Parenting 101

So I wanted to just list a few rules for parents since for some reason the wealth of knowledge available seems to come short for some parents when it comes to raising their kids.

1. BOUNDARIES. You are not your kids friend. You are their role model, their guide and their mentor, NOT a playmate. While being playful with your children and having fun is necessary to make a well balanced adult, it is NOT the most important life lesson. Fun won't make them responsible and capable in with dealing with life´s difficulties. Your child is more than someone in your life. They are YOUR responsibility until they can do for themselves. Your first and foremost challenge is to make them capable of surviving, NOT their happiness. A well adjusted person IS happy all on their own. You are not a psychologist or a life coach. You are a mentor, tutor, guide, consultant, ect. NOT some one that is to ensure they smile. You are to teach them how to be able to smile.

Being happy is their responsibility. Make them strong and capable of successful lives, that will give them the resources and mentality to achieve their goals and maintain them. You are not to establish guidelines YOU think will make them happy. If they want to listen to death metal and worship Satan, then you should ensure they learn the skills to buy their own CD´s and black candles and attract a nice Goth chick without starving or being evicted. They will be happy with their choices if they know what they want. Teach them to know themselves. That is it. Not as a friend who will got through their various phases in life, but as a mentor that shares notes and experience. Done and done. If they like girls or boys, or whatever, or want to be popular or not is their prerogative and none of your business. Choose how your friends are, not how your children will turn out.


2. STRUCTURE! you have to set limits to their acceptable behavior and establish a chain of consequences that they understand. Punishment should be equal to reward in any reliable system of parenting. Punishment is not so much an action on your part to assert your dominance, we are not lions in the jungle. It is a system of checks and balances that you yourself are subject to in the real world. Not doing an assigned task has the consequence of not doing a preferred activity. It is not that YOU take away their games or fun, it is that they have not met their contractual agreement agreed to by them. No homework done means time normally spent in the park is then dedicated to meeting the ascribed assignment. Completed homework ahead of time means extra time in the park, ect.

You should never let them break the rules you establish just because you are too tired to enforce them. There is no day off from parenting and it requires more than a lifelong commitment, it requires more of an obsession with their development. As they grow you can let loose and relax your role as disciplinarian in light of their ever asserting sense of social structure.

3. CONSIDERATION. You cannot just lounge around at a restaurant while your kids go ape since you have not taken the time to train them like other people you see lounging. You know why you cannot bring animals into restaurants but blind people can bring in guide dogs? It because the guide dogs are trained. Similarly your wild children are like street mutts, and the civilized children that understand that a restaurant is not a play area are like well trained police dogs. One you can trust, the other will do the inappropriate thing. So if you want to lounge around ignoring your kids, you bastards, train them first like the rest of us.

If they are SOOO playful, then take the time to go outside with them and tire them out. When they are in the restaurant with you for example, they are to eat their meal and speak like the rest of the adults do. They can listen into your conversation or begin one of their own. Speaking is allowed. Running around like the table was the monkey bars is not, or else you would be doing it as well. You would not see it normal if they were sitting talking over a snack at the play ground, ignoring the swings and toys, so why is it normal for them to break a sweat entertaining themselves at meal time?

More to be added later.

If you have any to add, please do.

reply to post by zedVSzardoz


I agree with most of what you have posted here.

But, who are you to tell people how to raise their kids?
Yes, some people obviously need parenting classes. But I doubt a rant on ATS is going to have an effect on someones parenting style.

I think you are ultimately wasting your time.

reply to post by watchitburn


I dont think there is a rule book on it, each child is different.

1st rule is love, 2nd rule is honesty.

you cant go wrong with love and honesty

reply to post by watchitburn


my time, and maybe so, but that is not even a factor. I am a successful parent, that is who.

Love and honesty are true for life, and tell you nothing about how to deal with kids and the real world. You have to be a real jerk not to love your kids, if you don´t you have no business in their lives. Honesty is just necessary for life.

There are universal truths for everything. I see people in dire need of help in this area .

reply to post by zedVSzardoz


I like it. Everything you said is exactly correct for each and every child for very good reason.

Boundaries are important because they provide the necessary feeling of safety to small children. Kids raised without boundaries will always feel on the edge and seek through ever-increasing poor behaviours to find an adult who will say.. this is the line in the sand little one.

I have heard so many parents who say that the consequences for some action will be something absurd, and when they do not follow through the child KNOWS their parent is lying to them and cannot ever be trusted again. Hence it is important to make the consequences something equal to the problem and also something the parent will follow through with.

I think there are two basic types of kids..

1/ Malleable kids.. the ones who will abide by House Rules most of the time, who will do as asked most of the time.. these are the kids who you hear their parents say they were a pleasure to raise.

2/ Ruthless kids... the ones who will push their primary care giver to their wits end, who will not abide by any rules, who will not assist around the home, and who seek COntrol over everything while thinking their parents stupid. No amount of Love helps with these kids.

Type 1 kids do not force their parents to dig deeper in order to find a way to deal with them, while the type 2 kids will each and every moment of every day. So in this respect they are brilliant for making parents have to grown and stretch themselves further.

I raised my girl on my own for 18 years, and she was a type 2 kid. It was hard work, in fact, it was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life so far. And now she is out in the world learning what it is like for an independant person in this crapped-out society we have around us.

All the child psychologists with no kids of their own had absolutely no idea about anything other than their book-learned approaches which were totally useless for Ruthless kids. I could not believe the pandering these supposedly learned people went through to try and get the kids to work with them.... I have heard some say that Yes it is the parents fault you are like you are. What a load of BS.

Lets face a fact.. kids characters are in place by age 5. You may help mould them to some small degree, but everything else is about the choices the kids make... and that is not a reflection on the parent.. it is purely a reflection on the child and their choices.

I do not like the namby-pamby approach to parenting that has come into favour since the early 1980's because it only disempowers the parents in favour of empowering the children beyond their ability to cope with it effectively, hence the many problem we see with youth from Gen Y to the current Gen X.

Kids need parents first. When they are adults there is plenty of time to become friends.

The best advice I ever got about rainsing a child into and through the onset of teenage years, was simply this, "You all hang on for grim death and hope you make it."

Each day I told my girl I loved her, even when I was angry with her, and no matter what she did I would continue to love her just as strongly. This does not mean she didn't have strong consequences for very wayward behaviour, it meant ..

I loved her enough to go the hard yards with her, to fight FOR her.

Most of the parents I see and have known have taken the other road.. "It's too hard, so let them do what they want." Weak bastards only managed to raise little a-holes that grew into big a-holes... just like you see in every street in every town in the western world today.

/silly old man's 2 cent rant

reply to post by zedVSzardoz


The problem is that you're preaching to the choir. Maybe you can become more active in your local Health Department's parenting programs or start a small non-profit in your area to help people that can't figure out how to open a book or turn on the internet-ma-jigger.

Also, it's awesome advice by the way. I sort of disagree with where you say you aren't your child's psychologist. Parents have to do things like nip eating disorders in the bud and determine signs of depression in the child, watch for insomnia, listen to dreams and try to determine if a neighbor is molesting.. all kinds of things. I'd consider a good parent an amateur psychologist. Not necessarily the kid's shrink but you have to be there.

I agre with pretty much everything you have said, many of those things i had already been saying prior to becoming a dad, my view have shifted somewhat slightly now that i have my own child, a 2.5yr old boy, my pride and joy. The main thing that has changed in my view about raising a child is physical punishment. Ive always said that society was becoming too soft and that it was leading to a generation of children with no respect and no manners, but thats not their fault, that their parents fault for failing to raise compasionate, respectful human beings. I always said i would not be afraid of smacking my children if the circumstances called for it, and i still stand by that, but i have only smacked my boy once, and as my wife pointed out to me, using violence to control behavior of a very young child (still a toddler) seems to me to be counter productive. Its enforcing the idea that its acceptable to use violence as a coping mechanism, and i dont think a toddler really understands what a smack is for, and really its just an over reaction and loss of control by an adult. Now i dont think this is the case with older children, you know sort of getting into the 4+ age but im still working out how i feel about it. All i know is that when ive gone to smack my boy its been out of anger and frustration with him, not really to punish him as much as it is a release of your anger and stress on them, and i think it sends the wrong message to a very small child. A child of school age i think understands what a smack is for and why they may have gotten one in the first place, but a toddler i think just see's that an adult is dealing with a problem by lashing out physically, and that must mean its ok to deal with problems that way.

As i said i dont want anyone to think im anit-smacking, i was raised with a good smack every now and again, i can only recall one time i got hit by my father when i was probably about 12-13, and all i remember is that i knew i deserved it. I was always threatened with it, and it was no idle threat, and i was far from an angel as a child, just mischevious, not a trouble maker, mostly cheeky and a fair bit of a smart arse, but i turned out alright i think.

What do others think about what ive had to say?

reply to post by BeReasonable


I have been smacked few times, and remember each one. The threat of it was real and constant. I did not live in fear of it, but when I was considering crossing that line all I could ever think of was that look my father would give me. It was enough to make you pale if you knew you were already over that limit of acceptable behavior.

My mom didn’t use the threat of " I will tell your father". She in fact shielded us from his version of consequences.

Hers were not exactly better. She never hit me. She played psychological ware fare when she ran out of options with us, and in the process gave us some really good life lessons. She was also very compassionate and caring.

In my house we were allowed to turn out as we pleased. We followed the rules but unto ourselves there was no interference in our political, ideological, or personal development what so ever. My mother focused on our education and ethics ect.., my dad on our character and REAL world view ect..... They made a great team.