The Answers to Your Parenting Problems...

Haha I wish I had all of the answers to parenting, that would be really amazing. Unfortunately I do not have all of the answers. I mean I'm not even a parent yet. Luckily, I have been parented. I've learned a lot about it from my own parents and I learned some new ways this week in one of my classes. First of all I guess we need to discuss what parenting is. What is parenting to you? Do you like the way your parents raised you, or do you have a different culture that you would like to create within your future or current home? These are all questions that we should be thinking about as we are striving to learn more about parenting. Personally I really love the example my parents set as far as being parents. I mean I think I turned out pretty good. I would like to do some things differently but overall I would like to be a lot like my parents. Someone who lets my kids have some sort of leeway but also has clear expectations of what they expect of you so that you are challenged to do your best. Like my parents, I want my kids to know that I will always love them no matter what. So now that we are thinking about what kind of parent we would like to be, how do we go about doing it?

As parents we should always be thinking about the needs of our children and what we can do to best support them and prepare them for what they will go through later in life. One way to do this is to know what their needs are and what we can do to meet those needs. I was able to learn more about this in my class. I learned some needs for children are, how they could wrongly react, and what we as parents can do to approach meeting the need. One of the first needs that children have is the need for contact and belonging. Children and really all of us need to have contact with other people whether that be verbally, physically, or even just eye contact. We also need to feel that we belong, like we are a part of something. We need to feel as though we are wanted and needed in a situation. When a child does not receive these needs they resort to undue attention seeking. They do obnoxious things to force people to pay attention. Something that we can do as parents to meet this need is to offer contact freely within the home. You could do this by giving a hug, having a nice talk or really any other thing you could think of. We can also teach our children to contribute. Doing this will help them feel as though they are an important part of the family. It will help them feel like they belong. The next need that children have is power. Now when I say power I don't mean let them have control over your household, but we need to let them have control over their own environment. Let them make choices to influence what is going on in their lives. Then let your children experience the consequences of their choices. From this they will learn responsibility. When we don't give them options it turns into rebellion. The next need is the need for protection. When children don't have this protection, the approach often taken is to look for revenge. As revenge is not always the best way to handle things, the way we can avoid it is to teach them how to be assertive but also learn how to forgive. As far as being assertive goes I kind of talked about it in my post "Communication the Do's." Basically, we do not need to be aggressive when we are being assertive. There are healthier ways to communicate our feelings with others and teaching our children how to do this will greatly benefit their lives. We also need to teach them how to forgive. No matter how much we try to prevent it, our children at some point in their lives will be hurt. We need to teach them how to get past this without reverting to revenge. Another need that everyone has is to be able to take a break. If we are unable to take breaks we revert to avoiding things at all costs. Being a procrastinator myself, I know what it's like to not take breaks and end up with a large pile of stress. We can combat this by teaching our children how to take a break and then go back to something. If we teach them that breaks can be allowed throughout the job rather than only when we're finished with a job, they will be better at completing the tasks which are in front of them. Despite popular opinions, another need that people have is to have a challenge. If there are no challenges people resort to taking undue risks, but if we teach our children skill building they will be able to grow and learn continuously.

Anyways, I know this is a lot of information but if you have any questions about things and would like me to provide more examples let me know and I will do my best to answer your questions.