Parenting

What makes parenting good? I suppose I would define good parenting as parenting that meets a child’s needs and teaches them how to be able to have success presently and in the future.

Children have several basic needs that need to be met, and when they are not met, the child frequently develops a mistaken approach of how to fill that need. These basic needs include contact and belonging, power, withdrawal (or the ability to take breaks), protection, and challenge.

Children not having the needs for contact and belonging met tend to act out with undue attention seeking. These are the class clowns, the ones who prod at you repeatedly, who bully people just to get a reaction, etc. I remember being told as a child to just ignore these sorts of children since they were just trying to get a reaction. First of all, that is practically impossible because attention-starved children become experts at attention-seeking. Second of all, it is just sad that a child would be so starved of attention that they would rather get negative attention than none. Third of all, ignoring them never did, and probably never would get them to stop because that need is still not being met. Over the years, I’ve honestly developed a lot of compassion for them. It doesn’t excuse what they did, but it helps me forgive them. I sometimes wonder what would have been different if those needs had been met. Contact and belonging needs are met mostly with attention, physical contact, and letting children feel like they are contributing to the household well-being. Doing chores side-by-side with children can contribute greatly to their sense of belonging. 

The need for power is tricky. I know that a lot of parents feel like they are constantly fighting with their children for power. If a child is not able to influence what happens in their lives they tend to resort to rebellion or controlling others. Which usually makes the parents want to limit their decisions more because the child is acting out, which makes the child want to act out more and on and on in a vicious cycle. Kids need to have some ability to choose. Of course some, if not most, of their decisions will be bad decisions. However it is by making choices and having to live with the consequences that they learn decision making. However, being on the opposite spectrum where the child is making all the family’s decisions there is also bad. The long-term isn’t really a concept children can grasp when they are really little. Don’t let children make decisions where safety is involved, someone else’s well-being is involved, or the consequences are too long-term or far in the future. Limit the child’s choices to only ones appropriate for the situation and their age.

Protection is a need that can be really dangerous if a child feels it is not being met. This can lead to them trying to get revenge. Unfortunately, you cannot and should not protect your child from everything. Feeling pain is a part of life. The solution is to teach forgiveness, and assertiveness without aggression. This is a hard one to teach. For one thing because you have to model it in your own life, and living it is hard.

Withdrawal is the chance to take breaks when stressed. If one cannot take breaks, they tend to avoid tasks completely, such as scrolling through social media to avoid schoolwork. I actually also associate this behavior with perfectionism. This one can actually ruin your life. I know someone who started to flunk school because of excess withdrawal from reality when he became an adult (I’m not sure if this is a side effect of the parenting or something else though). To be honest, I can also act like this, but usually only near the end of a semester because while I’m doing school I often push myself too hard for too long and don’t myself take any time to recover. Let your children take breaks and withdrawal and be by themselves sometimes so they can have a chance to collect their thoughts and recover.

Challenge is also a need. This is usually accomplished by letting children do things. A major reason this one doesn’t get met is that it’s frequently easier to just do things for children rather than let them learn to do it. I worked at a kiddie ride in an amusement park, and a lot of the toddlers wanted to buckle and unbuckle themselves. I was not allowed to start the ride until everyone had their buckles on, and unfortunately part of my job was to keep the ride safe and the line moving which meant that I couldn’t always take time to let the children do this. This resulted in a few missed opportunities to let the child challenge themselves. Remember as a parent your job is not to keep the line moving, it’s to teach the child. They will do things painfully slow and extremely badly because they do not know how to do it. But if you never let them, they will never experience the rewarding sense of mastering a difficult task.

I am fortunate enough to be blessed with wonderful parents, who taught me well. It’s difficult work though. I send out my respect for every overwhelmed parent who is trying to do the best they can. It is truly a difficult and beautiful work you are involved in.