Good Enough Parenting: Stop Worrying and Start Parenting

It is the job of parents to make their infants and children feel safe and cared for. This is what gives them the strength to go out into the world with confidence that they can survive and thrive.

Parents should do the best they can with their children, and the younger they are the more important it is that the child's need be met.

However, as we see in the story above, Johnny, clearly a child with many natural gifts, never had a need to speak, so he didn't.

Now, I am not suggesting that anyone deny their child, or certainly an infant, something on purpose, but think about this...

Picture a mother who anticipated her baby's every need. She had a bottle or the breast ready just before the infant realized hunger, she put the blanket on at just the right time, every time and took it off just when needed...

Sounds great, doesn't it? However, the problem for your child is that if you give him or her everything at just the right time, when will he or she learn to ask for anything? When will your child learn to reach out and pull a cover over on top or to push one away?

It is the 'mistakes' that entice your child to think, to problem solve and to reach out to the world to solve the problem. That is what a hungry infant is doing when he or she cries. When those efforts are met with nourishment or a warm blanket, then the infant learns that she or he can have some control over a safe world, and also an unsafe world.

Now, even with all the mistakes you made the home is a pretty comfortable place. I mean, wouldn't you like to have someone pay all your bills, feed you at appropriate times and give you an allowance just for being you? Yes, a few chores, but really, its a pretty sweet deal.

Who would want to leave such a place?

That folks, is why your teenagers have to decide that you have horns and/or are about the stupidest people in the world. They have to think that their chores are tantamount to slavery and really need to argue with you about everything that happens, or ignore you.

They have to do this in order to want to leave. And folks you are going to make a lot of mistakes during this time. Some will help your child grow, some won't, but you won't hurt them.

I have dealt with so many parents who worry and sweat about every grade and know the child is due to a life of deprivation if they don't get into Carolina or Duke right out of high school. I tell them about myself and my daughter.

I knew that I was going to college, but I had no interest in a high school schedule that I hated. I just wasn't going to do it.

So when everyone else took biology, and I wasn't interested in memorizing things, I took World History (where I still had to memorize things, live and learn).

I took Art instead of Physics and Journalism instead of Algebra III. All of my friends told me that I was ruining my life. Well, I got into college, The University of Iowa, and grew up to have an interesting career making a good living. I doubt that having physics would have made my life any better now. I wasn't sure I would use the journalism or art either, they were just more interesting, but here I am using both on Squidoo!

Of course, had I later decided to go to medical school, I would have had some make up to do, but would that have really been so terrible?

Oh, btw, in the last 20 years I discovered science authors like Stephen J. Gould and others who make biology and physics interesting and am self educating about those very subjects!

So parents, don't get crazy about what your kids take in school.

She was more conventional than I and got b's in a very competitive high school. However, she had a terrible time with the SAT's. Took them twice, took a course, both times no good. She didn't get into any of her colleges and ended up going to a school so uncompetitive that she applied in August and got in.

I tell this story because I see so many parents get twisted up and twist up their kids about high school grades and SAT's! Good Grief, you would think they were fighting cancer! Ok, so more to the story...

So she went to the college and it was not a happy year. The kids there were not the kind of goal oriented kids she was used to being with. There were too many parties. But she found 9 others kids who were in her same boat. All 10 of them made all A's and were able to transfer out. She got into the highly competitive Rutgers University and, as she would say, Rutgers College, the hardest college there. You see transfers don't have to have SAT scores and she had done so well in college.

So the year didn't hurt her, in fact I think she learned a lot. When it came time to take the GED's she did so much better that she got a fellowship for grad school! And she did very well in a career that she loves!

I wouldn't change a thing. Remember, if you have an under achiever that child can always go to community college where he or she will do better or not. But high school is not end! If you have a child who is just lazy, be sure to let them know, with a smile, that community college is very nice. They will either study harder, or get a second chance at good old CC. It will save you lots of money! AND it will save you some ulcers.