As a Hen Gathereth Her Chicks

Being a parent is awesome. It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. It’s also the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. One such terrifying moment came when my husband and I decided to give our oldest child “the talk”. She was 11 and was getting ready to enter junior high. We live in Northern California where the mainstream curriculum on sexual education is becoming distorted. She is also surrounded by kids of different upbringings who are not living in harmony with our moral ethics. We knew the world was eager to teach her its view on sexual matters and we knew we had to catch her first. The appointed night came. Wringing hands, cold sweats, pounding heart…and no, that wasn’t the feelings of our daughter. My husband and I flew a little blindly into this first lesson. I feel for older children…certified guinea pigs. I’m an older child myself. I did try to make improvements on where I came from. My parents taught me all I needed to know the night before I got married…too late. I ...

To me, the way I’ve been able to identify my biggest takeaways from my parenting class has been to look at what parenting behaviors I’ve changed in myself since the semester began. To me, this is an indication that I learned something, saw a need for change in my parenting, implemented the change, noted the progress, and tried to continue to improve on the method. One of those changes that I took note of was the way in which I praise my children. We were asked to read an article entitled, “Are We Spoiling Our Kids with Too Much Praise?” (Joanna Pocock February 22, 2017). It was an eye-opener for me and a little sting to my pride as a parent. The sting usually means a change is necessary. I consider myself to be a pretty good mom who cares desperately about the well-being of her children. But, on occasion, and more frequently as of recent, my husband pointed out that I coddle the children and seem to go to extra lengths to spare them any disappointment or discomfort. Who?! Me?! (...

                           In this blog post, I’d like to talk about something called the Parenting Pyramid. But before I do, I’d like to talk about a distorted mindset I had before taking a parenting class this semester. As a parent of nearly 16 years, I thought to myself, “I’ve been a parent for almost 16 years. I’ve successfully kept three children alive for that long (I’m much better with kids than I am with fish.), and I think I know a lot about good parenting”. Cue humble pie…the very first week of the class proved me wrong within the first lesson. The more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know much at all. I had much to learn as a parent even after 16 years and found myself wishing that I could go back to the start and tweak a few things. But here we are, what’s done is done, and I’m so grateful for the chance to change in these current moments and move forward armed with more knowledge. Our first...