spokedust

old fashioned parenting

John Rosemond - super duper plan for being a parent, or something like that.  This is one of the books I was able to read in the last few weeks.  Nothing groundbreaking in this book and that actually makes it worth the few minutes of reading time. John essentially hails back a couple generations for better examples of parenting.  For example - compare & contrast a couple things today vs say 1950 something.  Today, families have 1-2 kids - spaced "ideally" years apart, spaced & limited quantity so parents can keep the kids the center of their attentions.  Rosemond hypothesizes that this focus on kids isn't for the kids, but rather for parents who want to have no limits on their experience. Rosemond doesn't intend to idealize the '50s but rather show the shift in cultural directions.  There are couple important differences he points out.
Marriage, not kids are the focus of parents.  Focus on your marriage and kids will benefit. Secondly, childraising is just one of a parent's jobs. In today's culture, we parents have a tendency to fall prey to the pressure of kids first, its all about the kids.  Guess what - kids are resilient and not our measure of success. Its easy to succumb to measuring yourself by how good/bad your kids are doing. John uses the 1950's stuff to get priorities back in order. I think he says something like - in the 40's,50's childraising was one of many jobs a married adult did, but it wasn't the primary. It may take up the most time,particularly when kids are young but the mom/dad that is PTA, sports coach, taxi driver,etc has lost  focus on what God is callingthem to do. Thebook ends up with lots of stories/examples to this.  This is the  first point I was reminded of.

Then John suggests the unthinkable.  A pair of directives for your children - Do less activity & they will be ok to play on their own. For the do less activity,he makes a great case for ignoring most of the "opportunities" available to kids today.  His principle - 1 activity taking up no more than 1 afternoon/evening a week and must not disrupt family dinner.  The challenge is doing less = more relaxed family = less discipline issues.  What do your kids do with all that extra time?  Play, read, explore - creative, unstructured, child directed activity.  He questions how many of today's "opportunities" are really for the kids anyway.  Little League for example is dominated by parents.  He pushes the extreme and says his parents never saw a game.  I think that's a little sad.  I agree that parents  have taken over,but I'm glad my parents enjoyed watching me play.  It seems a good principle though - be incredibly selective about external activities - be sure any opportunity supports the family.  The 2 directives go together.  Less activity builds children who have more opportunity to grow their own skills.  They can play.  What do you do with all the free time?  Enjoy your home, have a family  life. My take was Rosemond wanted to say (if he didn't) that parents micromanage their kids.  He points out, its not painful for a 4 year old to spend an entire afternoon in their room.  They probably have abundant toys, books in their room. The hardest part for most of today's children is the pain, crying in learning to play on their own.  Its just like learning to sleep on their own - they have to learn isolation, learn to explore, learn that Mom & Dad are not their entertaining playmates.  Mom & Dad will provide goodthings but Mom & Dad are authority, not just buddies or an on demand adult entertainment unit.

Finally, I enjoyed his "make discipline memorable"  He puts it to parents that we don't give our kids enough credit. We don't make things hard enough. One story is a parent who takes a bike away for a day after the child rides out of bounds - a DAY.  Thats it, not a week, not a month.  John reminds us that the stories of discipline we as adults remember were memorable.  To be memorable, they were probably effective. How much of our "discipline" is worthy of stories?  The 4 weeks of dishes didn't kill you. Moving  the log pile across the yard 3 times didn't kill me. Kids are capable - they can handle discipline and responsibility.  Furthermore - they crave it.  A 4 year old can wash a floor and will be proud of the contribution.

Rosemond lost some of my respect. He has no problem pulling punches at a bunch of other teachers.  When he does so within his sphere of expertise (psychology), I'm ok with his attack (on Dr.Phil). However, when he goes after Dr. William Sears, he makes a fell error. He makes adhominem attacks on Dr. Sears unnecessarily & incorrectly. He evaluates Dr. Sears recommendations for their psychological merits (fair enough) without considering their physiological merits. Going outside of his expertise, Rosemond makes the same mistake of which he accuses Sears. Furthermore, Rosemond makes some STUPID assertions about infants. All in all the book was full of good reminders & refocusing ideas.


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Stefan M. Haney
stefan.m.haney@pobox.com
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posted by bikenomad @ 11:08 PM 0 comments