Friday, December 5, 2008
Consequences...
I honestly don't believe that kids are born bad. Something happens along the way, and it too often comes from watching their parents- their first role models- make poor choices themselves. Even worse, though, is the parent who enables his/her child. If they don't have consequences when they're little kids, and their parents constantly "bail" them out of every difficulty, they (the kids) are most likely going to continue to make poor decisions and get into more and more trouble. I've had more people than I can count ask me how we managed to raise 6 successful, great kids, and my answer to that is #6 isn't quite raised yet, so ask me again in about three years. But seriously, I think we have to let them make mistakes and they have to have consequences for those mistakes. If they make them when they're young, they're going to learn from them and hopefully not make too many bigger ones when they're older. We can keep them out of the alternative school (the place students are sent for big offenses like drugs and weapons or chronic misbehavior), but we can't wait until they're in middle school to start. Loving your kids enough to hold them responsible for their actions is part of a parent's job, and it's better to have a 5 year old a little angry with you than to have to bail your 16 year old out of jail.
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2 comments:
Yes, just one of the many issues of parenting that we have to deal with. The main one I get is not parents helping kids out of their consequences, but parents not caring enough about their kids to take care of them at all. (You know, "could you please have my son picked up by the police because I can't deal with him at all...") I hate to lay all of society's ills on parents, and goodness knows we all make mistakes, but I have to say that most of the kids I see in my practice have parents who could certainly do a better job, to put it nicely.
Yeah, after teaching for 28 years, I agree. When we have a parent conference, it's almost always obvious why a child is having difficulty. The proverbial apple never falls far from the tree. I do think many parents want to do a good job- probably most of them WANT to, but they never learned how, and they're raising their kids with a "trial and error" approach or think that if they are their kids' best friends, everything will work out. Or sadly, they've given up. I KNOW I made some mistakes, and I feel really lucky that I have the kids I do because they're doing pretty well! Yours, too!
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