I too remember nights spent walking back and forth, back and forth holding my babies when they had colic (some have it, some don't.) My wife needed her sleep, because she's the breadwinner in the family. And the baby needed to be held and walked.
I found the AP site you reference to be nice poetically, but it bears the same relation to the daily grind of child-rearing that a painting of the Garden of Eden bears to traffic jams. Nice ideals, but...
I realized that there was still hope for you when you said, "Where this theory and I start to disagree"
The book on parenting I found particularly useful was "The Kids Are Worth It" bu Barbara Colorosso. (I might have the pattern of double and single letters wrong in her last name, and the title might not have the word "The" in it). It was also available as a videotape, and I think it was once a PBS special. It is perhaps most accessible in the video version, as she is a lively and entertaining speaker. I read/watched it about 15 years ago.
She had a very pragmatic approach. One of her big principles is that although you have to protect your children from getting out of their depth, they still need to learn that decisions have natural consequences. You get them to make their own choices (within safe limits), which may be quite different from yours. You do not protect them from the consequences of these decisions (as long as they are within the safe limits; remember, you set those limits when you gave them the choice) They will gradually learn to make appropriate decisions themselves, learn to take on bigger issues, and become independent, secure, functioning adults.
On several occasions that one of my children asked if he/she could do something, I evaluated the risks, decided they could live through them, and told them, "Yes. You could do that. But it would be a very bad idea." I very explicitly advised them, and then handed the decision back to them. Sometimes they asked why, sometimes they thought it through themselves, sometimes they came up with new alternatives and proposed them. But if they chose the alternative I had advised them against, it was them that lived through the consequences. No extra punishment needed.
Sometimes it takes real creativity to find natural consequences that are still within the bounds of safety (and within the limits of parental sanity!). The book is a great help in finding those.
My children are now 13, 16, and 19. They are going through crises, asking advice or not, understanding it, sometime ignoring it, and creatively building their own lives. I'm proud of them.
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Date: 2006-08-31 01:22 am (UTC)I found the AP site you reference to be nice poetically, but it bears the same relation to the daily grind of child-rearing that a painting of the Garden of Eden bears to traffic jams. Nice ideals, but...
I realized that there was still hope for you when you said, "Where this theory and I start to disagree"
The book on parenting I found particularly useful was "The Kids Are Worth It" bu Barbara Colorosso. (I might have the pattern of double and single letters wrong in her last name, and the title might not have the word "The" in it). It was also available as a videotape, and I think it was once a PBS special. It is perhaps most accessible in the video version, as she is a lively and entertaining speaker. I read/watched it about 15 years ago.
She had a very pragmatic approach. One of her big principles is that although you have to protect your children from getting out of their depth, they still need to learn that decisions have natural consequences. You get them to make their own choices (within safe limits), which may be quite different from yours. You do not protect them from the consequences of these decisions (as long as they are within the safe limits; remember, you set those limits when you gave them the choice) They will gradually learn to make appropriate decisions themselves, learn to take on bigger issues, and become independent, secure, functioning adults.
On several occasions that one of my children asked if he/she could do something, I evaluated the risks, decided they could live through them, and told them, "Yes. You could do that. But it would be a very bad idea." I very explicitly advised them, and then handed the decision back to them. Sometimes they asked why, sometimes they thought it through themselves, sometimes they came up with new alternatives and proposed them. But if they chose the alternative I had advised them against, it was them that lived through the consequences. No extra punishment needed.
Sometimes it takes real creativity to find natural consequences that are still within the bounds of safety (and within the limits of parental sanity!). The book is a great help in finding those.
My children are now 13, 16, and 19. They are going through crises, asking advice or not, understanding it, sometime ignoring it, and creatively building their own lives. I'm proud of them.