Anyhow, first things first, do this:
Close your eyes. Have a vision of what you would like your child to be in 10years, 20 years and even 40 years.
Do I get a Doctor? A hope that most parents have for their children.. (admittedly I secretly harbour that hope too .. blah)
or
Do I get a firefighter? That's what Jill wants to be when she grows up!
Julia, Founder Director of Julia Gabriel, told us to do just that. Picture them in their teens, them as adults and them as parents. How they grow, what they grow up to be very much depends on how we as parents, bring them up. At the end of the day, regardless of what occupation they are in, regardless if they are enjoying singlehood or DINKs (dual income no kids) or parents, we need them to have values that will see them through life, compassion, determination, motivation amongst others.
It's up to us to decide how we want to deal with the discipline of our children. We can spoil them rotten by giving them everything they ask for or we can be very autocratic and insist they only do things the way we want. But we all know that either is not ideal and we should always seek a balance between the two.
Easier said than done definitely. Nobody is perfect and there are many occasions when I lose my self control and scream at the kids when the noise they are making gets unbearable, when the results are far off from expected.
But now, I'm reminded to put myself in the shoes of my children and to understand that each child is different and has his/her own temperaments. Close friends know that I'm often lamenting how Jill & Jen are as different as chalk and cheese! One is loving, obedient, yet often requires a lot of guidance in her decisions. The other, is boisterous, mischievous yet fearless by deciding on his own what he wants to do and how he does it. Needless to say, our role as parents, is to discipline and NOT punish them. We need to help them understand that misbehaviour is not acceptable and to learn the consequence that comes with it and by being aware of their individual characteristics, we learn how to guide them, to get them to cooperate with us by giving them choices. Praise them when they make good decisions that warrant positive acknowledgement.Through empowerment, we hope to inculcate in them, respect, responsibility, independence and self-discipline and to encourage them further to want to do more good.
Positive discipline happens at home and even outside. We need to be consistent, to send across a firm message to our children that whining. As many may know that Jen is as that age where it's almost impossible to reason with him! He throws a tantrum when he deems fit and no amount of cajoling helps unless we give in to his demands which can range from having the iPad immediately or wanting to buy a toy. Obviously this works well to shut him up immediately but long term wise it's not going to do us any good. As discussed with Julia, we have slowly learnt to leave him alone when he's not at his best behaviour and slowly walk over, but turning back to make sure that the boy's safe. And we're proud to say that this has worked! He learns ( and is still learning) that we parents are the bosses and he needs to listen to us as much as we listen to him. This is pretty much still at the beginning stage and we are certainly looking forward to more reforms as we progress!
Once again, many thanks to Julia and team who have painstakingly organized this session for us to learn and share the many methods of helping our children grow up positively. Because of their efforts during the session to engage our children with story telling and crafts, we were able to focus our attention, knowing our children were well taken care of!
No comments:
Post a Comment