I can hear you chuckling but tell me you didn't do it. Tell me you didn't think to yourself, I'm going to be the best parent ever because I'm going to do this, and I'm not going to let them get away with that. So humour me a little as I toy with this best case, prefect world scenario of parenting so that one day I can sit down with my kids and read them this blog and say, See, it was supposed to be like this. It was the perfect plan and I just don't understand where it all went wrong.
1. I won't let the tears get to me.
A lot of the time when kids fall over they look to their parents to check their reactions before crying. As far as most kids are concerned, if your parents haven't noticed then maybe it's not worth crying just to get a bit of attention. I've always been a big fan of ignoring kids when they fall over. There's no point rushing over to see if they're hurt because you're just going to teach them that crying will get them attention. If they're really hurt you're going to know about it; there's no point in encouraging them to cry the rest of the time.
Same goes for giving your kid something to shut them up. If you cry you'll get what you want is not a lesson that I want to teach my kid. I went to a kid's birthday party a little while ago and there was a little girl who would cry for everything, even if she didn't need to. If she wanted a toy, she'd point at it and cry, even if it was on the ground in front of her. Dad would run over, pick up the toy and give it to her. If she wanted cake she'd cry. If she was finished eating the cake and didn't want any more she'd cry. That's not a habit I would want to encourage. The dad's got no one to blame but himself (and maybe her mother) but heaven help her poor future boyfriends.
At the supermarket if my kid is going to cry that's fine. I'll be embarrassed but I'm going to sit down with my legs crossed and wait it out. I guarantee I can last longer sitting quietly than any kid can cry and the benefits of riding out a tanty would far outweigh giving in and having to put up with that every time I go to the supermarket.
2. My kids are going to break bones and that's okay.
I'm not going to wrap my kids up in cotton wool. Kids will break things and some of those things will be attached to them. I broke my nose... twice. Yes, my kids will wear helmets while riding their bikes. Yes, I will teach them the dangers of diving into shallow water. Apart from that, what are you going to do? They will climb trees and will probably fall out but it seems to be getting harder for kids to really hurt themselves. I can't remember the last time I saw a kid with an arm or leg in a cast. Councils have made play equipment so dull these days that it's impossible to do more than twist an ankle. You certainly won't find any of the rickety, treated pine playgrounds that provided so much awesome, teetering fun when I was a kid.
I'm not going to go out of my way to endanger my kids but if they have the imagination and persistence to find a way to break a limb, good for them. I'll be the first to sign the cast.
Oh, and I won't sue anyone if it happens.
3. I won't drink in front of my kids
Ok, I won't drink in front of my kids often and then only in moderation in social situations. I'm no saint after all but I can't imagine what it would have been like seeing my parents drunk. I also don't want to put myself in the position being a hypocrite when I tell my kids off for something I clearly have no problem doing myself. I'm not going to hide that I have done drugs and like a drink but I'm also not going to ask my kid to hold my hair out of my face while I vomit in the toilet. Besides:
A) I probably won't be able to afford to drink given the cost of raising children these days
and
B) It makes the health benefits of having a child particularly attractive.
4. I'll try to have quality time with my kids and limit their exposure to TV.
One of the greatest problems with having ideals as far as raising children is turning your child into a social outcast despite your best intentions. We all had at least one at school; that child whose parents raised them without TV/junkfood/contact sport etc. and was therefore doomed to never be cool or even moderately popular. Their friends were always the ones that they acquired by default because they were the other kids that nobody wanted to be friends with.
The solution as far as I see it is to make sure that there are a bunch of other cool kids in the same boat.
It's all well and good to decide that you don't want you kid to have access to violent video games, or the handheld consoles that kids seem to disappear into at around age eight and come out... well we're still waiting on that result, but we all know that when the other kids at school find out, your kid is never going to live it down. That's not even considering that unless you forbid your child from ever visiting other children's houses, they're going to get their hands on them anyway.
But in an age when kids spend an average of four hours a day in front of the TV, an additional two hours in front of a computer or video game and the skinny kids in the playground are the ones being singled out for ridicule, something probably needs to be done.
Let me break it down for you.
Kids spend about six hours a day in front of some kind of screen. Thats a total of 25% of their day and around 37.5% of their waking hours. Then factor in the six and a half hours that they spend at school and the nine hours of sleep that school aged kids need on average and so far we're up to twenty one and a half hours or 89.5% of their day. Odds are that thanks to all of those self serving baby boomers driving up property prices and rents, you and your husband/wife/partner can't afford to live without both of you working (that's of course not to discounting single parents. It's got to be tough raising a kid on your own so my hat's off to you.) That means that you probably drop your kids at school around 8.30am (if you're lucky and don't have to put them into before school care) and don't see them again until nearly 6pm. Let's not forget that your time before school/work is probably spent fighting to get your family showered, dressed, fed and out the door so we're hardly calling that quality time.
So, given that the morning is a write off and you don't see your kids until at least 6pm, they are then going to spend six hours being passively entertained by TV shows or video games produced by people whose lifestyles you probably wouldn't want your child to emulate before going to bed at no later than 10pm in order to be not too grumpy the next day when you start the whole process over again. By my calculation that leaves you with negative two hours of quality time with your child everyday... and we haven't even taken homework into account.
That's minus 7300 hours or 43.45 weeks of time that is totally lost into a black hole between the ages of eight and eighteen. Even if we allow that two of your child's TV watching and game playing hours fall between 4pm and 6pm when you're not there, the best you can hope to get away with is zero hours of quality time (no, sitting and watching TV without talking doesn't count as quality time and of course you'll have to eat dinner while watching TV so there's no hope there either.)
If your kids spends recess and lunch playing on a PSP or DS then maybe we can get back ninety minutes of quality... oh hang on, there's that homework time! Too bad.
Is it any wonder people keep on saying that kids are out of control these days?
So my solution is to band together with a group of like minded parents and all deny your children the perks of the modern electronic life; a parenting collective if you will. Your kids will all have to go to the same school of course because there's no point enforcing all of your wonderful ideals and withholding all of this bad stuff if you're just going to throw your innocent, naive child to the wolves at school. My wife had a fairly strict religious upbringing so she'll attest to how tough this can be. Besides, recess can undo a lot of good work.
Come to think of it, why not go one step further and start your own school. I'm sure you could find plenty of teachers who'd love a classroom devoid of electronic distraction and filled with kids with a decent attention span. They might even have children of their own that they'd like to include.
Since you're starting your own school why not form your own community?
The Amish might be a good model for this, or maybe the community in the movie The Village, but with lights, washing machines, dishwashers, stereos and a total lack of people dressing up like scary monsters to stop anyone from straying from the village grounds.
It'd have to be gated of course to stop the perils of the modern world getting in and to protect your children from venturing outside and being tempted by modern life. Maybe a walled compound? The advantage of a compound is that you could probably have yourselves declared a religion and attract a nice tax break...
Hmmm, reading that last part back I concede that this idea might be a little extreme. Maybe I'll just settle for eating dinner at the table as a family, no video games on school days and limited TV time. I'll even throw in doing homework with the kids (for as long as I can keep up) and stories at bedtime (for as long as they can stand it.)
After all, there's a difference between ideals to strive for when raising your kids and justifiable reasons for patricide.
