parenting

It's hard to let go of one's children after taking care of them from
conception and then on through their schooling. Our offspring learn
from a variety of sources which become more varied as they grow older.
For parents it has to be a case of allowing the independence while
maintaining the love. It is not an easy course to travel and a state
of over protection is every much as big a problem as that of under
protection.


I was fascinated by an "over protection" story the other day:

"It was a story of a man who was watching a butterfly struggle to
break out of its cocoon. After making some progress to work its way
through a small hole, the butterfly appeared to simply stop its
efforts. For some time, it seemed to make no headway, so the man
concluded it was stuck and decided to lend a helping hand by
delicately forming a larger opening in the cocoon with scissors.

Afterward the butterfly emerged easily but with small, shriveled wings
and a swollen body.

It turned out that the struggle to emerge from the cocoon would have
forced the fluid from the butterfly's body into its wings, a necessary
process for enabling it to fly. As a result of a man's
well-intentioned `help', he had interfered with nature's
life-strengthening process. The butterfly was now doomed never to fly,
but to crawl around with its swollen body and shriveled wings for the
rest of its short life." (Bangkok Post 17-01-2005)

There is one thing we all crave and that is love; but the loving thing
is often hard to do. What may appear caring in the moment may well not
be so in time and what may appear uncaring at the time may indeed be
the loving thing to do.

"Doing" for my children sometimes seems easier in the moment; yet
showing them how to "do' for themselves, so that they learn, will
often bring better results in the longer term. How can a child develop
into a dependable person if never taught personal responsibility? How
can any person develop into a respected leader if it does not
understand being a servant?

Feeding a child a healthy diet may not be the easy path, but allowing
too much sugar and fat is the harmful course in the later time. The
same applies to me now, I am slightly overweight and I love my snacks;
in the long term this is a self inflicted wound. I must learn to love
myself, then my children may longer share in that loving environment.

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 21:19:23 EST, (dan)
wrote:

Welcome to misc.kids.moderated. I'm going to respond with a bit of
challenge; I hope you won't take it amiss.

"Doing" for my children sometimes seems easier in the moment; yet
showing them how to "do' for themselves, so that they learn, will
often bring better results in the longer term.

[...]

Feeding a child a healthy diet may not be the easy path, but allowing
too much sugar and fat is the harmful course in the later time.

Actually, the juxtaposition of these two general statements makes me
notice that it's not nearly that simple. The real trick is to
provide a variety of healthy food and a good example, and an amount of
guidance about what and when and how much to eat that is appropriate
for the child and his/her age, and to let your child learn to make
some of those decisions. The details of course depend on the age and
the child's personality and food preferences, but other posters on
this newsgroup can give you lots of examples, such as letting young
children help themselves to carrots and apples at any time, modeling
and enforcing appropriate ways to not finish one's plateful of dinner,
and not giving sweets the lure of the forbidden.

I sometimes work at a camp for gifted 17-18yo, and I am always shocked
at how many of them complain about the cafeteria food, struggle with
making varied healthy choices in the cafeteria, or order take-out food
most nights. When I then point out that they have the choice of
*not* living in residence when they attend university, they stare at
me. I can't tell whether it's because everyone in their life takes
residence for granted, or whether they can't quite get their heads
around fending for themselves, but I quite enjoy planting more seeds
of autonomy and choice.

Louise

In article ,
Louise wrote:

When I then point out that they have the choice of
*not* living in residence when they attend university, they stare at
me. I can't tell whether it's because everyone in their life takes
residence for granted, or whether they can't quite get their heads
around fending for themselves, but I quite enjoy planting more seeds
of autonomy and choice.

For what it's worth, a lot of colleges/universities do require freshmen
to live in the dorms. I think most parents are most comfortable with
that arrangement at first too. I'd be less than thrilled if you
encouraged my child to live off-campus their first semester.

--Robyn