Like all activities involving interaction with other human beings, parenting is an art, not a science. Like maintaining a good marriage, it takes work.
A very wise woman named Rhonda Robinson wrote an article entitled, Five Ways Parents can Transform their Wild Boys into Mature Men. It's a good article. Here are her five ways:
5. Replace His Sense of Entitlement with an Opportunity.
4. Give Him a Code of Honor to Live By.
3. Show Him the Power of Bridled Strength
2. Teach Him to Reject a Disposable World
1. Expect Him to “Pull His Own Weight.”
It's all good advice, and her article elaborates on each point. It is important to teach children to focus on the world around them, and not just themselves and their toys. A code of honor, or morality grounds us and guides our actions. Teaching a child self-control and self-discipline will pay a lifetime of benefits, for them, for you, and for those around them.
Good things take time and effort!
77 comments:
Well Steve, if professional guidance on raising children produces someone of your sparkling intellect, discriminating judgement, and exquisite manners, I think we're better off with Heloise.
The point of the whole thing was summed up perfectly when the woman said something to this effect:
We came of age at a time when you FIXED things that got broken instead of THROWING THEM AWAY.
~ FreeThinke
It is high time that parents stop trying to be their children's best friend and accept the job of being a parent. Parenting is the most important job and the heaviest resposibility that any man or women will ever undertake.
I almost did a spit-take before I made sure the author of this list wasn't born before 1965. Getting a sermon on personal responsibility from a Baby Boomer is so much going to a sewage treatment plant for a bake sale.
5. Replace His Sense of Entitlement with an Opportunity.
But Grandpa will die without his Medicare fix. Who do you love more, Gramps or America?
4. Give Him a Code of Honor to Live By.
Thou shalt not expect largesse from your extortion victims?
3. Show Him the Power of Bridled Strength
Those Medicare benefits you're eating? You didn't build that.
2. Teach Him to Reject a Disposable World
But sir, you only paid for 18 months of your retirement...
1. Expect Him to “Pull His Own Weight.”
Wal-Mart is hiring door greeters.
Steve: I've read the "professional" child rearing books. The government nannies hand them out to parents of newborns. Most of it is bullshit written by over-educated people who do not have kids.
Had my wife and I followed those books, our teens would be little wanksters running the streets in $300 sneakers. Instead, they are A students who participate in the community around them in a positive way.
I thank my own parents and my wife's parents for imprinting on us what good parenting is.
I also thank Dr James Dobson for writing "Dare to Discipline." We both read it as new parents and agreed that was the way to go. Parenting based upon personal responsibility and consequences, backed up always by unconditional love.
So, unlike many progressives, I could give a crap about ivory tower pseudo-scientific theories of unquantifiable subjects. I learned long ago to ditch the social science eggheads and go with what works based upon history, empirical data, common sense and human nature all evaluated by the light of reason.
"Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
"Let all bitterness and wrath and anger, and clamor and evil-speaking be put away from you with all malice, and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, who for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."
Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of our Lord and of His Son, Jesus Christ.
FreeThinke: An appropriate Bible quote for this Sunday.
Looks like somebody crapped in Steve and Beamish's Wheaties this morning.
Even when I post something I think will be innocuous and non-controversial, the negative natterers have to show up and throw lemons.
Sunday School.
Boy Scouts.
Don't leave him to his friends or school for guidance.
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Steve certainly is a piece of work; his parents must be awfully proud. Beamish’s crabbiness comes from low testosterone which he can turn around. Sadly, I fear Steve is lost to us forever.
Thank you for this excellent post.
I'm pretty much in agreement with you, Silverfiddle. My parents pushed me to be self-reliant and self-sufficient. I guess that's what parents do when they can't pay someone else to be mommy and daddy.
But, it is what it is. What parent has any credibility preaching that list above *if* their own sense of "entitlement" has them foisting a $16 Trillion national debt upon the next generation?
What parent has any real code of honor to live by *if* they're reduced their efforts to maintaining themselves to holding their hand out and begging Uncle Sam to turn their paltry "contributions" into more than it can possibly pay for?
Who among the Baby Boomers who have already squandered most of the wealth, prosperity and opportunities intended for the next three generations has "unbridled strength?"
Who among the Baby Boomers doesn't faithfully believe the world is disposable? Don't forget this is the generation that legalized abortion, replaced pristine environments with pollution and waste, and held as a foreign policy "we can nuke the planet more times than you." All the while tabbing up a bill they fully intended someone else to pay.
With a $16 Trillion national debt, entirely composed of various Baby Boomer "entitlement" expenses billable to the ensuing generations atop those generation's own expenses, who among Baby Boomers "pulled their own weight" or even knows someone who did?
There are exceptions to the rule, of course. My Baby Boomer parents can't be condemned by my measures above, but they are rarities.
We didn't get where we are as a nation with a Baby Boomer generation as a whole that does not fit the description I've given. There has never been a more despicably useless generation in American history. That's what I'm scoffing at. I don't want to hear a goddamned thing about personal responsibility, honor, or integrity from ANYONE born before 1965.
Beamish’s crabbiness comes from low testosterone which he can turn around.
Cute. I had heard Obama had created more disability dependents than jobs. Were you one of them, Sam?
You burn with righteous indignation, Beamish. If the Boomers had your attitude, we would not be in the dire straits we now find ourselves in.
You observed:
"There are exceptions to the rule, of course. My Baby Boomer parents can't be condemned by my measures above, but they are rarities."
How do you know the author doesn't fit that category as well? Also, you would take no advice from any boomer? Doesn't that contradict your statement about their being exceptions?
This stinking, rotten system that is collapsing around us was built over a century by progressives preaching "scientific methods" over logic, common sense and collective wisdom of the ages, and successive generations bought it.
While I lament this fact, I do not heap scorn upon those who were not the authors but were merely people living their lives and raising families.
Perhaps you can find a little charity in your heart?
Perhaps you can find a little charity in your heart?
I screamed at the driver before leaping out of the car he drove off a cliff.
What else can I do?
After making sure this failed system gets a fanfare funeral, that is...
How parents can raise children with entitlement expectations is strange to me; we certainly weren't raised that way. At least not expecting government entitlements.
it was a rich feeling to know Dad's provisions were something we could rely on and we never ever took advantage of those. His love was the biggest provision (as was Mom's)..a new dress or money for a movie were always looked upon as a surprise and a great gift with tons of love behind it. We had a lot of children and Dad's business did well but he worked very hard and never didn't have to worry about us. My mother made his home his castle and we saw that and did the same for him when he came home from work; utter love and total TOTAL respect.
He gave a code of honor to live by in observing his daily life. I miss him.
Discipline was nothing we ever had to have a book for...believe me, my parents could have WRITTEN DARE TO DISCIPLINE :-) ANd we ADORED them through even the toughest discipline; how they managed that, I'll never know, not being a parent myself.
"I learned long ago to ditch the social science eggheads and go with what works based upon history, empirical data, common sense and human nature all evaluated by the light of reason."
HEAR! HEAR!
A doctor named Benjamin Spock
Deserved to be given a sock
Not ribbed cotton hose.
As you might suppose,
But a hammer hard blow from a jock!
His son committed suicide, if I remember rightly. Doesn't that make a great recommendation?
I wonder how many lives -- and souls -- have been lost thanks to presumptuous intellectual morons of his meddlesome, know-it-all ilk?
Children may not exactly crave discipline, but they are sure to feel unloved and unwanted if none is imposed on them.
~ FT
Steve, methinks you just might be the dummy that all those handbooks for dummies were written for.
Not a bad set of maxims.
Where it goes wrong is when the fringe starts whining that the reason we haven't achieved the utopia is that other group who don't an adequate code.
The pure stinky cheese.
Ducky: If you're talking about my fringe, you're off base. We don't believe Utopia is possible in this world.
The Pollyannish Utopians are your fringe. Get a grip.
SF you said "I thank my own parents and my wife's parents for imprinting on us what good parenting is."
THis is my biggest fear; that, more and more, parents are NOT doing this anymore.
Ed's right, too....parents have to keep their kids busy with wholesome things to do; today's left would ask "who are YOU to define wholesome?," you know that; and that's a big part of the problem. We have forgotten in the name of Political Correctness and "if it doesn't hurt other people, do it".
Stevie, the Delusional Asshat that you are, rather than spew your ever ready hyperbole and BS about me why don't you produce factual evidence in regard to what you allege?
Oh, that's right, you can't. It doesn't exit other than in your polluted delusional poor excuse of a mind.
Steve's mental state would have to improve dramatically to be considered delusional.
... today's left would ask "who are YOU to define wholesome?"
------
Who are you to define wholesome?
And who are you, a spoiled brat, to tell me that my leftist single father didn't work his ass off to teach his family values?
Ducky, thanks for confirming what I said and, by the way..."spoiled brat?" What a lovely, lofty goal. No, not spoiled, but I'm working on it. Remind me when I get to work at 8am every day, okay? thanks.
As for your single father? Good for him. I'm SURE you do have some values; unlike your normal banter that shows you hate this country which welcomed your family here with open arms only to have them wish it was a Socialist state.
Oh Stevie old boy, any Asshat Ignorant delusional fool can take one sentence from an entire post and twist it to suit their evil and hateful purposes.
Stevie old boy you are not only stupid and ignorant you are a complete waste of oxygen.
Go climb back into the sewer from whence you came. The rats I am are waiting for your smelly disgusting ass.
>You prove everyday that you lack education and common sense
Stevie, son, I'm assuming that you directed that comment toward Silverfiddle, so I'll respond under that assumption. (It's hard to be confident when interpreting your comments since you appear to be a non-native speaker of English, so forgive me if I'm wrong.)
By way of background, I've got me all kinds of fancy book lernin' and all the official documents with the requisite letters "BA," "MA," and "PhD" on them, I teach at a large Pac-12 university, and I have spent quite a while working with and interacting with and reading the work of many of the biggest names in a variety of academic fields. I don't know what level of formal education Silverfiddle has, but I can tell you, without any doubt, that when it comes to analyzing and understanding issues, constructing logical arguments, and expressing the concepts and conclusions in a coherent fashion, Silverfiddle could wipe the floor with 90% of those "highly educated" scholars.
You, on the other hand, seem to even struggle with the construction of simple sentences. Both the syntax and the content are generally incoherent and inconsistent. I suggest that, before you finish junior high, you at least take a course in logical argumentation and a course in basic composition, in addition to your ESL class.
A few months of intensive cognitive-behavioral therapy would also be quite helpful. It should be covered by most health insurance plans.
Best of luck in your future endeavors. I'll keep you in my prayers.
>you compared Obama's economic policies to Hitlers.
And I'm sure that you provided a thorough and rational argument against that assertion. (Oops! Was I being sarcastic? Bad me. BAD!)
>progressives preaching "scientific methods"
I have always found it curious that regardless of all the preaching of those methods, they never seem to get around to actually using them.
Or maybe we merely misunderstand, and "scientific methods" really means "emoting and seeing what we can twist and force into our predetermined conclusions, and if that doesn't work, we can always call somebody a racist."
Natsuo (夏男) said...
"... And I'm sure that you provided a thorough and rational argument against that assertion. ..."
Steve? ROFLMAO
Natsuo, while you were blowing more out of your ass than a Mexican drug mule you came a little short on content.
Natsuo: I am humbled by your words. I was going to cut out a quote and repeat it, but it was all good.
Thank you for looking up from grading papers and stopping by. I know you are a busy man.
Yeah Ducky, he probably didn't have enough slobbery vulgarity for your tastes.
Go to bed. Senile old men need their rest, and by my reckoning it almost 10:30 on the east coast.
He's a Farmer John multiple personality.
But a more important issue is why a perfectly reasonable article draws such a huge fight.
Steve doesn't help and probably there isn't any way to recover from that but I don't know why we can never go very far without our discontents blaming this one or that one or this group or that group. It contradicts the values that were the original article, no?
Of course then we have z yammering about being welcomed to this country when my ancestors go back to Governor Winthrop. My Ukrainian grandfather was a different story but the maternal side goes back a long way in this country.
Anyway, why is it that even a common sense article starts this off? In this case I'll say okay it was Steve but even modest agreement seems impossible.
I'm a night person.
Ducky, sorry I don't have your family tree memorized...
All you've ever talked about is your people coming to America presumably for freedom and then wishing it were a socialist nightmare...so I didn't have a lot of information to go on.
I don't know why we can never go very far without our discontents blaming this one or that one or this group or that group. It contradicts the values that were the original article, no?
Here's a flash: no one does this with more regularity than you do, Ducky. As you are fond of saying, buy a vowel.
Well it's true Sam that I consider you so far off the deep end that agreement is impossible. I live in 2012 not 1776 and I can't get behind efforts to return us to those days.
I do agree with Silver a fair amount of the time. However, I can't quite get him to admit that Hayek doesn't have all the answers.
Perhaps Ducky, but Hayek does have the lions share of the answers. As opposed to say Keynes.
There were already soup kitchens and welfare offices built when Ducky's ancestors got here.
I think it was Edmund Burke who said, " One can only reason with reasonable men." It's regrettable that those who can bring no other arguments beyond insult and invective tend to drag the discussion down to their level, but patience is a finite virtue.
>Steve? ROFLMAO
Thus the "Oops! Was I being sarcastic?"
>while you were blowing more out of blah, blah, blah...
Is that even supposed to mean anything? Although, maybe I should defer to you, since you are well versed in the practice of being "short on content."
>He's a Farmer John multiple personality
Again I ask: Is that even supposed to mean anything?
You must be tired, because you're usually not quite this vacuous.
>Thank you for looking up from grading papers and stopping by.
I'm actually not teaching this semester, so no grading. (Huzzah!) I'm trying to get some work done on the book project I've been dragging out for far too long...A couple of journal articles I need to finish up before the end of the year too.
Maybe I should uninstall Skyrim...
One of the primary duties we have to ourselves is to make a rational determination as to which potential interlocutors we run into are worth our time and attention and which are not.
I see little evidence that any such wise discrimination is ever made here in the blogosphere.
Pity!
"I'm a night person."
Yes, like the vampire, the succubus, bad dreams and the bogeyman.
You live in endless night, Canardo.
I smell shit.
Isn't it time somebody called in a janitor and sanitized this place.
I for one don't want to spend my time posting pearls of wisdom in a shit house.
Steve, or are you shithead Tom? Cause you sure write and sound like him. The apology admits no wrongdoing. It admits to having made an over the top comment. The apology was for respectable people like Shaw. I do not make apologies to lying shiheads and fucking delusional ashhats like you.
So Steve, go stick your head up a dead goats ass and have a conversation with someone who actually gives a shii.
RN, trust me I have read the filth that as you called him "shithead Steve" writes on this blog and on some of the other :shithead" blogs where the 2 of you argue as well. And trust me he furthest and most remote thing that I would do is agree with that Obama ass-kissing ding-bat "shithead Steve" .
However, I would like you to clear it up and to hear it from you
Did you say those awful things that he has accused you of saying or not on your blog about the Jews in Germany?
I am fully aware about the lies these Liberal Whore’s say, so I’d like your explanation.. Please. I am Jewish and it’s important to me to know both sides of this argument I heard his and I don’t trust anything that spews from his ugly mouth. So let’s hear yours.
Damn, Beamish really hates all of us Baby Boomers -- even those of us who have lived a Spartan existence. Nothing like being lumped in with the selfish geezers even if one isn't a selfish geezer. **sigh**
beamish, as usual, starts from false premises. The boomers are the first generation to actually collect LESS than they actually paid in to Social Security.
If he has a beef, he should take it up with the so-called "Greatest" generation.
Of course, beamish already KNOWs all this, but stubbornly refuses to process it.
...apparently, his need for finding scapegoats to blame for his problems exceeds his need to find real solutions to them (like the Ryan Plan).
ps - mr. ducky... Natsuo? REALLY?
*shakes head*
You're starting to make beak look good, by comparison. ;)
@ Mizz Anonymous, What I said was in reference the reality of what happened during the holocaust. While I was not alive during those horrific murderous Nazi years my understanding was the Jewish people living in Germany did not physically resit the Nazis. This I was taught in school and heard it from conversations as well with those who did live during those years.
My apology was to those who were offended as I recognized I did not make the point I clearly and with the sensitivity I might have.
With respect to my views...
1) I support the Jewish peoples right to their homeland and stand behind Israel and its right to exist as a Jewish state.
2) My wife works for a Jewish family owned business and they are both nice and compassionate people.
3) The corporation I was employed with for 27 years was started by a Jewish family and the President and CEO of the company was Jewish, a man I got to meet and spend time with unfortunately only four times while with the company. He was as fair and honest a man as I've ever had the pleasure to meet.
4) I'll say no more because one I do not feel it necessary because I know in my hearty and soul I have no ill feelings towards any individual Jew or the Jewish people.
Steve (or Tom) is trash and I'll leave it there.
Wasting more oxygen that real people good be using I see.
What a fucking waste of human flesh you are.
You are undoubtedly the biggest racist lying asshat there ever was.
No go back to the sewer from which you emerged.
Steve,
You are NOT one of my official deputies. How DARE you terrorize a goyem w/o an official license. It's simply NOT kosher.
Now either come to my blog and be deputized OFFICIALLY, or be run out of town, tarred and feathered with the REST of the goyem.
You HAVE been warned.
Listen all of you idiots who think this is a big joke.
Making jokes or jesting about the way the Nazis treated Jews is not funny. never mind being offensive which it is, but it's plain STUPID and its disrespectful to all people especially to the families who had relatives that were in the Holocaust. And it should be stopped. This is obviously someones bad idea of a joke. And SF should stop it RIGHT NOW!
Well Silver never mind what This Maddening World suggests, I simply won't be visiting blogs that have Steve's sewer line running through their cellar.
Stinks up the entire house. Take care.
I wonder if these bleeding heart PC liberals would find this cheap adolescent subject so whimsical if they substitutes the word Jews with Muslims?
Blah blah blah.
Calling people racists and trying to shame them into not being listened to, is despicable NAZI-ism in its' PUREST form.
THAT is what the RNC did to Ron Paul.
...and THAT is what you're trying to do to RN now!
This subject is not funny and in fact I think that it crosses the line. Any jokes about the Holocaust victims are just grotesque. Think about it this way would you laugh at a relative being led into a gas chamber? Haven’t we learned from our past yet? And are we going to repeat this unfortunate and saddling time. If we haven’t learned anything from all of this then this means that these people have died in vain. Why am I saying this at this time? Because the human race needs to learn from past mistakes or sooner or later we' ll have another World War. We are currently being divided again, between racists, and religions again. This time it’s the Mormons that seems to be the topic of fun. And it sickens me to see it. And we all know who is doing it this time. And if you don’t I’ll tell you, it’s our dear leader Barack Obama..The great divider. The truth maybe ugly and hard to swallow, but we need to remember it and learn from it, otherwise we are the same as our enemy.
And please don’t try to tell me what’s despicable NAZI-ism. I am well aware of what the Nazis did to the Jews, and what is Despicable! Hitler's Hatred of Jews has NO place here.
Inspector AIPAc - I will not be shamed at all. I just have choosen to NOT be in the company of sewer garbage. Take care.
It was NOT my intention to shame RN at all, it was Steve who said.Nazi boy..and who was throwing around those terms as it they were meaningless.
RN did apologize and I for one accept his apology.. It was Steve who tried to make a shameful thing about it.
It's not at all funny to story tell about 6 million people who were killed in this manner .
And as for the puny puck who calls himself " Inspector AIPAc" Are you really suggesting that forcefully putting innocent people, including women and small children, in internment/concentration camps against their will, and putting 6 million of them to death is a joke?
Yes or no?
"Teach Your Children Well"
I think that no matter how much we try, we will not be able to make our children understand history the way we do,if we actually lived through it. I am the first generation born after the Holocaust and I had the advantage to speak to many survivors first-hand.. No one can tell me that there was no Holocaust or that it was exaggerated. But there are people who do listen to the propaganda from these anti Israeli dictators and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who will tell you that the Holocaust never happened. .
It does not frighten me when the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says the Holocaust never happened, because anyone who would believe that crazy man isn't worth listening to.
We'll never get beyond accusations of racism and anti-Semitism until those charges leveled COMPLETELY out-of context, have no power.
Nothing that RN said here merited the slap-down that Steve tried to dish out here.
As for my impersonating a Jewish political correctness enforcer, it is in very VERY bad taste. But get over it. It's in no worse taste than baseless charges of anti-Semitism.
And if I offended you, Maddenning World, I am truly sorry.
(but NOT sorry enough to stop calling a spade a spade)
I actually believe that this is the way forward on racism and anti-Semitism.
Steve said...
"Love the way you sickos stick up for the Jew hate RN spews
I guess you all agree with him
Racists"
Maybe it's because we trust him more than we trust you....
>Try reading his own words
Well, Stevie, I have, on a daily basis, for quite a while, which gives me plenty of information to know that regardless of how much you try to twist things or cite them out of context, you have no rational basis for your accusations. What you're doing is rather cowardly, and you're not even good at it.
Pardon my bluntness, but you're just plain not very bright, and each time you post another bizarre and semi-coherent comment, you merely make yourself look more pathetic and desperate for attention. However, there are plenty of kind people who frequent this blog who feel compassion toward you and will pray for your speedy recovery from whatever it is that is tormenting your mind and causing such unhealthy behavior.
Assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh!
The boomers are the first generation to actually collect LESS than they actually paid in to Social Security.
Only if they're still paying $600 for a 64 kilobyte computer.
DeNile is a very deep river, beamish.
Steve,
If you are going to INSIST upon prosecuting the goyem for uncommitted war crimes, you really MUST come to my website, register as a PC Enforcement Deputy and get officially deputized, otherwise everyone with a political axe to grind and a boat load of faux moral outrage (like yourself) will continue to impersonate the true friends of the Hebrew race.
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