Читать книгу The Four Rs of Parenting - Carmen Bynoe Bovell - Страница 10

Chapter 1

How Parents View the Role of Parenting

What are your thoughts about parenting?

Marguerite Anderson

I think, generally speaking, we basically approach parenting as we approach anything in our lives. We are the sort of people who like to travel; we believe in a very broad worldview and caring for people and showing our caring through basically how we treat each other and how we interact with others in the world. And we want our son, George, to understand that, and we want him to mimic our behavior and absorb how we treat others in the world. So parenting is about caring. I guess my main thought is, I like it, it’s rewarding, it’s worth the hard work. My husband, Sean, and I agree it’s the most rewarding hard job we’ve ever had. We give up a lot to do it, but we get such great rewards for doing it. I love seeing the person he’s becoming. George is kind; he’s a thoughtful child; he likes to share. I can see that he likes to make his playmates feel happy, and he’s a jovial child, and it’s wonderful seeing him grow into the person that he is going to be. I think I like parenting, and I feel lucky that I’m able to raise a child, and we got lucky with the kid that we have. He’s a very easy baby, a very easy toddler so far. He’s fourteen months old.

Christopher Blanchard

I would say, I think parenting is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s a life-changing experience, being a parent, being that person that your child looks up to, and you know, I’m happy to be there to provide and care for that person that I cocreated, and I definitely enjoy the experience. I say it’s a life-changing experience for me because of having created another human life and being one of the main persons that need to care for, nurture, and be there for the person that I cocreated. So it’s something that’s very, very important and special to me, in that I definitely got something I always wanted. It’s more than everything I thought it would be, and I see parenting as a very, very important responsibility.

Holly Blum

From my personal experience as a parent, one of the things I think parenting has made me much more aware of, and intentional about, is figuring out what were my values and what I really want to intentionally and thoughtfully impart to my daughter. Somewhere in my mind and in my heart, I knew what my values were, but then what does that look like? And more intentionally, when I’m trying to communicate those values, how does that affect my behavior? I’m looking for consistency between my behavior and my values, and this is what I think is important. Her father and I had quite a few conversations about that because I didn’t know whether we shared the same values. It was a talk we had never had, but I didn’t think he was as thoughtful about parenting, and maybe that was partly influenced by the fact that I was an early childhood teacher. I think I parented in a way that tried to provide opportunities where her experiences would be consistent with those values. For example, when I first moved into Virginia, I was naive and assumed that the world was pretty well integrated because that had been my experiences in most of the places I lived, so it never occurred to me to really take a look at the demographic of the neighborhood. I was just focused on what I could afford, but when we moved, I looked around me, and I was surprised by how homogeneous the community was. To this day, her dad reminds me I was ready to pack our bags when I realized the lack of diversity and worried about what if the neighborhood doesn’t change.

Respect for diversity is one of the values that guided my parenting socioeconomic and cultural diversity; I don’t think I gave a lot of thought to language diversity. That awareness came when I started to experience the impact of culture and language and how they interacted. That came a little bit later in the game when I had the fortunate experience to find work with the Fairfax County Head Start Program.

Another value was being respectful of other people’s thinking and ways of doing things; therefore, I wasn’t uncomfortable, for example, sending my daughter to a Lutheran Preschool, although our cultural heritage is Jewish. The Lutheran preschool was the best and most developmentally appropriate preschool in my community that I knew of, and I wasn’t intimidated by having the conversations about her having to go to chapel twice a week. Other people live other ways; not everybody in the world is Jewish. When she came home from preschool, she asked questions and made comments, and I saw it as an opportunity to have conversations with her about how other people may think differently, or let’s look at what we have in common, everybody is special, etc. I felt that those were fine messages that afforded us a chance to talk about different religious backgrounds, experiences, and traditions.

Respect for your elders was another of my values. You don’t have to like everybody, but you have to be respectful of everybody.

Marlon Bovell

As a parent, you are fully responsible for your child, to teach them to be successful or responsible contributors to society. I think parenting is a 24-7 job. It’s tougher than you would ever think it would be, both before becoming a parent, and as a parent. I now see where my parents were coming from with all the things they used to say. I still hear those things in my head today, and I repeat some of those same phrases to my kids. I understand now what I did not understand as a child, and I try to keep that in perspective when I discipline or talk to my kids even though it’s tough. I keep in perspective that kids don’t really understand what you’re telling them because they can’t project into the future. I try to use terms they understand and explain to them the possible outcomes to their actions. I have a lot of information, and I can project into the future what will or can happen based on their current actions. For instance, not wanting to clean their room or not wanting to put their device down and do homework without us having to tell them to do it. Also, one of the main things I always tell them is, do now what you can do today. For instance, my daughter may have an assignment that’s not due until Wednesday and it’s Monday; she would do very little or none on Monday. I tell her do as much as you can today; if you can finish your homework on Monday, finish it, because you never know what’s going to come up on Tuesday, so do as much as you can today to be prepared for the next day.

Robert Bovell

I believe parenting takes the collective effort of both mother and father. In that way, a child understands the roles of man/father and woman/mother who together raise the child using a balanced approach. When parenting is one-sided, sometimes we leave out certain components, whether it’s from a male role-model standpoint or a female role-model standpoint, and the child has to rely on outside sources for those things that make them function with a balance in and out of the household or with other family members. So I believe it’s key that both parents play a very active role in the upbringing of the child, whether they’re married or they’re not living together.

The role of parents is very vital, because if parents don’t take an important stance, we then rely on the streets, the church communities, the schools, and peers to play a role in raising our children, and that’s when we complicate things. When there’s one parent, if that parent merges the components and balances the roles of mother and father and interjects that education equally into the child, you can get productivity from the child, but I find it to work better when a father, whether the mother and father are married or divorced plays an active role in the upbringing of a child.

There are things that a child can ask a mother and a mother can give a more subtle or passionate response to the child that helps the child better understand a particular behavior or situation. A good way to look at that is the following. A lot of times when we talk to our children, whether it’s a mother or father, a father may say, “I think you may need to ask your mom when she gets home or when you can find time to talk to her,” and the mother may say, “I think you need to talk to your father,” or “I’m going to let your father know.” Once we understand the importance of each parent’s role, we get a better reaction from the child, and that adds an important dimension to the upbringing of the child.

Shanice Bovell

Well, for me as a single parent, parenting has been hard, but I’ve learned through the years that parenting is as hard as you make it. We all have struggles, but as with anything in life, it’s how you handle it. It’s the most precious thing. For me, it’s the most precious thing that I have because I am the one responsible for molding two individuals who will go out into this world and make an impression.

Parenting has been joyous for me because I have two great sons who have made it so. Even though there have been some scary and tough times, for the most part it has been pure joy raising two boys to become respectful men and teaching them about manhood. I needed to be a good example when teaching them to treat people the way they want to be treated and to respect girls/women the way they would want a man to respect me. I had excellent examples in my father and brother, who of course learned from their fathers, and I’ve been thankful to have them around to teach my boys about manhood.

Both of my children’s fathers for the most part were absent. They were around enough so that their children knew to call them daddy. They have different fathers, and both weren’t the best at being providers. My oldest would spend quality time with his father but those days didn’t last long and visits were far in between. As he got older his dad pulled away and left everything on me. I struggled a great deal, even as a wife. I struggled to raise them and take care of the household. Being diagnosed with chronic illnesses when my children were five and two put a huge burden on me because I needed tremendous help. My ex-husband was never around for assistance. Thankfully, I had an excellent support system in my family. Trying to get financial help for the most part was difficult, so I took both of them to court for child support, and back then the courts weren’t as helpful and strict as they are now. I didn’t start to get financial support for my children until they were in middle and high school. By then, their dads came back around to develop a relationship. I did appreciate what they could provide, a few dollars here and there, but it was never enough.

Dorel Campbell-Adams

I think when you first become parents, your parenting style comes from what your parents passed on to you. You become the parent that your parents were to you, and as your children grow and mature, you begin to develop your own parenting ideas and views, and they may not mimic or mirror the ideas and views that you grew up with. I had many discussions with my mom about this and her views about how we should treat certain situations, and we agree on some and disagree on others. So I think it all depends on the time that we are in and whatever is going on in the world and in our environment, because it’s ever evolving, and parenting is ever evolving. So it’s just what our kids are exposed to at that time and how we choose to tackle it. There are, of course, the base values that we carry on from generation to generation that this book addresses, such as, respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. These are the foundation, but of course, there are many different variations in how we pass along these values.

So there is a difference between the way I was raised in the Caribbean by older parents compared to parents today and with these kids who are all high tech and the experiences that they have. I never had these experiences as a child, and my parents had different experiences as well. So the values they passed on to me were based on different scenarios, but hopefully it’s the same values that I’m passing on to my children. I’m talking about different variations of different scenarios that we have to tackle with these kids, but we are trying to pass on the same values.

Desiree DeFlorimonte

Parenting is an ongoing process in which a child is nurtured, protected, and guided in preparation to become a well-rounded adult. Although there are some instinctive responses to being a parent, I believe that I learned many of the necessary skills about parenting from my mother and through trial and error. I am grateful that she was there to guide and support me for my daughter’s birth and through the first nine months of her life. Through that experience, as well as recalling my upbringing as a child, I learned much about parenting.

Just as many teachers teach the way they were taught, I believe many mothers parent the way they were parented. As a new and young mother, I learned the importance of taking care of and raising Angel through each developmental stage of her life. In college, I studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which included being responsible for my child’s basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. In addition, I learned to provide her with a firm foundation, grounded in the Christian faith. The Good Book tells us to “train up a child in the way she should go and when she’s old, she won’t depart from it.” Throughout the years, this verse was central in my mind as I strived to raise my daughter to become a caring, capable, responsible, and independent young woman. Teaching Angel values, showing her affection, but not being afraid to discipline her when necessary were all part of the course. I instilled in her the importance of education and always supported her in school. I can recall the time I spent a morning observing in one of her middle school classrooms, at a boarding school she attended. At the end of the visit, she asked, “Mommy, when will I be old enough for you to stop sitting in my classrooms?” My response was, “When you are in college.” Of course, I did sit in one of her college classes since I was also teaching in the adjacent building.

As a parent it was also important to protect my child and keep her safe from the myriad of obstacles, challenges, and dangers she would encounter. However, I had to find a happy balance and not be overly protective but encourage Angel to make good choices and learn from mistakes. There were times when nonnegotiable rules that were established were not adhered to and the resulting consequences had to be painfully accepted. I had lots of fun times, providing mommy time while reading to my child, traveling, visiting museums and family members, and giving unconditional love. All these matters are integral to the process of parenting.

I believe I will always be a parent. Even now, my daughter is forty-three years old, and I’m still parenting her…giving advice, especially when asked. It’s truly an ongoing process as I’ll never stop parenting.

Ryan Dickson

For me, parenting is an amazing opportunity of discovering not only how I show up for my kids but what vision I have for their future as well. As a single parent, I call myself a decentralized parent, in that I have two girls with my ex-wife and a son from a previous situation. So with my daughters in the Virgin Islands, we are geographically separated, and I look at myself more as a facilitator between the relationships with my kids.

In my life, my father had children outside of his relationship with my mom—and I’ve seen this in other situations as well—so that the nature of the relationship amongst the siblings is in direct correlation with whichever parent they live with that similarly facilitates that relationship. So obviously if you’re in a household with your mom and your siblings may have different fathers, your mom may facilitate the relationship among you and your siblings. If you happen to be somewhere else, there has to be an active effort from the parents to facilitate relationships with and among the children. So I look at my role as a facilitator, and I continue to reinforce the love and connectedness between my son and his sisters. As a single dad and also as an attorney, when I had my son out of wedlock, and was not in a serious committed relationship with his amazing, fantastic mom at the time she was pregnant, I instantaneously thought that warranted a fifty-fifty custody, and looking at how much value society placed on fathers at that time, it was impactful to me. I think it actually impacted my desire to want to be married and have more children and to not only have the full fatherhood experience, which to me meant waking up with your kids, and so forth, but also being a stand (support) for other fathers who may be frustrated with the system and how much time and connectedness they’re allowed to have with their children.

All that being said, as a human being, I definitely identify right now as being a father who facilitates relationships with my children with multiple moms, and that pretty much runs a large part of my identity in terms of my commitment to expanding my business empire, so on and so forth, so I can fly back and forth between my kids with ease and show up one day and get on a plane and be here in the morning and just move in those types of ways and travel with them to where I want to go. Parenting requires teamwork. To fully integrate it is definitely a team experience and I definitely have my kids’ moms and their families on my team, and I’m committed to maintaining those relationships.

But co-parenting is a whole other topic, and that’s a huge part of the deal. I’ve seen many persons whose relationships with their children suffered because of their relationships with their co-parents. So the advice I’d give to fathers around co-parenting is based on my own experience as a co-parent. I have an ex-wife who is the mother of my two wonderful, beautiful daughters, and then there is the previous situation with my son’s mom. We didn’t really know each other when we first met—she’s great, she’s amazing, but there was a lot of drama in the beginning. I mean, you don’t know each other to a core in the beginning, and then when you add in the stress of the pregnancy and you’re still trying to discover how you’re going to work out not only the aftereffects of parenting but this kind of situation, this pregnancy, that’s another aspect, you know.

Richlyn Emanuel

Parenting on a whole is not easy. You do need a village. It doesn’t matter if you’re a single parent, or if you’re co-parenting, or if the father is in the home. You need more than that; you need a village; you need outside support. You need to expose your kids to other family, other individuals, because as a parent, you don’t know it all. But we’re not born, or we don’t grow up knowing, okay, this is how you parent. It’s trial and error. It’s asking for help, asking the right questions or the wrong questions. It’s making mistakes, because I’ve done that. The one thing that I’ve tried to do as a parent is to do all the things that my parents did not do, good, bad, or indifferent. I tried to do things that parents have not done, because how I was raised and how I wanted to raise my son were totally different. His dad said that from birth, I’ve raised a well-rounded child and he was jealous. He’s actually jealous of his son because of all the things that I’ve allowed him to experience—every sport, regardless of whether or not Giovanni wanted to do it—because that’s the only way you grow, when you come outside of your comfort zone. And you do that from the inception; you expose kids to everything so they don’t have a narrow view of the world. From the time he could understand words I didn’t do the baby talk thing with Giovanni. I didn’t do goo-goo, ga-ga—none of that. I remember his pediatrician walking into the examining room one day when Giovanni was maybe two, and she said, “I thought you were having a conversation with an adult.” That was because of how I was speaking to him.

Growing up around people and actually having conversations, I think, is very important. Exposure to the world is important; letting them know that they’re not privileged is very important. It’s also important to have a routine: Saturdays we clean house, Sundays we go to church, then we rest early to bed. Those things are important, and you can’t stray from them, because I’ve learned the hard way that once you break a routine, or you add things to a child’s routine, or there is a lot of confusion within the household, it drives your child crazy. We had a period of time in our lives when Giovanni was in the fifth or sixth grade and he went through the confusion of “this is what Mom said,” “these are Mom’s rules,” “this is what Dad says,” “this is what Nana says,” “this is what Grandma says,” and it was overwhelming because he had four adults plus school telling him what he could and could not do, what he should and should not do. So as a parent, you have to set the standard. I appreciate the fact that you think I should do things this way or that way, but you don’t bring it to the child. As a parent you need guidelines—yes, this is how other people think it should be done. That doesn’t mean that it’s right; that doesn’t mean that I’m right. I could be wrong, but be open enough to accept ideas and try different things.

Parenting is not easy, regardless of who is in the house, and it’s especially not easy in this day and time when kids are exposed to so much, and it’s hard to limit that. But you can’t truly limit what they want; you can’t limit the influences that they get outside of the home. All you can do is set the guidelines and lead by example and have faith that when they leave your home or when they leave the house that they’re putting on their best face and showing the world how it should be.

Yes, for me, parenting has been difficult, but I’ve had a village, and I appreciate my village. It seems small, but the amount of experience in that small village is remarkable. Giovanni has been exposed to his great-grandparents all the way down, up and down the line on both sides, everyone.

Raymond Fisher

Parenting is a journey that takes commitment, sacrifice, and a strong belief in shaping and molding lives to be productive. I take it as the ultimate responsibility, and being a spiritual person, I also take it as a gift. The greatest gift you can have in life is to cocreate another person and then nurture him and raise him in a positive way. For me it’s the driving force of who I am at this point in my life as an individual and as a person. The interesting thing about it is I’m coming to the point where my children don’t need that much effort on my part because of the foundation I laid early in their lives. I think it’s important that the responsibility of parenthood changes over time from less direction at age eighteen to more advice after age 21. It is ever evolving; that’s why I call it a journey. But the cornerstone of that, I think, is based on the foundation you lay with your children. The boundaries of respect, love and discipline come in many forms, and it’s an all-encompassing journey that constantly evolves.

Martine Gordon

My initial thought is just that it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done—the most rewarding and the hardest, simultaneously, thing I’ve ever done. For me it’s the knowledge that someone’s life and development is so heavily dependent on what you’re directly giving them at this young age. You know, my daughter is very young; it’s just the ultimate responsibility, and I really feel a lot of pressure to not mess it up. So it’s the hardest thing and simultaneously the most rewarding thing that I think I’ve ever done and I probably ever will do.

By saying “not messing it up,” I’m thinking that I didn’t have a great childhood experience myself, and when I reflect on how I was raised, I don’t feel that I was supported and encouraged in a way that could help me get to my full potential, so I feel a lot of pressure to not repeat what I view as mistakes with my child. So for me it’s a constant, everyday sort of gut check for me… Am I acting in a way that’s demonstrating for her that she should be confident and healthy and she’s supported and safe? And you know, with everyday stressors outside of family life, some days it’s harder to do than others.

I take my role as a parent very seriously. It’s the most important thing in my life.

Justin Hampton

Parenting for me is a learning process, and I try to always be open to learning new and effective ways of doing it. I’ve had the advantage of having a lot of my friends get married very young and have children very young in their early twenties, so I’ve gotten opportunities to observe them. Their children are now teenagers, and I’ve had the opportunity to see how they raise their kids, some of their successes and failures, and to see the kind of children that are the fruit of their lives and their parenting efforts. I get to see and glean from them some positive things that work and some things that didn’t work. This allowed me to kind of have an advantage. So what I try to do is just create a hodgepodge of successful techniques that I’ve seen firsthand, and I do listen to the advice of others. But like I said, I have the advantage of seeing firsthand the outcomes of their parenting; therefore, for me parenting is a learning process. It’s about trying to do your best in the moment and not be led by your emotions and to really think about what the long-term consequences or outcomes are of what you are instilling in your child.

The way I look at it, every interaction is a learning experience for the children; every interaction is a training. Even if it’s not intentional, every conversation, every time we go to the park, I’m training them, I’m teaching them something, I’m instilling something, and it is not necessarily on purpose. For instance, they’ve gotten used to going to the park every week, and that’s something they will take to their parenting when they grow up. They’re going to remember that, and it’s going to be impactful, as those things leave a lasting impression. So I try to be cognizant of the fact that everything I’m doing has the potential to be impactful in their thinking and I just have to be really careful and intentional as much as I can about what that means and what the outcomes will possibly be for the children.

Leticia Herrera

Being a parent is very important, because parents are the children’s first teacher and play an important role in their early development. How you spend time with your child and what you say, how you express yourself is what will make a big difference in everyday life for your child. One example is, when a child asks a question, make sure that you give the right answer, or if you don’t know the answer, just say, “I will check and get back to you.” For me what was always important was spending quality time with my son. I remember the way I was raised. I was raised with a lot of siblings by a widow in a big house. The widow did not have time to spend with me individually. My son was very lucky. He was the only child, and I was able to give him lots of attention.

As a young single mother, I had a very hectic life working seven days a week but always looking into what was the best for my son. One of the things that I noticed about the Jewish family I worked for was how they raised their children. After observing how they parented their children, I decided to incorporate some of those strategies into my parenting style. I admired this family I worked for. They were open in conversations with their children. That is something that I really liked. At one time my son wanted to become Jewish because he had a lot of good times with this family, but I always made sure he knew he was Hispanic and that his mother born in El Salvador, not in America. I’m very happy to have been able to put all the pieces together because this has helped him understand and appreciate the Hispanic culture as well as others. Right now it is fantastic. We live in an ethnically and culturally diverse world, and he is able to work and function very effectively because of his exposure to various cultures and racial groups at an early age.

One of the things that I did with my son at a very young age, I think when he was eight months old, was actually to read to him every night, because that’s what I saw the Jewish parents do. Each parent took a turn to read to the children every night, and I loved that, and I was asked to read to one of the children at nap time every day. I noticed when this five-year-old spoke, she had the vocabulary of a middle school child, and I liked that. So I did that with my son starting when he was eight months old. By the time he went to kindergarten, I had read a collection of Bernstein Bears books to him, but I didn’t know that he really knew how to read, until after he went to kindergarten and he started to read back to me. I wondered if he memorized the books or he really knew how to read. Now I think he knew how to read, and I feel so proud of that. I’m not a reader, but he is a fantastic reader. He reads a lot, and he writes a lot. I do believe it is because I followed the example of the Jewish family and read to him every day.

I was raised in a huge family. There was no time to say “I love you,” because there were just too many of us. But I saw the love the Jewish family had for each other and the kinds of things that they did together. I liked what I saw and did all these things as a single parent. I did them because I put my son first. It was not his fault that I was a single parent. I always felt that he was not to be blamed. He was first always. I wanted him to be successful. He didn’t ask to be here, so it was my job to make sure that he got everything and was exposed to everything that was important so that he could be successful in the future, and that’s what I did. He met a lot of wealthy people and a lot of very poor people, a lot of families and friends, so he could see the differences and learn that there was a price you have to pay to be able to earn what you wanted in life, and by having some of these examples, I was able to show him that he could be anyone he wanted to be, but he would have to work hard for it. That was my plan, and he was first in every way.

Finally, I could not have done a successful job raising my son without support from family, friends, and the Head Start Program. The preschool education my son received in Head Start made a significant contribution to his social and cognitive development. My involvement in the program sharpened my parenting skills and helped me be a good role model for my son.

Joseph Kijewski

I don’t want to point fingers at anyone, but I think a lot of people go into parenting not realizing the true commitment it takes to successfully raise children. Being a good parent requires three things. You have to be a friend, but you also have to be a disciplinarian. You have to be gentle, but you have to be stern. And you have to be able to set rules, but you have to be able to look at those rules and bend them at the right times. There are so many contradictory things that go into it. And it really requires dedication to the calling. I think some people are more suited to be parents than other people just because it’s something that they’re truly willing to embrace.

I keep remembering the dialogue in the movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, where Sidney Poitier was talking to his father and his father reprimanded him about the way he was speaking to them and what Sidney Poitier owed him for everything he and his wife had done for him. Then Sidney Poitier came back and said, “I owe you nothing. If you carry that mailbag to the moon and back from the day you brought me into this world, you owe me and if I have a son, I will owe him.” I think that’s the way I look at parenting as well. I think once you take on that responsibility of being a parent, you owe your everything to that child or to your children. Not meaning that you get in and give them everything they want, but you owe them your full attention. You owe them your time. You owe them your love, you owe them your consideration, you owe them all these things, and you really have to pour yourself into your children’s lives.

I don’t know that a lot of people think about that when they think about becoming parents. It’s a full-time job, the full twenty-four hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It doesn’t end when they turn eighteen or twenty-one years old. You still get the calls at 1:00 a.m. You still get the crying over this or that happened, and you still have to be there, and you want to be there. I think if you’re a good parent, you want to be there. But it really is, once you want to take it, a full-time call.

Errol Marks

It’s the most important job that anyone could ever have, and it’s an extreme responsibility. Most of us go into it lightly. We don’t take it as seriously as we should. It’s the most rewarding job, filled with pride, especially if your child does something great that makes you proud. That feeling is immeasurable. Like when my child finished at the top of her class in fifth grade, she had a nice GPA, and that made me very proud. So yes, it’s the most important job and the most rewarding job and the lowest-paying job, but ultimately, it’s a labor of love.

Maxine Maloney

My thoughts on parenting are from two perspectives—a spiritual perspective and what we would say would be a theoretical perspective. From a spiritual perspective, parenting, I would say, is a gift. It is a gift and an honor that’s bestowed upon us by the Father. And many of us who get to be parents realize there is something significant about the role of the parent, and I think when we are in tune and whether we’re spiritually grounded or on a spiritual journey, our Father grants us that gift, that opportunity to parent. Then there’s the theoretical, that parenting is caring for our children, whether it’s a biological or adopted child. I’ll also say that parenting is a powerful relationship that has to be approached with care and great caution because as a parent, you have the ability to give life or destroy life. We give life from a physical sense, and we give life through the care and the nurturing and building of our children; then as parents we can destroy the life of a child—whether it be from the way you look at a child, the things you say to your child, the relationship or lack thereof. And so, you know, combining all that, I think parenting is a gift that should not be taken lightly.

Virgil McDonald

First of all, I must admit that parenting is a joint effort by my wife, Kelley and me. Fortunately, we agree on most things about parenting. In our courtship years, we had long conversations about having a family and the number of children we wanted. She wanted six children because she is an only child. I wanted three children, we had three, and she thanks me until this day. We were not ambitious for our children. Instead we wanted them to develop good character. Respect, responsibility, reciprocity, and restraint were among the characteristics we hoped that they would embrace. I have to give Kelley credit because she was a stay-at-home mom who spent a lot of time substitute teaching at the elementary school where our children were enrolled. She was engaged in virtually all our children’s activities as they were growing up. The feedback that our children gave to me is that they could rely on me going to work every morning and coming home for dinner every evening. They remember fondly our family vacations, visits to the museums, and picnics along the Potomac River that I usually planned.

Have fun with your children. Don’t be afraid to let them see your silly side. Challenge them intellectually. Set high standards for them. Expose them to new and different things. Prick their interest and curiosity. Teach them about money. Let them know that death is a part of life. Teach them that “life ain’t no crystal stair.” Don’t shield your children from the unpleasant side of life. You’re lucky if you are a parent at thirteen and a friend at thirty. Expose your children to religion, but impress upon them that the choice is theirs and theirs alone. Allow your children to grow up—it will broaden your horizons. Tell your grandchildren preposterous stories—real and imagined. Remember your grandchildren love to hear about the devilish things their parents did as children. Let your children and grandchildren teach you new things; it keeps you young. Be more an example than a disciplinarian. Show your children how to love and not to be afraid to express it.

Lawrence Rawlings

I think parenting changes with each generation. We look to the past as a guideline, looking at what our parents did and seeing where they made mistakes and where we could improve upon what they did. Each generation should build upon all the positive aspects and influences of the previous generation, such as dedication, hard work, and perseverance. These are the things that my mother instilled in me even though they were the archaic way of doing things, but I built a foundation for myself, and I’d like to continue that foundation for the next generation. It’s a good thing when your parents have a brick wall for you to run your head into, like when they say this is the limit and you know that is a line you don’t cross. And if you cross that line there should be some kind of punishment that instills in you, “Okay, well, I want to do this, but maybe I don’t.”

It makes you think about the consequences of your actions and how you instill that into the next generation without putting out those heavy consequences. I talk with a friend of mine about parenting all the time. We talk about positive reinforcement and giving our kids other tasks outside of school for self-betterment and also having good conversations and open dialogue with our children. We are working at building that open dialogue. For me the open dialogue came late in the game because I’ve had this as an issue with my wife, but the open dialogue with my daughter has been created. Sometimes just walking and doing simple things cause me to reflect on things like, “Do I love her enough?” “Am I getting enough positive energy?”

Build the energy in your home for the child to feel comfortable and welcome and figure out, “Are we actually in a bubble or are they in a bubble?” Break that bubble and get to the child; speak their language so they can feel more welcome. Most importantly, build experiences with your child; that’s your job. This is more important than the material items you get. Material items should only be tools to create experiences.

Jacqueline Rose

Parenting is a lifelong endeavor. One’s parenting role shifts and changes over a lifetime. One needs to have understanding and wisdom about how each age and stage of their child’s development from childhood, to youth, to adulthood impacts their parenting experiences. Seeking to understand yourself and your child builds effective communication and strengthens trust in your relationship. The most important thing is to listen to your child and your own inner voice. That’s the place to start.

Halima Thorne

Parenting is extremely difficult. You do need your village to help you out. It’s very important to have that. You cannot do it alone, especially in 2018, 2019. Things have become more and more difficult to do on your own, financially and emotionally. I don’t know what I will do if I didn’t have my mom, my dad, and my sister throughout this whole process of having Carter, birthing Carter, and currently dealing with Carter. Not that he’s a bad child, but you know, there are sleepless nights, he gets sick, and he needs day care. You have to think about all those things, and you can never be one hundred percent prepared to be a parent, no matter what people tell you.

Having a child is definitely rewarding. Every time I see Carter, I see myself, his dad, my sister, my mom, and a little bit of my dad. And you know the smile that he gives you when he wakes up, just the hugs and the slobbering kisses are very rewarding at his age, because he’s only six months old. But you know, just like everything in life, there are pluses and minuses. As he gets older and as I become older too, my thoughts will definitely change. But this is how I currently feel and have experienced right now with Carter being six months old.

As Carter gets older, as he starts progressing and having his own opinions, and as I become older, my thoughts will change, and parenting will definitely become easier. But there are still going to be challenges. The only thing, I think, that will become a little bit easier is maybe sleep. Everything right now is difficult because he’s only six months old; he’s so young.

Joseph Shields

My thoughts about parenting are different since I’ve become a parent as opposed to how I thought about it before being married and having children. I feel a lot about the way environmental factors and social factors can influence and change a child or an individual. I would say, among the valuable lessons that I’ve learned as a dad has been that kids are kids based on who they are coming out of the womb, given the kind of DNA and RNA of how they’re shaped and their personalities. There are a lot of ways, from being God’s creation when they’re born, that we can influence their personalities, that we can shape it and guide it, but I’ve become much more respectful of the fact that, you know, my son and my daughter have their own personalities, regardless of what I thought they should be or where they should go from the get go. I think that’s a learning process in terms of parenting. And so it shifts how you want to approach nurturing and caring for a child as a result of that. And it really makes you more of a guide and an influencer and obviously a good example, as opposed to somebody that’s trying to change everything your kids are going to be. So that’s my perspective.

Barbara VanDyke

It’s a blessing to be a parent, and it’s a gift that you get for a lifetime. It’s a gift because parenting provides the parent with opportunities to grow and develop in areas in which they wouldn’t have ordinarily grown without being a parent. And the reason I say so is because some of the beliefs and maybe even some values I didn’t hold fast to before becoming a parent because the reality of being a parent in and of itself was a lesson—a lesson to live my life by or to guide me in my own life and to move from one stage of development as a parent or as an adult to another. I don’t think I had, for example, the patience or the degree of patience I have now before I became a parent. I am not so sure that I saw things through the lens of a child like I did after I became a parent. When I interacted or worked with children before, I might not have been as empathetic as I should have been to their needs, but once I became a parent, I learned very quickly to feel and see things through the lens of a child’s eyes and understand what they may be going through and understand that like me, like an adult, they have emotions, they sense fear, they have difficulty with changes and transitions. Children see and recognize when you don’t care about them, they see when you’re unfair, and you know those things help you do your own self-reflection if that does occur in your parenting relationship and help you to grow.

Ten Things about Parenting

 Parenting is joyous, rewarding, and challenging and the most important responsibility anyone can ever have. Parenting is about caring. As a parent, you make many sacrifices but receive many rewards. Parenting is a life-changing experience. Parenting is a 24-7 responsibility, and it is tougher than you may think.

 There is a spiritual perspective to parenting, in that the cocreation and nurturance of another human being from infancy to adulthood, and at the same time parents themselves grow and develop in various ways, is the greatest gift given to us by the Father.

 Parenting is an all-encompassing journey…it is ever evolving. One’s parenting role shifts and changes over time. Although we tend to parent the way we were parented, parenting in today’s world may require different parental behaviors to pass on the same important values we acquired from our parents. Parenting changes with each generation, as the younger generation tries to improve upon what they view as mistakes their parents made.

 Parenting must be taken seriously, and parents must think about the long-term consequences of what they are instilling in their children. Children will observe their parents’ behavior and mimic how they treat each other and how they interact with others in the world. As a parent, you are fully responsible for your child, to teach them to be fully responsible, successful contributors to society. You are your child’s first teacher, and you play an important role in their early and ongoing development.

 Parenting includes setting high standards for your children; it is therefore important to think about what you want to intentionally and thoughtfully impart to your children, as well as how you are going to demonstrate consistency between your values and your behavior. Some persons may be more suited to be parents than others because they are willing to embrace the commitment that parenting requires.

 Parents need outside support. They need “a village” to support them in carrying out their parenting responsibilities and should not be timid or afraid to ask for assistance.

 Single parenting can be one-sided, and certain components may be left out; therefore, it’s important for both parents to be actively engaged in raising their child.

 Divorced parents co-parent in separate households; therefore, it’s important for both parents to facilitate the relationships between and among the adults and children.

 It’s important to note that young children may not fully understand what parents are trying to impart to them, because they do not have the background experiences to facilitate their projections into the future.

 Parents should also be aware that children have their own unique personalities from birth and their main focus should not be on changing the things they don’t like about their children; rather, they should be more of a guide, an influencer, and the best example in the lives of their children.