Is Your Lazy Parenting Setting Your Kids Up To Fail?

This is one of my first rants, so buckle up!  I have a lot of opinions about a lot of stuff and I think I’ll be sharing them more.  

I think we are doing our kids a disservice as parents,  and setting them up to fail AND I think it’s lazy.  In my opinion, we want our lives to be easy, but we are using the kids as an excuse and say we’re doing it for them.

Here’s what I mean.  When I was kid, not everyone got a trophy just for being on the team.  Not everyone got chosen to BE on the  team.  In fact, some people were even cut from the team!  Shocking, I know!

But, what I have seen over the past 30 years raising my kids is that all of the kids get a trophy for participating in anything, and everyone gets to play every game, and some organizations don’t even keep score for fear it might hurt someone’s feelings… really?!

This is what I am talking about, we are setting them up for failure.  Listen, they are gonna fail, they won’t all be chosen for the promotion, they won’t all get their dream job, some of them will be fired.  There will be people in the world who just don’t like them, and that’s okay, it happens.  Unfortunately we as parents aren’t allowing them to fail, we can’t teach them how to handle rejection, failure or disappointment, if they never experience it.  BUT, the worst part here is I think we are not allowing these things because we are too lazy  to mend their broken heart or teach them how to overcome being cut from a team because they weren’t good enough.  It’s easier for us to not have them disappointed or sad or broken, but, they weren’t put here for our lives to be easier.  Parenting is hard, childhood is hard – we need to BE the parents, we need to say no, and tell them to get over it, when needed.

Why in the world would we raise them up to think that life is a box of chocolates and then turn them out in the world, and they have NO idea of what’s coming, and then… they have no skills to handle it when things don’t go their way.  THEN we say get over it, grow up, be an adult…. we never taught them how.  We wanted their childhood to be nice, and sweet, and rosy… but, for them?  Or was it easier on us?  It’s hard to be the bad guy sometimes, but, we have to do it to help mold them into thriving members of society.

Have you thought about it?  Is Your Lazy Parenting Setting Your Kids Up To Fail?

Teen Battles:  Are You Choosing Wisely?

I have mentioned in the past that we have now raised 4 teens and we were Youth Pastors for 15 years and had worked with Youth Pastors for years before that.  One thing I have run into quite a bit with parents is their complaining about their kid’s choices.  Now, I am not talking about choosing bad friends, or choosing to skip school, or choosing to set random fires… I am talking about choosing to color their hair or parts of their hair purple or green, choosing to wear navy blue nail polish, or even whitish makeup or weird haircuts.

But, my response to all of that when parents complain to me was and is:  “If purple hair is your only teen issue… you don’t have a teen issue.”  Truly, your parents (yes, I am old) didn’t like your hip huggers, mini skirts, long hair on guys, hair metal bands, punk rock, screamo or rap music.

But, you turned out fine.  Choose your battles, is it a hill worth dying on?  Trust me their will be REAL teen battles and absolute hills worth dying on and PLENTY of them… hair style/color, and most clothing choices do not fall into that category.

Will dog collars and white makeup mean your child will become a “Satanist”?  I have known many teens who did all of that and none of them are now worshipers of Satan, they are married normal, loving parents who no longer where dog collars and white makeup :).

How do you know when to worry?  When your kid retreats from the family, seems depressed or overly angry.  I have found that these are all signs that there is something bothering them and often they feel guilty or are carrying a weight too heavy for them and they don’t know how to talk to you about it.

I am blunt with my kids, not mean, but blunt.  I ask outright questions, the hard ones, the ones you don’t want to get the wrong answers to, but, those are the ones that open the gap, start them talking and when I get an answer I don’t want, I don’t freak out – at least that’s my goal.  My Mom once told me that we often told her things she didn’t really want to know and she felt the reason was that she never acted shocked and that way we never tried to shock her.  I have tried to use that with my kids and it worked well for us.  Even now with the last one at home.  Their friends even shared stuff with us that they never have shared with their parents even now that they’re grown with kids of their own.

When your kids adopt a new “style” think first if this is something you think is worth a battle.  Do you want hundreds of inconsequential battles with your kids, or do you want to wait until there’s a bigger issue you feel can’t be chalked up to weird but acceptable to you?  

What are your thoughts?

Bratty Kids Is It Nature Or Nurture?  Who’s To Blame?

This week there was a bit of discussion on Facebook about a post a wrote a while back:  Is Your Lazy Parenting Setting Your Kid Up To Fail?  There was some discussion about “bratty” kids.  That’s not quite what the post was about, but, you know Facebook threads can run amuck!  lol

We have had this discussion in our own family and it gets me a bit upset.  There is one child in our family who has been called a “brat” more than once, and I have had this discussion with the people who have said it and with the mother of the child.   Are kids born brats?  Are they born with a propensity toward rude behavior?  Well, here we go, this is my blog and you are here so, I get to say how I really feel, right?  

I don’t think there’s such a thing as a “bad” kid.  I never have.  Kids are molded by their parents, siblings, experiences, and environment.  We as parents, though, are the ones who are provided to them to help them navigate it all.  So, when I hear someone call a kid a brat, I think it’s unfair to the kid – they didn’t raise themselves, they didn’t teach themselves how to respond to people and situations.  Their parents either did or didn’t. 

When people call an innocent child a brat, is it because they are too afraid to ask the parents why they raised a brat?  If so, then don’t say anything at all.  It’s not in any way beneficial to child or parent to call a child a brat. The parent is molding that child or they are just letting the child get older under their roof, which is a whole other problem, too!

How exactly do we expect a child of 5, 6, 7 or even older to learn to not be a brat on their own?   I think we all look at what we had or didn’t have growing up and decided how we would be as adults or parents based on that sometimes skewed view.  If we grew up poor, some vow never to let their kids grow up poor.  If we grew up being verbally abused we determine that will never happen to our kids.  Those are bad things to decide, but, too often I see people throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  They go too far the other way.  We went from Leave It To Beaver parents in the 50’s to Flower Power parents in the 60’s and 70’s!  That’s a huge shift, middle ground is not a bad thing.  We can be their parents and not their friends.  

I love all of my children and loved laughing and joking and having a good time.  I have tp’ed a friend’s house with them, I have taken pictures as they jumped off the roof onto the trampoline (I know, I know sometimes it’s hindsight..), but, I also corrected them when they needed it and taught them to be respectful to others.  There are lines and a middle ground – it doesn’t have to be Father Knows Best or living on a commune, there is a middle ground.

Next time you think of calling a child a brat, even under your breath, take a moment to remember they didn’t make themselves that way, it’s not their fault.  When they become a teen or young adult their struggle to fix those things will be much harder than if their parents had just done it when they were young.

Please don’t get upset and tell me that some kids have disorders that cause this behavior, I am obviously not talking about those situations.  But, not every kid that is deemed a brat has a disorder.

Are Schools Replacing Parents?

I was talking with a few teachers last night and found out that public schools in our area are now teaching Character Training.  Are schools replacing parents?  Now, I know I homeschooled all 4 of our kids so, I don’t really know what goes on in schools.  But, when I was growing up character training was done at home.

These teachers said every year it’s getting worse, that kids have “no home training” as one of my kids friends used to say.  They said they have no manners, they don’t say please and thank you and they are just lacking common courtesy.  When did these things stop being taught at home?  Don’t tell me it’s still being taught at home, because if it is, why are the schools now doing the parent’s job?

With my kids, please and thank you were some of the very first words they spoke.  When did we stop using Yes Ma’am, No Sir, and other terms of respect?  I required my kids to say “Yes Ma’am” and “No Ma’am”, as well as “Please” and “Thank you”.  When did parents decide that was unnecessary? 

If we don’t teach our kids to respect others what kind of country will this be when we are old and need taking care of, who’s going to do that?  And how will they treat us, if no one teaches them now?

And pardon me, but, truthfully character “molding” should not begin AFTER they start attending school, it should have started WAAAY before then!

According to a 4H Youth Development program they are training teachers how to teach the: 

“Six Pillars of Character”

• Trustworthiness
• Respect
• Responsibility
• Fairness
• Caring
• Citizenship

Personally, I just feel like more and more the schools are taking over our jobs as parents.  According to the teachers I spoke with, it’s necessary because the kids aren’t getting it at home.  Ok, so granted, I was a stay at home parent and that has to make a difference, I am sure.  But, just because parents work, it doesn’t negate their responsibility to teach their children common courtesy and the 6 things listed above.  If this “course” were something that was to supplement teaching that kids were receiving at home, I would agree that it’s a great thing, to back the parents training up.  But according to the teachers I spoke with, it’s not a backup – these kids aren’t learning these things at home.  The teachers I spoke with are teaching high school, too… even more shocking to me.

Have you noticed this at your school, or a lack of character training in your kids friends?