they know? What gives one parent the right to demand that another parent bend to a specific style of parenting?  Even though I’m a card-toting member of the co-sleeping, extended breast-feeding, baby-wearing, attatchment-parenting club I don’t pretend to think this is the practice every single mother on planet earth should employ!  It’s just a style of parenting that I believe gives me, personally, the abillity to impart a good amount of love and a nice, healthy start for my son’s life.   Yet, even though I believe in these specific parenting practices, I believe that others who do not employ them can still acheive their desired level of child-rearing results.  How can we claim to know that one specific way of raising a child up is better than another?  We can’t. 

For instance, how many of you think you turned out “ok”?  (((raises hand along with the rest of you)))) Do you think you turned out “ok” because of …or inspite of ….your own parent’s child rearing techniques??  How many of you were raised in one manner, yet are raising your own children - or plan to raise your own children - in different ways and methodologies?  What makes you think that you now know better than your own parents or that your own children will turn out “better” than you did? 

There’s no real way to answer those questions.  They’re just things that I myself ponder.  For example… my firstborn, my little wonderful Jack-Evan, is now almost 5 months old.  As I’m sure many mothers out there do, I’ve had a picture in my mind for a while now of how I want to raise my children.  Through various readings of books and other such things, I find sometimes my mind latching onto other schools of thought saying “Hey, I agree with that!  I need to incorporate that into my parenting style”.  

Then the thought will hit me:  My own parents never used that method to raise me.  Then my mind wanders to my own childhood and how I would have felt if such various childrearing techniques suggested in many parenting manuals would have been used on me.  Many of them I truly would have hated living through.  I also remember various people I grew up with and different parenting styles I saw enforced.  More often than not, the more “stricter” the parents were with outer rules and regulations, the more “wild” their child would tend to become - right behind their parent’s backs.  

This type of self-reflecting back on our own childhood, I believe, helps give us good “checks and balances” when it comes to raising our own children.  I know it does for me.  It helps me gleam the best parts of how my parents dealt with me, and also shows me what could have been done differently so that I may have been prepared more for adulthood.

Now, in saying that, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best style of parenting anyone can have is not one of “extremes” - but one that allows your child to be prepared for the life you believe he will be leading 20…30…40 years from now.  As parents, it’s our job to look at our station in life, look at the possible (realistic) future that exists for our child, and then guide him into the skills he needs to live successfully. 

Therefore, regardless of the style we choose to employ, I believe that our first ”commandment” in child-rearing should be based on the old proverb,

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”.

Let’s google the definition of “train” to get a better glimpse of what that little word proposes.

Train: “create by training and teaching;”

Teaching.  Hrm.  Teaching… that’s an interesting word.  What does it mean in regards to parenting? 

Let’s googlethe definition of teach.

Teach: “impart skills or knowledge to”

But what does impart mean?

Impart: “To give a part or share; To hold a conference or consultation; To communicate the knowledge of; to make known; to show by words or tokens; to tell; to disclose ”

Ah ha.  Here we go now…

We’ve come to the core of parenting it seems.  Communication.

We can discipline, spank, threaten, enforce, and “parent” all we want to.  But unless communication is involved, the reason behind the action does not sink into the child. 

Now what is communication??

Communication: a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.

Between.  That little word right there might just be the key. 

Between.  Hrm.  Between.

Information is exchanged between individuals.  Do parents always do this?  Or do we sometimes find ourselves simply “giving” information to our child’s face without seeking to find out what’s going on inside their heads?  When we do that (with anyone, not just our children!) are we truly “communicating”?!  No!  Communication involves exchanging information between individuals…plural.  Do we seek to find out what lies behind what motivates our child to do or act or behave in a certain way?  I believe we should. 

Now, when I say you should communicate with your child, I don’t mean just mearly talking.  Commmunication is done through symbols, signs and behaviors (everyone has heard, I’m sure, about how something like 90% of communication is in our body language).  To fully communicate with your child, you must do more than talk.  You must pay attention to their actions and listen to what they’re “not” saying as well.  As a mother of an infant, I can’t rely on verbal communication to understand what my baby needs.  I must spend time with him and pay close attention to subtle details - and change my actions accordingly.  The process does not change much as our children age.  We still need to keep in close fellowship with them so we can see their needs written in their behavior.

Growing up as part of a very conservative circle of people, one of the sayings amongst us was that the “Preacher’s kid was always the worst”.   It wasn’t the case with every preacher we knew, but it was definately a statement we were familiar with.  Could the underlying cause of this stereotyped family have stemmed from a lack of communication? Perhaps in those families…and many others with “strict” rules…children may have been talked “to” more than they were talked “with”.  Communication may have been sorely lacking due to the time the ministry took the father away from the home.  That’s just my theory…but it seems plausible, no?

In my own home, I was raised by parents who didn’t seem to have ever heard the word “strict”.  Oh, I knew what they expected of me in terms of behavior, but I never had any rules hung over my head.  Lest you think we were a bunch of wild hobble gobblins, I must say we were a fairly conservative chuch-going family.  Discipline, for me, came in the form of knowing when I had dissappointed my parents (something I tried hard never to do!).  There were no restrictions on TV viewing, no behavior charts, and certainly no spankings.  I was never even required to do “chores”.  They never acted “above” me.  They never demanded obedience.  Yet I turned out ok… i think. :)  In other situations, this style of parenting could have produced a terribly wasted, immoral, laggard individual.  But in my case, despite my parent’s seemingly lack of authoritarian traditional parenting, everything worked out fine.  Why is that?  I believe it goes back to the key ingredient - “communication”.  In our family, there was never any doubt in my mind that my parents respected and loved me, and I always felt free to discuss things with them.

And…therefore…because we had open communication, coupled with love, the style of parenting employed worked.  Not because the style of parenting, in and of itself was “good”, but because I knew the motivation behind it. 

These are the types of thing I muse over when thinking about how to best raise Jack.  It also gives me a reality check when I find myself gravitating towards any particular extreme style of parenting.  I’m reminded that no one style fits for all people at all times in all situations.  Parenting is a give and take…an ebb and flow… a dance that we make up as we go along.  What suits our family and child’s needs one day, may not be suitable later on down the road.

 So, reader… what about you?  Have you ever considered why you choose to “parent” like you do?  Do you find yourself drawing upon your own parent’s style of parenting? Or do you avoid it?  If so, and you turned out “ok”, why?  Do you work carefully at trying to truly communicate with your child?  Does your child fully understand why you employ various rules or activities around the home?  When is the last time you examined the reasons behind your parenting style, and is there any way it can be improved upon?

Tagged: Parenting

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