Parenting

 

Welcome back fellas!

This week we talked about parenting and tips as to how become a better parent. This lesson meant a lot to because one of my top goals for when I have a family is that I want to be a good parent. I want to raise my kids in a great environment as well as teach them the good that there is to learn about life. In my class we learned about active parenting. What is active parenting?

Active parenting is having both parents and a parent take a proactive approach to raising their children. Though the definition is not quite clear examples will help define active parenting. From what I have a great example of active parenting is having the parents be part of their child development. So how do we do this? First, I want to put this out there; active parenting is far more common than what you might be thinking. Most parents are in fact being an “active parent”. Active parenting means that we are there with our kids helping them grow from their mistakes and teaching how to be good people while at the same building their personality and spirits grow. To further explain my point; there are two approaches to teaching a child from right and wrong. For example, if a child makes a mistake, we can explain to them what they did and help them grow and learn so that they do not commit the same mistake in the future. On the other hand, a parent can punish the child usually in a physical way or with a lecture. From these two points which way do you think is more beneficial to the child in the long run? I think we can all agree that the first approach would be the better approach and this approach is a great example of active parenting. However, what makes the second approach not the better option? From what I learned in my class by physically punishing a child can cause them to grow scared of the parent doing the punishing. To elaborate on this, if a child is punished by being spanked this is going to cause pain and the child’s brain can label the parent as a “threat” leading to the child to think of the parent in a negative way and causing him to be scared. If the child is scared, he is less inclined to talk to the parents since he will not want to be spanked again. This will then lead the child in a loop where he will continue to make mistakes without talking to the parents therefore, he will not learn as much from his mistakes, or he will not be corrected. That is bad because the child can start doing bad things and would not know any better. Obviously, this is a very extreme example but things like this do happen just not always to the extreme which I shared.

I have shared this information with my family so that they are aware of the effects of both approaches. I also am going to try really hard in order to be an active parent in my future children’s life because I want nothing but the best for them. I also find it crazy how much of an impact the way that we choose to raise our children can have on them. Sometimes parents do not always know the “best” way to raise their kids and they might think that by spanking them they will learn and become good children. Which is does happen, if a parent spanks their kids that does not mean they are bad parents it just means they have a different way of parenting.