Today is Day 19!!!! YAY!!! Doing great! I'm writing about kids today....shocker? No. ;) We all have different views on parenting, and how we should raise our children. What we all have in common is that we want our kids to be happy. So why do some of us have such vast differences, when it comes to HOW to raise them happily? Maybe its because we were all raised differently, we have read different parenting books, and heard different parenting advice.
It all comes down to patience.
I don't think a parent that chooses to spank, loves their child less. Not at all. I've spanked, and I will do it again when it's needed. I think a 6 year old is too old, yet a one year old is too young, for that kind of discipline. I think the age that THAT kind of discipline is really needed is the toddler stage. About 2-4 years old. Thats when they are testing the boundaries and the rules like crazy. Now, I've been spanked in my day, and the way my father did it was unacceptable in my opinion. A child shouldn't be spanked with an object, an open hand and two swats is good enough to get their attention.
Honestly, I think there is a better way of getting your point across when it comes to this. I think sometimes some parents jump straight to spanking, it's how most of us were raised right? You do something wrong, you get spanked. Why can't we find a more loving approach? I've been raising kids since I was 18. My oldest is 12, and my youngest is approaching his second birthday in December (why oh why must they grow up so fast!?). I've had enough kids and time to kind of test out what works best. Haha that sounds bad. Don't worry, I didn't use one as my spanking kid and another as the time out tester. No, I am raising them all the same, but it's natural to learn more as we get older. I've learned more things to try with discipline, since I became a mom. What I've learned is simple. Patience.
Nicholas is going to be 13 in October. He has by far been the hardest for me the past two years, but there are a lot of contributing things to why that is. Yelling at him, or any kid truthfully, gets us nowhere! Do I do it? Yes. I lose patience sometimes, and the yell quickly emerges before I can even realize I'm doing it. I've learned this year to get a grip on that, because not only do I feel terrible after, but the kids tune me out. They all do.
I'm trying hard to approach my kids with love, and sternness. It's hard some days, but it's working. I can't remember the last time I spanked any of my kids. Simple time outs don't work for every child. It works for Laura my 6 year old. I can make her sit there for 6 minutes and when she is done, she apologizes and moves on. If I put Katie in time out, it shatters her. Different personalities. So, when you get the general advice of "do timeouts, one minute for every year".....try it. It might work, and if it doesn't don't resort to spanking, or thinking something is wrong with your kid. Try a new approach. With Katie I have to pull her aside and literally explain what she did wrong and WHY it's wrong. Laura gets that sometimes too, but their personalities are so different that, their discipline approaches have to be different. Not one thing works for every child. Not even every child of yours.
Nicholas is 12, so things are totally different there. Sentences are what works for him. It took me a long time to figure that out. I also like to have him sit and write me a letter about what exactly he did wrong. If its something tiny, of course he just gets the "come on, really?" look from me.
I believe that our kids really want to make us happy and impress us. They don't want us to be mad at them or disappointed in them, but sometimes we are. It's life. It's an emotion they have to learn. I get mad at my kids pretty much on a daily basis. I'm around them from the moment they wake up, to the moment they go to bed. Being kids, they mess up, they take chances and test boundaries. Our job as parents is to teach them, that its ok to mess up, as long as we try to fix it. After all, even as adults we still mess up, and we expect everyone to love us through it all. Let's do that for our kids.
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