✔ Reality: Kids are maimed while their parents watch.
“Watch it, he’s going to fall,” says the observant dad at the playground. “It’s ok, he needs to learn to be careful,” says the other, more modern enlightened dad watching his child about to break an arm, or leg, or worse.
Of course we all hope the dad didn’t really intend to abuse his child, but parents run the gamut from scary hands off, to so involved they speak for the child during play times. Learning from experience certainly is a great way to gain knowledge and beats listening to dumb old parents, and then ignoring their words of wisdom, but no child needs the school of hard knocks instead of a parent. For some reason many well meaning parents grasp upon an idea and then ignore the details. They insist learning the hard way is good, and then smugly stand back while their child burns his hands, bruises, bleeds, and suffers. Some misguided parents call it tough love, as if that excuses them, others will say it is child abuse. The problem is from the parent perspective a cut heels, bruises go away and that nasty bully is really teaching their child some sort of great life lesson, but the child sees it differently. They think that they are bleeding to death, the bruise is the most pain in their little lives and getting worse, and the bully is more terrifying than Godzilla. To cap it off, their great protector parent is standing by doing nothing; in fact their parent has defected to the other side and become an instigator of everything currently wrong in their life.
What to do - well for starters, parents can pay attention and learn their child’s habits. Do they fall in water every time they get near a fountain? Admit it, is he or she a klutz? And, they can pay attention to surroundings. Falling is the number one way kids get hurt. It doesn’t take much to spot dozens of traps at the park, school yard, back yard, store, or in the house. Let’s make a fast list; stairs, drop offs, swinging things at head height, hot things, water, throw-able things, finger pinchers, head/neck entanglers, ingestible and inhalable stuff, slippery places, strange pets, monkey bars, other kids doing stupid things. The list is endless and kids are curious, fast, devious, and for the most part poor liars about what they are up to.
✔Parents need to be parents all the time so that their children may be children all the time. This may seem simple and obvious, but the key words are, all the time, all it takes is an instant of inattention or one poor decision and the child suffers the consequences. Have you ever seen a five year old walking and balancing atop a wall or railing while the parent strolls nearby watching? That seems innocent enough until the child goes over the edge, and then the parent is too far away to help in a split second. If it were safe, then why is there a railing? The parent says to the EMT called to the scene of the accident, “it all happened so fast, I couldn’t do anything to help.” The parents mistake was the decision to let the child stand on the railing in the first place; it is the parents fault the child is hurt, period! End of story!
✔The next mistake to be avoided, is not giving comfort and not showing concern or empathy even if it’s just a little boo boo. Parents need to be parents all the time so that their children may be children all the time, and this includes providing solace when they stumble. No, giving solace does not create a cry baby, giving too much solace does.
Learning the hard way, is no excuse for lax parenting and needs to be put to rest once and for all.
No comments:
Post a Comment