OKAY.. Gimme just a second to vent – since that’s what blogging is for…
It’s finals week. I’ve had a pretty easy semester and I thought that I wouldn’t have any real finals but I do. But I’m not panicking about anything just yet. I’m just so lazy these days I can barely wake up in time for class.. Also I eat tons of junk food everyday.. today I ate a pint of ice cream for dinner… Ugh I feel so unhealthy and really gross…I’ma have to hit the gym at this rate..
Also I had to get a storage unit today to.. well store my crap in for the 7 week break.. I didn’t like doing that. Probably because it made me feel like an adult and I like being an adult I just hate doing adult things… like paying bills, buying food, signing for storage units.
And what comes with being adult? Well adult relationships – which I’m not good at all the time… But that’s not important today.. Today is all about parenting. Because well… once you get into a healthy, happy, loving, adult romantic relationship you should get married, wait the appropriate amount of time you and your spouse think you should wait and then have babies. And having babies makes you a parent.
Parenting… I don’t think anyone wants to be a bad parent.. I know I don’t.. I think that we all want to be better parents than our parents were to us. Which could be an easy thing if your parents set the bar real’ low or really difficult if they did a pretty marvelous job.
Some people are just natural born nurturers and are totally ready to take on the parenting role at an early age; or they have the parenting role thrust upon them through unplanned pregnancies. I mean there are millions of scenarios.
Point is becoming a parent is a major part of the cycle of life. You’re born, raised, fall in love, get married, have babies, raise them, die. Haha well a’lil something like that I guess.
So besides it being a part of life who really benefits from having a baby?
Well for starters… You can come to understand God, you can come to better understand the sacrifice and love our Heavenly Father has for us by sending His only Begotten Son to Atone for us. (www.mormon.org)
Another thing is that we can better develop Christ like qualities. Like patience, sacrifice, love, selflessness, that kinda stuff
Okay so those are only two things but I think that when we have children and become parents they will teach us things that we never knew, or didn’t fully understand. Through parenting I think that we will be able to better ourselves and just grow into a better whoever we’re meant to be.
…Well I mean that’s what I think a purpose of parenting would be…
Anyways there are three different parenting styles:
1.) Authoritarian: You’re a dictator (dick-ta-tor). teehee, but basically you have high regulations with really harsh punishments. With this type of parenting the focus is on yourself, the parent, trying to maintain control and you’re constantly reminding your child that you are in charge.
2.) Permissive: You’re your child’s best buddy. You wanna know everything that’s going on in their life so you do all you can to be their bff but hardly ever manage to provide them with direction or correction when they need it. These parents tend to have large explosions when their child dismisses them when they do try to take control.
I.E. this one time my friend told her mother’s bf that her mother was having a different man over at night, my friend was like 12 but she knew what her mother was wrong, and when my friend did that her mother was so upset she left to another state to cool off. That’s an explosion. It was a rough night, but they got past it. And that friend of mine has grown up to be quite the young lady, shoutout to you baby girl I’m one proud mama! 😉 ❤
Point is: This type of parenting is definitely still placing the focus on the parent. It’s what the parent wants. They want to have a certain relationship with their child but dismiss vital facets of parenting in order to obtain that relationship – which btw the relationship isn’t as good as you think it’d be.
3.) Authoritative: Naturally this third option will be the best out of all of the available options. This is when the parent listens and corrects their children. They are clear but permeable. This is important. You have to listen to your children. You cannot provide them with accurate guidance if you are not listening to them. &They will be less likely to share things with you if they are afraid of consequences or if they don’t think that you’ll be listening.
When it comes to discipline, Popkin suggested progressive discipline:
> Begin with a polite request – followed by encouragement
> Use an “iMessage” to communicate
– Allows children to see how their actions affect others
> Firm Request
– Use sparingly, if you use them continuously they will begin to lose their validity.
Popkin really promoted active parenting. He said that as parents we are to prepare our children to survive and thrive in today’s world.
He suggested that each balanced teen should be taught and have:
> Courage
> Respect: Which can be taught by modeling respect to each other (between parent and teen)
> Responsibility: Choice and consequences
We should always allow the natural consequences of their choice do the teaching except when it’s:
- Too dangerous
- Too far into the future i.e. if your kid is in middle school and decides they’re dropping out and you let them.. so that they can deal with the consequences later.. uh it’ll be a long time before they actually deal with those consequences..
- Affects someone else
> Cooperation
Popkin also listed the 5 universal needs of people:
1.) Contact and Belonging: people will do crazy things to have this need met, it has a severe impact on our ability to live and thrive
> Parents should offer these things freely
> We all belong to important groups or have important friendships and there are things that we do in order to fit in and contribute
> If we aren’t contributing we don’t feel like we belong
2.) Power: We want to feel a sense control that’s natural, but we cannot control everyone. We can never control enough people to feel powerful.
3.) Protection: We all can become protective of those important/special to us. When someone becomes protective of us we feel a sense of belonging. I have people in my life that would never say the phrase, “I love you” but they’ve defended me while I’ve been hurt by someone else. &Sometimes that means a little more than, “I love you.” Actions have always spoken a little louder than words.
4.) Withdrawal: This is a hard one to explain, I know that I withdraw from situations that make me uncomfortable.. I think we all do. I mean I can have withdrawals from things, from people and their attention ha
5.) Challenge: We’re gonna be challenged. &The more that we are then the more we will grow.
While we discussed parenting a large topic we covered was the importance of not micro managing. If we are attending every tiny problem our teen is facing it is a form of disrespect. We must learn to distinguish between whose problem it is. Is it yours, as the parent, or is it theirs as the child?
When we are consistently doing for others what they can do for themselves they become dependent on us as well as grow to resent us.
Parenting will be a pretty large chapter of our life when we reach it. I hope that when I get to that point in my life I will be able to do the best that I can, and I’m just glad that I won’t have to do it on my own… Assuming that things go according to plan and I’ll have my husband by my side.
Animals of the Burg 