Tuesday, July 5, 2011

What if We’re Wrong about some Things…..and it is throwing our Parenting off course?

We were looking through the parenting section in a bookstore the other day and realizing that most of the volumes there were not written for NOW. They fail to deal with the newest and most scary thing facing kids today—the entitlement attitude that surrounds them every day!

Continuing on with the scare tactics of last post, lets all ask ourselves some more questions, self-examining questions, that may help us to re-invent our parenting a bit and make it fit better with the times our kids are growing up in!

This book asks you to be brave enough, and to love your kids enough to ask yourself some scary questions:

What if our pat answers on nearly every aspect of parenting are not working any more……and we are operating on the wrong assumptions on almost every aspect of raising our kids?

What if our WHY is wrong….
and it’s not really about making our own lives easier or our kids’ lives more pleasant but about teaching them—early—to be more independent and more responsible and to make good choices and tough decisions?

What if our WHAT is wrong…..
and it’s not really about giving them everything they want and everything we’d like them to have but about helping them to earn things for themselves and to perceive ownership and self-reliance?

What if our WHEN is wrong…..
and it’s really not their babyhood and teen age years when they need the most attention, but their elementary and middle school years when they should be making the transition between dependent childhood and the beginnings of independent, responsible adulthood?

What if our WHO and WHERE are wrong…..
and we really can’t depend on the teachers and coaches and tutors and nannies and care-givers to do the work, and its not in the school but in the home where they have to learn character and choice making and money management?

And what if our HOW is wrong…..
and it’s not about the re-active defense of trying to sort out what to do when they have problems but about the pro-active offense of building the values and skills that anticipate and avoid many of the problems?

The simple fact is that our world has changed and our parenting must change to meet it!!

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