Articles of the Month

Parenting

I know most of us have reached an age where marriage is creeping closely upon us and independent life seems here to stay. I'm here to talk to you all about a little thing called parenting, or die trying. I'm sure some of you know more than me, since I'm just an 18 year old kid with a lot of free time and nothing better to do.

As the saying goes, it takes a whole village to raise a child. I guess what I'm trying to say is that all of us have or is going to be affecting some child's development at least once sometime in life. I want you to be awake and prepared in those future shinning moments.

I'd like to start by stating that there are many ways to raise a child. There is no real universal way to raise children because they are all individual human beings with thoughts and actions of their own. That said, most parents seem to automatically go into fixed roles after there birth of their child¹.

There are many ways to raise a child when you are the parent of him or her. The nuts and bolts of raising a child are relatively simple. Provide the child with nourishment, entertainment, and teach the child the difference between right and wrong.

The growth of every single person goes through different physical and psychological stages. A parent should be there to develop both aspects of his or her development. However, this is not always the case. Many parents neglect the child in these stages of development.

Toronto, Ont.: The Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse, chapter 4: Characteristics of maltreatment, p. 67, table 4.4a gives the following statistics:

This table was taken from the "Child Abuse and Neglect data at the National Clearinghouseon Family Violence, Health Canada."

Apart from paying attention to your child, one should also learn different forms of enforcement forms to teach him or her. The two most broadly used forms are positive reinforcement (PR) and negative reinforcement (NR). Both forms have their good and bad points. Positive reinforcement is where the child is awarded for doing what you ask/told them to do. Negative reinforcement is where the child is punished for doing what you ask/told them not to do. The good side to PR is that the child will be more likely to listen to you and they feel good towards you. The bad side to PR is that the child will more likely be connected to the rewards and less towards the parent. The good side to NR is that it works most of the time. The bad side to NR is that you have to be careful not to physically abuse the child. This would lead the child to be disobedient thus would be less likely to listen to you later in life. There are also other negative effects to NR.

Here's a quote from the "Found Learn Theory"

Contrary to popular belief, many off-task and disruptive behaviors in classrooms are probably not maintained by teacher attention. Instead, students often use these behaviors to escape or avoid an instructional task. This type of relationship between behavior and environment is termed negative reinforcement.

As much as we love children, we must learn how to teach children, help children, and raise children to create a better tomorrow.

PI can only hope you take in some of what I have ranted on about today. Think about it, even for a split second, that is all I ask.

1 Extracted from "The relation between mothers' and fathers' parenting styles and their division of labor in the home: young adults' retrospective reports"