Hey y'all! Long time no blog. How are y'all doing with this supposed end of the world? I'm surviving, even while working in a grocery store! Great to catch up in this one-sided conversation, so back to the blog.
I'm in my final class of winter semester, and I'm almost in the final week. I think I was a bit overly ambitious with the goal of posting an update every week, but here I am. I will be posting two more posts by the end of Saturday the 4th. I may or may not have left this project until the last minute... This class is a parenting class. You may be asking yourself, "Brianna, you're 19, why are you in a parenting class?" To answer your question, it is a required class for my degree and there's no time like the present to start learning how to raise my future children.
Understanding was the topic for the second week of classes. It was quite eye-opening for me. In one of the preparation readings for a discussion, I read about a parenting style that is extremely different from what I consider to be normal. There was a mother who raised her children based on their sex. Her sons were not expected to help with household chores, and were allowed to date whomever, and whenever they wished. The daughters on the other hand, were expected to do all the cooking and cleaning, and were only allowed to date men the family had approved for her. Men were supposed to go to college and financially support a family, while women were to stay housebound.
I was shocked while reading this. A mother had no hope for her daughter’s futures. There was no ambition to be bigger and better than a housewife. I was almost angry at the mother in this story because she was keeping her daughter from so much potential. As I sat and tried to calm down, I realized that this mother simply had a different view of normalcy than I did. My wrong was her right. I needed to try understand how she thought, and suddenly my hard feelings went away.
This change in perspective is needed while teaching children. It is impossible for children to think and understand things the same way we do. As parents, we must understand how children develop and how to best teach them at the different stages of development. There are four major things to remember when we start changing the way we parent (Steinberg, 2005, p. 68).
1. When children are flowing from one stage of development to the next, they are changing both physically and intellectually (Steinberg, 20005, p.67).
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that children change and learn, but sometimes it helps to remind ourselves that changes are happening everywhere. When a once agreeable child suddenly challenges everything you say, it can be very frustrating. The child is growing up, and testing the waters of agency.
2. The stages in which children develop are generally consistent (Steinberg, 2005, p.67).
As humans, we look for patterns. It brings us a sense of ease. There are patterns all around us in nature, so it makes sense that we would have patterns within us. Most children learn to walk and talk around the same time. Most learn how to ride a bike in elementary school. It makes sense that their intellectual developments also occur around the same time. We can see how this has already been put to use, by looking at the education system. Children are put into grades, and are taught the same material. Everyone in a grade is not the same age, which shows us how there is a natural variance in a child’s development. I was always the youngest in my grade, having a late summer birthday.
3. No one can control how and when they develop, both physically and intellectually (Steinberg, 2005, p.67).
Have you ever tried to control when it snows and when it doesn’t? I remember being told by my classmates that if we all put a spoon in the freezer, flushed and ice cube, and worse our PJ’s inside out, we would have snow the next day. This, sadly, never worked. Children are like the weather in this scenario. We cannot control when they begin to, or how quickly, they develop. There’s not much detail to go into here, you simply cannot control it.
4. The new developments that make your child seem more difficult to parent, are the same developments that are helping them succeed in other areas of their life (Steinberg, 2005, p.68).
When you daughter begins to stand up for herself at home, she is practicing what it will be like when she has to stand up for herself when you’re not there. Learning how to say no to things like drugs and alcohol, can start being reinforced by such simple things as a child saying “no” when they don’t want to eat their veggies. While they will need to eat their veggies, they will start to gain the confidence to say no to others.
My overall take away from that week’s lesson was that in order to understand how a child is developing, you have to try to think like they do. It is not easy, in fact it is very difficult to even begin thinking like others do, but it can be helpful when understanding and raising children.
Sorry it’s been so long since the last blog post. With the whole “end of the word” thing it has been quite hard to find time (and the motivation) to write blogs about parenting. It’s starting to feel like I’ll never become a parent because all my possible suitors are locked up in their houses. Oh well… I’ll have another two posts out in the next few days, so stay tuned!
Reference:
Steinberg, L.D., & Steinberg, L.D. (2005). Principle 4: Adapt Your Parenting to Fit Your Child. In The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting(pp.65-86). New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
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