> I didn't have rebellious teens because there was nothing to rebel against.
I'm curious about this statement. Does that mean that when your child become a teen you placed no restrictions on them, and let them have a free reign?
I always kind of felt like the two were interchangeable. :-D But then I pronounced "facade" as "fake-aid" for years and years. My mind seems to like to blend and overlap two concepts like that.
A) I anticipated problems and taught them "wisdom" before the issue came up so they wouldn't be stumbling around doing stupid, destructive stuff.
B) I'm not a rejecting, judgmental, controlling, authoritarian kind of parent. So there isn't anything to rebel against. For example, when my oldest would say he wanted to play video games for a living when he grew up, I would say "I don't think that's a realistic career goal. But don't let my lack of vision stop you. Feel free to prove me wrong." So he never felt compelled to go make scads of money as a competitive gamer just so he could throw it in my face. He was free to have his idea of what a career looked like evolve without making it a power struggle with his mom.
My kids are very well behaved, ironically because I never required it. On the one hand, I imagine it would take many, many words to adequately explain (and maybe some day I will get back to developing the parenting site I own). On the other hand, I also feel like there really isn't anything to say. Just love and accept your kids. No big. (And work on your own crap. Ninety nine percent of the time, if kids are a-holes, they are just reflecting demons in the parental subconscious. I spent a lifetime hunting down personal demons instead of kicking the crap out of my kids for being reflections of my personal demons.)
I just want to add another voice to this. Really, reading this, you sound very much like my parents. I'm a 21-year-old home school and now college alumnus and I've been thinking some of these same things.
It's not that my parents gave completely free reign, it just that rather than actively directing everything, they backed off somewhat and left a lot of direction up to me. It's not that there weren't rules, it's just that the rules were reasonable and reasonably explained. Of course there were disagreements and children being childish, but there was also respect of their authority, which I think is something horribly lacking in kids today.
Any 'rules' my kids had were rooted in reality, not in mom's neurotic personal crap. "Don't run out into traffic" wasn't some "Because I won't love you anymore/what will the neighbors think?/how can you embarrass me this way???" kind of rule. It was a "because cars will hit you and maim or kill you" rule.
Two days before my 2nd child was born, my then 2 1/2 year old stood between me and his father, each of us holding one of his hands, and was told "don't cross the road without us". Being a bright, curious, strong-headed kid, this meant he promptly pulled away from two adults and dashed out into the road just to see why we saying that. He came so close to being hit by a car that he cut his finger on the side of it (well, he was hit by a car, but only his finger). The driver likely had no idea how close he came to tragedy that day. My son was so short, I don't think the driver ever saw him. I spent the next year standing on the side of the road for up to 20 minutes (in the heat, the snow, the rain) waiting for my oldest son to conclude it was now safe to cross. He needed to learn to use his own judgment to safely cross the road.
I raised my kids with an eye towards producing functional adults who could make their own decisions. That often meant putting up with inconveniences so they could internalize valuable decision-making rubrics instead of simply doing as they were told -- which really doesn't work. Even assuming I had perfect judgment (which I don't), what happens when I am not around to tell them what to do (like at daycare or school or after they grow up and move out)?
Comments
It's not "free reign" but "free rein": http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/reign.html
Hmmm. I always thought that 'free reign' made sense in that it was like self-governance with no restrictions.
I always kind of felt like the two were interchangeable. :-D But then I pronounced "facade" as "fake-aid" for years and years. My mind seems to like to blend and overlap two concepts like that.
A) I anticipated problems and taught them "wisdom" before the issue came up so they wouldn't be stumbling around doing stupid, destructive stuff.
B) I'm not a rejecting, judgmental, controlling, authoritarian kind of parent. So there isn't anything to rebel against. For example, when my oldest would say he wanted to play video games for a living when he grew up, I would say "I don't think that's a realistic career goal. But don't let my lack of vision stop you. Feel free to prove me wrong." So he never felt compelled to go make scads of money as a competitive gamer just so he could throw it in my face. He was free to have his idea of what a career looked like evolve without making it a power struggle with his mom.
My kids are very well behaved, ironically because I never required it. On the one hand, I imagine it would take many, many words to adequately explain (and maybe some day I will get back to developing the parenting site I own). On the other hand, I also feel like there really isn't anything to say. Just love and accept your kids. No big. (And work on your own crap. Ninety nine percent of the time, if kids are a-holes, they are just reflecting demons in the parental subconscious. I spent a lifetime hunting down personal demons instead of kicking the crap out of my kids for being reflections of my personal demons.)
I just want to add another voice to this. Really, reading this, you sound very much like my parents. I'm a 21-year-old home school and now college alumnus and I've been thinking some of these same things.
It's not that my parents gave completely free reign, it just that rather than actively directing everything, they backed off somewhat and left a lot of direction up to me. It's not that there weren't rules, it's just that the rules were reasonable and reasonably explained. Of course there were disagreements and children being childish, but there was also respect of their authority, which I think is something horribly lacking in kids today.
Any 'rules' my kids had were rooted in reality, not in mom's neurotic personal crap. "Don't run out into traffic" wasn't some "Because I won't love you anymore/what will the neighbors think?/how can you embarrass me this way???" kind of rule. It was a "because cars will hit you and maim or kill you" rule.
Two days before my 2nd child was born, my then 2 1/2 year old stood between me and his father, each of us holding one of his hands, and was told "don't cross the road without us". Being a bright, curious, strong-headed kid, this meant he promptly pulled away from two adults and dashed out into the road just to see why we saying that. He came so close to being hit by a car that he cut his finger on the side of it (well, he was hit by a car, but only his finger). The driver likely had no idea how close he came to tragedy that day. My son was so short, I don't think the driver ever saw him. I spent the next year standing on the side of the road for up to 20 minutes (in the heat, the snow, the rain) waiting for my oldest son to conclude it was now safe to cross. He needed to learn to use his own judgment to safely cross the road.
I raised my kids with an eye towards producing functional adults who could make their own decisions. That often meant putting up with inconveniences so they could internalize valuable decision-making rubrics instead of simply doing as they were told -- which really doesn't work. Even assuming I had perfect judgment (which I don't), what happens when I am not around to tell them what to do (like at daycare or school or after they grow up and move out)?