What to do when......

I am often asked “what do you do when....?”
Or “What do you do to get [child] to do [x]?”
Do you reward, punish, time out, ignore, etc.
And if so, what do you do to punishment, to reward etc.

It’s a long list of questions when you fill in the blanks – and there are no specific answers that I can give you...

How you raise your child is up to you – assuming you do not abuse or neglect.

For each question asked, I can pose back a whole lot more:

Why do you ask?
What about the situation is important for your child?
Is this your issue or the child’s?
What else is going on in your home? Work?
Is this issue worth a big fight?
In the long run is it really that important?

I do not know your families and cannot answer specific questions...but I can give some education and advice.

Your child is yours; he/she is an individual with a set of experiences, feelings, thoughts and interests that are different from yours and different from all the other children in the class or neighborhood.

If you read some earlier posts, you saw that I wrote about uniqueness, cultural, familial and other differences. All these factors go into making your child one special being who is, at the same time, a citizen of your home, neighborhood and universe.

It’s tough being a kid – you need to learn a lot, to practice what you are learning and to ultimately make your own way in the world while still being a social creature who lives among parents, family, classmates and all.....

Here is a personal example... my son was never a good student in his early years. Did I punish him for failing classes or not doing homework? No - I explained that these were his choices and that no matter how he did in school I loved him – but that I was disappointed about those choices he was making.

Years after finishing high school, he finally decided he really wanted to go to college and was turned down in his first application due to his high school grades..[I did not say I told you so.]

So off he went to a community college and then transferred to the school that had turned him down - where he is now on the Dean’s List and invited to be part of the Honors College....

Would he be here now if I had forced the issue when he was younger? I don’t think so – neither does he...

One of his comments to me a few years ago was that I picked my fights carefully as he was growing up. There were issues I ignored and some I did not – but to the now grown-up him the one’s I picked as issues were the ones that he now knows are important as values to live by.....and it was great to hear him say that – because for me, in the long haul, having an adult child who is a caring, thoughtful human is the important part of child rearing.

Others may disagree -- but go back to where I started this post – how we raise our children is a choice we make. The scary part is that we do most of it in hopes that it works out.

But I am also a believer in the idea that we can always change - so if you make what you consider a mistake with your child – you and your child can always make changes in what you are doing.