The things I got right...eventually

 Over the years I have learned a lot about parenting and what type of parent I would like to be towards my kids. I have seen many different types of parenting over my years. I had tried one way of parenting and it really didn’t work. I did learn my lesson on what type of parent I would like to be though through the years. There was in incident about 10 years ago that changed my life in a most profound way. I had a big change in how I parent. At the time I wasn’t very happy about the change but I knew that it had to happen. I learned a lot of lessons and some I implemented in my own life and others I let them go. I learned that you have to look at things from the child’s perspective and not just your own view point. You needed to reach back into your dusty memory and remember what it felt like to have your parents say what you were saying to your child right now and remember how you felt.

I took a class on Becoming a Love and Logic Parent and it was eye opening. It gave me things to think about that I hadn’t ever thought about before on how to parent and letting your kids fail at things and how you want them to fail at the little things now and not shelter them because if they learn from failures now they are less likely to fail as they get older because the lessons have already been learned.

I am not saying that I now get everything right and that I haven’t learned anything from my class that I’m currently taking on parenting skills. I am going to say that I did learn a lot of the lessons that were taught and I can see the difference now in how I implement parenting skills in my life. I have learned new lessons in my current class about things that I thought I was doing alright on and other things that I knew that I could do better at but I didn’t have the skills or the knowledge of how to do better than how I was currently doing.

I have read some books that have changed how I view things and how I want my children to be raised. I would have to say that one of the books that helped me was a story about Mr. Rogers’ life. I had heard all these crazy rumors and I was curious to see if they were true and what I learned from that book has shaped the way that I view his shows and the spin off show called Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. I had no idea that Mr. Rogers wanted to specifically reach out to children of all ages and help them deal with their lives. I knew it was an educational show but I had no idea the lengths that he went to so that he would be the most effective in reaching children on their level. Now as I watch the show I understand what he is trying to do and I can more fully appreciate the ways that he is teaching and I try to learn what he is doing and how he is talking and implement that into my parenting skills. Honestly sometimes I am successful and others I really am not and it’s ok because I am trying.

I try to be an understanding parent and I try to reserve my anger for when my children don’t come to me or tell me right away or lie to me. I feel like if they know that they can come to me with anything that I won’t be mad. I might be disappointed and I will tell them such but I try not to dwell on it and we press forward changing what can be changed and correcting the mistakes. I do get angry when they lie and when they don’t come to me about things that are bugging them. I want to hear about things that they have done even if they weren’t the best of choices because I am there to help them and I want to help them. I tell my children that if they want my help they have to tell me the whole truth so that I know what I can do to help them move forward in the right direction and give them counsel as to what they should do that will be the most helpful to whatever situation that they find themselves in.