Suck on this RED PEN, helicopter parents!

My sister's recent blog post involving bedroom performance ratings mixed with parenting (I don't know how she can crossover like that, but she does!) made me want to write about the old adage and the newest spin on it: Spare the rod, spoil the child?! It makes me a little sick.

While I may not endorse the rod, I think there is an effective way to parent firmly, with love and boundaries, rules, and expectations that prepare them for the world!

As a parent I think we must use RED INK and quantitative grading. We must be disappointed and be mad at our children when appropriate. Let them discover the feeling of losing and NOT getting a trophy anyway. They SHOULD develop a taste for vegetables and healthy, whole foods as babies because it will likely follow them their whole life. You CANNOT let them eat whatever they want and expect or assume they will "outgrow" it later.

All of these modern "positive" parenting tenets (helicopter parenting) are COMPLETE HORSESHIT! These parents scare the shit out of me! They say, "Oh, what about his feelings? I hate to see him cry when he doesn't seem to understand the punishment!". Oh, dumb, dumb parent: Believe me, he understands it - and if not by name, by feel. If he fails to understand it, it's your fault because you haven't given him the chance to. You're so afraid of how he'll "feel" that you're skipping over the lesson to be learned!

I cannot believe how unprepared for the real world young adults are these days and parents are creating this problem. Cut the apron strings!! If children cannot delineate between success and failure, or take a bad situation and make it a winning outcome - how will they even get to the point where they should have kids themselves?

I saw this mission statement in a high school on Friday night, it went something like: "Empowering students through education to become productive, responsible members of society." It made me wonder what their specific methods are, because I sure do like the sound of that but what I see them churning out these days is not THAT! I have a sister about to graduate high school and have been involved with her soccer seasons. I recently worked with plenty of the <24 age group, and it's consistent.

We have a huge responsibility to our children and sheltering them is to essentially retard them. Shock, loss, bad grades, a tough boss - all REAL things in the world. The sooner they learn to COPE with that and OVERCOME it, the sooner they will succeed in life.

Our job is to teach them to COPE and OVERCOME, not protect or shield them from all negative impacts in life. OH I GET SO HOT ABOUT THIS...

And it begs the question: Where are these parents? Who are they? Everyone I know who is having kids, or even not having kids believes in reality parenting, preparation for the real world. Generational experts say much of this will change when these kids become parents, that parents often parent in ways that are contradictory to the way they were raised. I say,
let's hope!





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