When you have a daughter....

[Gunny Highway]

I was discussing parenting with someone the other night and the topic of giving your kids freedom came up. Tell me what you think of this.

When I was a kid, my mom was all about kids having tons of freedom. We spoke our minds and mostly did what we wanted. Mom wasn't neglectful, but she did believe in raising free thinkers that make their own decisions and bear the responsibility for them (ie. natural consequences). So she was pretty far at one end of the spectrum. My dad was not that way. He was much more forceful...more "my house, my rules" etc. But my dad was a very moral person. He tended to view things in black & white. It was right or wrong. Period. And yes, sometimes, we resented his domineering ways.

But looking back on it, his personality was exactly what was needed to offset my mom. If he hadn't been that way, if he'd been more middle-of-the-road personality, I think my sister & I might have ended up as disasters.

I wonder if this combination of two parents isn't much better than what we tend to see today, which tends to be two parents who are both more middle-of-the-road...more centrist, if you will.

I dunno. It was just something interesting to think about.

[AlexSem]

Hopey has by far given the best advice in this thread, I think [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

The goods for rewards scenario I think is a horrible one however.

If the only motivation for a child to do well in school is to get some sort of material good, then all you have done is failed to teach your kid that school's important and life will be very hard without.

You should reward children and adults alike, with constructive positive emotional support. That's what all kids need the most, not the newest cellphone or the new ipod.


Raise your kid smart and able to make the right choices, and then you won't have to do the quick fix such as "Get good grades I'll buy you a phone" or talking to their friends saying "If you touch her I'll kill you".

That's just so wrong.


My parents never restricted me and I was never rewarded anything for getting good grades in school. I never smoked and am not inclined to try drugs.

Why? Because my parents taught me the importance of education, the hazards of smoking (considering that my grandma died of cancer sorta helped seal the deal), the hazard of drugs.


I was given a lot of freedom and that's what you should give your kid as well. Most nutcase teenagers I see these days are the ones with psycho control parents who demand to know where he or she is going all the time so very soon, the child sneaks out, lies and does all kinds of [censored] to rebel.

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] My 2 cents

[Gunny Highway]

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Raise your kid smart and able to make the right choices, and then you won't have to do the quick fix such as "Get good grades I'll buy you a phone"

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I struggle with this. Where do you draw the line between bribery and teaching them the value of earning something they really want?

[Hopey]

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Raise your kid smart and able to make the right choices, and then you won't have to do the quick fix such as "Get good grades I'll buy you a phone"

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I struggle with this. Where do you draw the line between bribery and teaching them the value of earning something they really want?

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I agree with the previous poster that you shouldn't have to bribe your kids in order for them to do well in school. You should teach them the value in an education, and their motivation will hopefully come from within themselves.

That being said, ocassionally rewarding your kids for working hard is not being a bad parent. It's just one more way of showing them that you can respect and appreciate the amount of work that they've done, and that you are proud of them.

I don't think that a 1:1 relationship between rewards and good grades is a good idea. However, giving your kid an unexpected treat every so often after he/she has worked his tail off is not being bad parent.

I think the reward needs to come *after* the hard work, and not as a condition for them to work hard.

It's "I know how hard you worked to bring up your grades, and I'm really proud of you. I also know how much you wanted a cell phone, so I went out and found this one for you. I don't want you to expect me to buy you something every time you do well in school, I'm hoping that you'll understand that it's important to do well in school so that you can have options in your future. However, I am so proud of you that I wanted to do something to make you happy so I bought you the phone" as opposed to "If you bring up your grades I'll buy you a cell phone".

[Gunny Highway]

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Raise your kid smart and able to make the right choices, and then you won't have to do the quick fix such as "Get good grades I'll buy you a phone"

[/ QUOTE ]

I struggle with this. Where do you draw the line between bribery and teaching them the value of earning something they really want?

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I agree with the previous poster that you shouldn't have to bribe your kids in order for them to do well in school. You should teach them the value in an education, and their motivation will hopefully come from within themselves.

That being said, ocassionally rewarding your kids for working hard is not being a bad parent. It's just one more way of showing them that you can respect and appreciate the amount of work that they've done, and that you are proud of them.

I don't think that a 1:1 relationship between rewards and good grades is a good idea. However, giving your kid an unexpected treat every so often after he/she has worked his tail off is not being bad parent.

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I agree 100% with the grades thing. I meant more in a general sense that it's something I struggle with.

[Hopey]

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Raise your kid smart and able to make the right choices, and then you won't have to do the quick fix such as "Get good grades I'll buy you a phone"

[/ QUOTE ]

I struggle with this. Where do you draw the line between bribery and teaching them the value of earning something they really want?

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with the previous poster that you shouldn't have to bribe your kids in order for them to do well in school. You should teach them the value in an education, and their motivation will hopefully come from within themselves.

That being said, ocassionally rewarding your kids for working hard is not being a bad parent. It's just one more way of showing them that you can respect and appreciate the amount of work that they've done, and that you are proud of them.

I don't think that a 1:1 relationship between rewards and good grades is a good idea. However, giving your kid an unexpected treat every so often after he/she has worked his tail off is not being bad parent.

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I agree 100% with the grades thing. I meant more in a general sense that it's something I struggle with.

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Ah. I understand your statement more now. The problem is that working hard in school should not correlate to receiving a gift as a result. That's bribery. I believe that the gift should come as a result of you being proud of your children and wanting to treat them. It's when the "treat" becomes expected that it turns back into a "bribe", though. For this reason, I think that gifts of this nature should be given sparingly.

Now, if my child tells me that he really wants something in particular, I would have no problem with the idea of him doing extra chores in order to earn the money to pay for it. This is teaching him the value of money and hard work. It's not a bribe.

[4_2_it]

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Where do you draw the line between bribery and teaching them the value of earning something they really want?

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My daughter really wanted an expensive pair of pants ($75). My wife originally said no because of the cost. My daughter was disappointed, but understood.

She was willing to spend her babysitting and referee money to buy them. This is around Christmas time and my wife and I have no problem with her spending her own money if she wants the pants that badly.

My wife takes her shopping and and my daughter buys a pair with her own money and you could see the pride she had in wearing something that she purchased with own hard-earned $$$.

Fast forward to Christmas Day, my daughter opens up a box and finds another pair (different color) of the same pants from Santa. I got the biggest hug that I have received in a while.

It would have been easy to link the pants to grades, behavior or something else, but I think that the way we handled it allowed her to get an appreciation of how much things cost while showing that Mom and Dad are glad to buy her something she considers important.

[Elevens]

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No offense, but why in the hell does your 13yr old daughter need a cell phone at all? She's not even driving for 3 more years to justify having one in case her car breaks down. I have 3yr and 3 month old daughters, there's no way they're getting any kind of cell phone when they're 13. I can't think of one good reason a 13yr old should have one.

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Here's one: My daughter has been invited to least 6 Bar Mitzvahs in the last 4 months. So far, she has borrowed my phone while attending each one. One time, I had to run a few errands so I was not reachable for a couple of hours should something have occurred. It would have been convenient for me if she had her own phone.

Don't get me wrong, if you have read my posts in this thread you will see that I am pretty much in your camp on this one.

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Get her one of these cell phones. Damn thing can only call like 4 people or so.



http://www.fireflymobile.com

[Blarg]

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It's just such a stupid, arbitrary thing to withold from her. It's something that she'll want, something that all her friends will have, and something that will make her feel like part of the group (as she'll be able to participate in the text msging).

Just because we didn't text message when we were their age doesn't mean that it isn't "important" for her to be able to do it. This shouldn't be considered as a "privilege", it's something that all kids do these days.


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I disagree on some of this. Just because people have something doesn't mean it's NOT a privilege. Just because people's friends have something doesn't mean their friends should have it, or they should have it either. Life is not all about falling to the lowest common denominator, especially for kids. Utter conformity is prized by kids, but is not nearly the most important thing in life that they might think it is.

The truth is people have gotten along just fine in the world without being identical to everyone around them. And they'll continue to do so. Being enslaved by every social or fashion trend that comes along isn't a way of caring, it's a way of being indifferent or even giving up.

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Pick your battles. If you aren't reasonable in the boundaries you set with your kids, they won't respect you. At which point they'll simply start doing everything behind your back without asking first, because they can't expect you to react rationally to their requests.

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I agree with this somewhat, but think you're going too far in the opposite direction yourself. Not giving a kid text messaging is going to -- what, drive them to suicidal despair or into the arms of heroin-dealing pimps?

Not giving your kids every bit of whatever junk of the moment is popular is going to make them disrespect you? I'd hope a parent would have themselves a little more together than to have to buy his respect with toys, or feel so frightened he would lose it that he would feel not giving any teenager anything she wants would be a relationship disaster and the end of mutual trust and respect. Really, worrying about things like that sounds like the perfect way to have a disastrous relationship that debases the both of you.

Pick your battles indeed. Perfect conformity to a kid's every most trivial wish is just not that important. Kick her in the neck sometimes, teach her that life is hard! Just kidding, but really, if she thinks life is hard because she can't get text messaging, or you encourage her to think such ridiculous thoughts, means you'd be incredibly foolish and raising a moron of a daughter -- one who, by the way, probably has one of the best lives in the history of the world.

Casting all differences as if they were disastrous ones is hystrionic. That's a teenager's territory, not an adult's -- and certainly not a parent's!

Of all the ways to love a teenager, giving her text messaging is about the lamest and least credible one I can think of, and of all the ways to show a teenager that life is hard or that you're an uncaring, untrustworthy parent she should begin to hide things from, NOT giving her text messaging is about the least convincing.

You don't handle problems by viewing everything as a crisis or somehow traumatic. Part of growing up for a kid, and of being an adult for someone who is charged with the responsibility of taking care of others or even himself, is indeed knowing when to pick your fights with the universe. Blowing tiny things up into huge dramas that could only have tremendous, life changing repercussions is not the way an adult handles problems, nor is it the outlook he should be striving to pass on to his kids. Kids are SUPPOSED to be retarded, overdramatic goofballs; it's important that their parents not be.

[Blarg]

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It has been shown that girls who don't have close relationships with their fathers tend to be more promiscuous, among other things.

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My father is a very cold, authoritarian type of parent. He was too over-protective and restrictive, while not building a relationship with his children so that we would respect his authority. As soon as his children became older, we all rebelled, and his only strategy was to try to come down harder on us. Eventually this stopped working altogether, as we soon discovered that it wasn't worth trying to live up to his high standards in order to retain a few privileges here and there (that could be taken away for the smallest of infractions). He showed no respect for us, so we showed no respect for him.

I have two sisters. One became pregnant at 15 and now has a six year old son. The other became pregnant twice, but lost one of the babies and gave up the other for adoption. They both barely graduated from high school. One now works for minimum wage in a book store, the other finally became a hairdresser after working at McDonalds for years.

I'm convinced that had my father acted more like a parent rather than a drill sergeant, things would have turned out differently for my sisters.

Get to know your kids, and be reasonable in how you deal with them. Give them some credit for being able to make decisions and respect them. Otherwise they'll eventually turn on you and your ability to have a positive impact on their lives will be gone.

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You're talking extremes that you went through, but I don't think your particular situation is as analogous to what the OP is talking about as you seem to think it is.

I had an authoritarian father too, by the way, probably more authoritarian than yours, who built up zero relationship with me, so I know where you're coming from on that. And I've got my own set of very real problems from that. But whereas his mistakes taught me some things to avoid, that doesn't mean I have confused having strong standards or being strict with a lack of respect, or love, for your children, nor do I find giving kids whatever they want, or whatever other kids have, to have the slightest bit to do with how much you love them.

All fanaticism is bad, but reacting to it by pulling too far in the other way isn't the opposite thing, but the SAME thing. How many people hated their fathers or thought their parents were stupid when they were younger, maybe "rebelled" a lot, but then grew up to be them? They may have thought they went far out of the loop, but they never took a single step outside it; even their rebellion was completely of a piece with it.

Balance is nearly always somewhere in the middle. And it's rarely reacting against something or burning it down; nor is it fearfully stepping back from the whole ordeal. It's usually scrapping the easy comforts of fixed, rigid ideas and trading them in for moderate, clear, humane thinking, and actually listening to the world and oneself instead of rejecting both and chosing prejudices and certainties instead.

Neither excessive authoritarianism nor permissiveness are going to result in a happy life or particularly well-adjusted kids. Nor is fear of being either authoritarian or permissive to different degrees at different times a healthy attitude. Life, and parenting problems, won't be solved by dashing fearfully into the rabbithole of either extreme, but comes down to honestly evaluating individual situations day by day. And, unfortunately, not always making the choices most desired by our kids, or anybody else.

Heck, someone's got to be making the decisions in a family. And they should be adult decisions. The family should not be run by the kids, or, god forbid, the knucklehead ideas or enthusiasms of their friends.