Day 78 - Parenting
Mar. 19th, 2010 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolfsbrideI don't have kids. My only claim to parenting is years of babysitting. However, I can't help thinking that you're not doing your kids any favours when you do everything for them. Take for example tonight.
I'm going to be house sitting for a week and the lady came to pick me up since they're leaving tomorrow morning early to go to Mexico. We got there about 6pm. She nagged her two boys about packing until 9:30pm. It's wasn't even because they hadn't packed. It was that she had to check their bags to see if they had packed the right stuff.
Let me be clear. Her sons are not eight years old. Her sons are FOURTEEN AND SIXTEEN! I'm sorry but at that age, you need to step back a little. If they were my sons, I'd let them pack whatever and when they got there and had the wrong types of clothes or whatever, then that's a lesson learned and they would pack better the next time around.
You standing over them giving them the hairy eyeball is not promoting their growth. Sure, when kids are small they need you to limit their choices and help them with stuff. But when they're older, they need to learn how to assess their choices and make the right decisions. You making the decisions for them is a recipe for disaster.
But what do I know. I don't have kids.
I'm going to be house sitting for a week and the lady came to pick me up since they're leaving tomorrow morning early to go to Mexico. We got there about 6pm. She nagged her two boys about packing until 9:30pm. It's wasn't even because they hadn't packed. It was that she had to check their bags to see if they had packed the right stuff.
Let me be clear. Her sons are not eight years old. Her sons are FOURTEEN AND SIXTEEN! I'm sorry but at that age, you need to step back a little. If they were my sons, I'd let them pack whatever and when they got there and had the wrong types of clothes or whatever, then that's a lesson learned and they would pack better the next time around.
You standing over them giving them the hairy eyeball is not promoting their growth. Sure, when kids are small they need you to limit their choices and help them with stuff. But when they're older, they need to learn how to assess their choices and make the right decisions. You making the decisions for them is a recipe for disaster.
But what do I know. I don't have kids.
