Challenges of Parenting

The other day as I walked by two women engaged in a conversation, most likely a mother and her teenage daughter, I could hear the mother say the following to the teenager; “any day you do not get up and decide to skip school will mean no car for a week, a full week”. As we were walking in opposite directions, the conversation quickly faded. What struck me was how parenting has changed since I was the one on the receiving end of my parents. First, using the family car was not even a thought. You walked or took the bus. The idea of not attending school was also never contemplated.

Today’s parenting as it relates to discipline comes with a wide range of varying consequences and probably more realistic than the singular response many of my generation may have endured. When you were told what had to be done, or not done, failing to do what was expected was routinely accompanied by an “or else”. That seemed to be enough, except perhaps for the most foolhardy, to keep most children in compliance. If a child sought a further explanation with the question “why”, the most quoted parent response was “because I said so”. That was usually enough to end any further discussion.

There’s more than one model for effective parenting as what works for one child/parent may not work for another. The challenge for most parents is to find the right balance between the setting of expectations, the freedom of the child to make certain choices and the consequences, both positive and negative, for the outcomes. From what I have witnessed in public areas regarding how children behave and in some cases how older children exhibit overt rude manners toward their parents, there are many parents that are either still in search of the right parenting model or they have simply abandoned their parental responsibilities.