My Childhood and my Children's Childhood

My childhood was basically split into two; time spent with my mother and time spent with my father.  My dad was quite conservative and strict when I think about it now, my mum very laid back and pretty much the complete opposite of my dad.  Before I reached the age of 10 my dad lived in the house with us and kept everything in check according to the way he felt about things.  When I reached 10 he moved out and things changed drastically around the home.

From the time that my dad left the home, I was able to live the kind of life I wanted.  My mum gave me complete freedom.  I could go out when I wanted, as late as I wanted and with whoever I wanted.  From the age of 11 and all through my teens, I made the decisions for myself.  Naturally, I got into quite a rough crowd and soon started racking up clashes and incidents with the police.  This went on until the age of 15 when I moved to permanently to live with my dad.  The structure, love and guidance I got from him helped me to calm down and stay out of trouble.

As far as how I feel about raising my own daughter, I feel as though I saw both sides of the spectrum when I was a kid. What I have learned about life is that things are often about balance. Anything that is done to the extreme can quickly and easily become unhealthy. Being too strict and being too lenient are both parenting styles that can lead to a lot of problems. I try to find the happy medium. I don’t want to let my kids run wild in on the streets but at the same time I don’t want to shelter, baby or frustrate my children by keeping them locked up and away form everything that is real life. Modern technology can offer parents today with a helping hand in this respect, child locate services can be used to locate your child at any time via their mobile phone meaning you always know, or at least can quickly find out where they are.

I feel fortunate to have experienced both sides of the parenting, strictness spectrum.  I use it now as a measuring stick with my child.  When it comes to what I allow and don’t allow my children to do basically, it comes down to talking, discussing and a lot of story telling on my part.  I try to teach my children principles about life and about the consequences (especially long-term consequences) then I let them make their own decisions about what they want to be involved in.  I got this parenting style from my dad more than my mum.  I don’t lie to myself, I know there are probably things that my children hide from me as far as what they do when I’m not around but for the most part, they are fairly well-behaved and I can see from the little things they do that they actually hear a lot of what I say.

It is not often that I have to outright say no to them because they understand how to make decisions.  They know where I stand on many things.  If they want to do something that I am not completely comfortable with, I ask them questions.  Not in an accusatory way but in a ‘let’s think about this’ way.  If they still don’t understand why I don’t agree, I will usually tell them a true story of something I or someone we know has been through. Showing them cause and effect.  On their own, a lot of teens because of their age can’t always reason through cause and effect.  They just don’t have the life experience to draw from.