Yesterday, I got to see some of my old friends again, and its been awhile since we saw each other. Of course time has change, all of us now married and even have young children. As usual the chat started about hows everybody doing, then one of my friend shared that for the last few days he's having trouble getting his 1,5 yrs old daughter in bed at night, so he asked my other friend with 4 yrs old son how she managed to get her son trained to sleep on time every night. And from that innocent question suddenly started a whole new conversation piece about how to raise and disciplining children.
And friend with the son said that having a child is like having a mirror that "slapped" in her face constantly, because whatever she said or did to him especially the negative ones , he will imitate them to others. This really makes her think twice every time she wants to punish or teach her son.
I couldn't agree more with her, and I even pointed out that I am big believer of :"Most children are not born bad, they just have bad parents." And as usual after I said that I'm waiting for the million dollar comments such as:"you are not a parent yet, so it's easy for you to say that" and "You know they gonna say the same thing to you when your kid behave badly.," As I predicted both comments did come almost the same time.
Well, for the first statement I usually answer:"I may not be a parent yet, but been working in early childhood education field, I've seen enough that give that conviction." and as the second statement, since I'm waiting for my first child to be born soon (less than 2 mth), me n my husband already decided that we're going to educated and teach our son the best we could, and if he behave badly, yes we will take the responsibility.
When I say bad parents, I meant parents who neglect their children physically and mentally. also parents whot never teach their children about boundaries and discipline. Don't get me wrong, I like children to creative, active, independent, and free spirited but that doesn't mean that they just be rude and uncivilized. I'm sure you've seen them, children throwing tantrum and causing scene in public. What I've learn is that if they have enough confident to do that in public, it means they must done worst than that at the comfort of their home, so the question is what did the parent do when the children did all of that at home?
Anyway, I know that we are, including me and my husband are just humans. We are imperfect, which means we are bound to make mistakes, even in raising our children. But it doesn't mean we don't try our best as parents.
