We've been off the topic for a time while focusing on marriage. In the last parenting post we discussed being a helicopter parent vs a drill sergeant parent and asked which was the best or is their an alternative. Cline/Fay have an interesting insight they call "Love and Logic Tip #1". It talks about our gut instinct that invariably has been influenced by how we were parented. Were your parents helicopters or drill sergeants? Let's see what they have to say:
The techniques of parenting with love and logic may rub some parents the wrong way. Allowing kids to fail with love, letting the SLO's (significant learning opportunities) do the teaching, treating themselves right as a way of modeling healthy adult behavior - these principles can go against the parental grain. Most of us raise our children based on our gut reactions. But how do we know whether such responses are trustworthy or just the result of bad lasagna? Actually, adult "gut reactions" are the result of childhood responses to family emotions and interactions. Therefore, "gut feel" is more valid if we had a happy childhood and presently have peaceful and rewarding relationships at home and elsewhere. Sure we all will "nerd out" more often with children if our own childhood and/or present home life are in turmoil, but generally our actions with our kids will be fine. If, on the other hand, we react to our childhood by saying, "I sure want to do things differently with my kid than my mom and dad did with me," then our gut reactions will probably be untrustworthy and faulty. Those instinctive reactions come from our parents - and we hated the way they parented us! ....... thoughts?
Interesting that we don't particularly like the way our parents raised us, and we vow to do it differently with our children - yet, we do not have a plan - or having it, fail to practice it, as we raise our children. We just revert to doing the same things our parents did and hoping we will get a different outcome.
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