PARENTING 101--Part 3--TEACH THEM

The element that I placed second in importance is to "Teach Them"!  Isn't that what we fear as parents the most?  Fear that we won't be capable of teaching our children all they need to know to grow up and become great adults?

First in importance is to love them, and then  to teach them!  Honestly we could keep it simple and say if we LOVE them and TEACH them, that is all we really need to do because the others could fall under those two categories.  My other elements could easily fall under those two.

Play with them

Respect them

Discipline them

Sacrifice for them

Love them Unconditionally

For the purpose of confusing things I will talk about teaching them with this blog and continue the others on later blogs.  

We hear the quote "It takes a village to raise a child", I agree it certainly does.  I couldn't be more grateful to my wonderful family (my kids grandparents, aunts, uncles), neighbors like Aunt Milly and Uncle Grant, all the Larkspur Lane Mafia who watched, coraled, and loved my kids.  Teachers in school and church, scout leaders, sports coaches all made our job so much easier.  BUT....that does not give us as parents the opportunity to NOT PARENT.  I think this is vitally important to re-learn.  Having been very involved in PTA's, as school district employee, and community liason in my parenting years I am sorry to say I have seen parents leave too much to "the village" that they should be taking on themselves.  With households having to have dual incomes these days it happens even more.  Please remember your children are the most important legacy you leave in this world.  Work to bring home the bacon, but don't let the bacon become more important than those little ones you are in charge of and love.  

I tried very hard to live up to this priority.  Though I did become an insurance agent with an insurance license I chose to not have a career in the industry, I just had a job.  In other words I didn't have my own agency I worked for other agents.  In many cases I did the work, but didn't collect the higher paycheck.  That was okay with me because my job was insurance, my career was my children and family.  My work gave my kids the extra things like sports, scouts, vacations, nicer clothes but it was easy to quit or work less if there was an issue that needed to be dealt with.  

So I guess the first hint in teaching our kids is to BE AVAILABLE.  Another thing that I learned was important was to LISTEN to them.  I learned from very important things about parenting from my kids.  I will give you a couple of examples,viz., One of my sons was about 2 1/2 or 3 and he kept coming into my room and saying "Mommy will you play with me?"  I would reply "Just a minute hon, Mommy's doesn't have time right now, but I will."  After the third time he came in and said "Mommy if you don't have time I will give you some of mine, cause I have lots!"  He threw his arms up and then down to his side to express his frustration.  What did I learn?  To look at things from his point of view, maybe to explain patience and the necessity of doing other duties, and to keep my priorities in order.  Don't you love being in a car with your kids?  So many things happen in a car.  Another time two of my sons were squabbling in the back of the car.  The oldest one about 3, hit the younger one.  I turned around and smacked him making that ironical statement, "Don't you hit your brother, ever!"  Pouting for a few minutes he was brave enough to say, "Mommy, if I'm not supposed to hit, why did you hit me?"  Now some mothers or fathers might have considered him to be a little smart aleck, but it struck me so hard that I listened to him.  It didn't make sense to hit when I was teaching not to hit, or bite when I was teaching not to bite, or yell when I was teaching not to yell.  Not to say that I always was able to avoid those things, but I tried, because it made sense.  I will talk more about that in the DISCIPLINE THEM part.  

What do we teach them?  This is part of intentional parenting instead of reactive parenting.  We need to actively participate with the other parent to decide what it is you want to teach.  It can come from our own experiences, how we were raised, what do we want them to learn?  Bud and I had conversations before we were married about what was important to us.  Bud joined my church so we could raise our kids with faith and with a religion we felt focused on family values.  We spoke many times as we were waiting that first 9 months.  Then it is an ongoing conversation.  One thing I think is vital is that parents be united in front of the children.  There may be differences about what to teach or how, but those decisions need to be ironed out before presenting to the kids.  Some of those things I think we chose to be the most important things we taught were:

FAITH

HOPE

HAPPINESS

ETHICS

MORALS

(ours not someone else's)

MANNERS

PATRIOTISM

SUCCESS

GOOD WORK ETHIC

BE THOUGHTFUL OF OTHERS

LIVE THE GOLDEN RULE

HONESTY

TO DREAM

 MARCH TO YOUR OWN DRUM

YOUR NAME MEANS SOMETHING

LOVING YOUR BROTHER

HONORING YOUR PARENTS 

YOU ARE IMPORTANT TO THIS FAMILY

There were several things I have learned since that I wish we had taught them, or done a better job at teaching.  They say however you can't give a gift you don't have.  So things that we didn't teach them were things we didn't know well enough to teach them.  Again, that's why you always have to keep learning so you can keep teaching.  One biggie was financial knowledge.  We did get life insurance as one of our first steps in marriage, we did always pay our bills on time, we did know how to squeeze a dollar and we taught our kids those things, but we didn't save for college, we didn't plan for retirement, and we did have a bit of a scarcity thought process.  My kids are successful and learned so many things on their own and will pass what they know on to their kids.  There are always regrets about what you didn't teach.  That's when I remind myself  "I did the best I could with the knowledge that I had at the time".  When you get frustrated with your parenting, you need to give yourself a break and tell yourself  "I am doing the best I can with the knowledge that I have right now", then maybe determine to find a way to improve.  It's always one step at a time!

I  hope these little blogs can help you in some way if you are in the middle of parenting.  Please share some of your ideas as well.  Afterall, I'm not an expert.  I didn't get that little manual with my children either.   We just all have to help each other.