自強之路

Zoe, my girlfriend, told me when she is a mom in the future, she will carry out the following tips for being a perfect parent. I am quite fine with what she cares for. However, I do care more who the dad will be...

7 Rules For Parenting

1. What You Do Matter: It is necessary and indispensable to tell your children what you really care about. It is something related to the setup of a personal future goal and career, which helps them learn about the values of life in aspect of yours. With an attempt to educate children what their parents do and how their parents would achieve it will be a good start.

2. You Can't Be Too Loving: We are never too late to love and be loved. Love your children as much as you possibly can. As the Bible says, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."  (Mark 12:31) Loving your children and other people as you can is actually the first thing first to live for.

3. Stay Involved: Being involved is never being interruptive, nor being manipulative. It is rather another way of attentive and caring. Teenagers as your kids may be, they still need advice and opinions from their parents, who are relatively more experienced dealing with various situations in daily lives. To your children, you are the best advisor. You are the person they could ever trust the most in their lives. Or who else can be to replace you?

4. Adapt Your Parenting: Don't feel ashamed or embarrassed when your children disagree with what you think or believe. Give them plenty room to express themselves. Open yourself to listen to them. They will be only honest and candid when you yourself are so. That can be counted as real successful discussing and mutual understanding. After all, people err. Real education consists of real understanding and convincing whole-heartedly. Dogmatism and intolerance will never be the case.

5. Set Limits: Children do grow up, yet that doesn't necessarily mean they can be readily mature. Even teenagers are more or less innocent to many decisions or ways of thinking. You should let go in some circumstances where you have confidence on their behavior. Meanwhile, you should allow them to learn by themselves. Allow them, to certain degree, to make mistakes. Chances are that they can learn the lesson better, and thus it's more effective. "The rod and sharp words give wisdom: but a child who is not guided is a cause of shame to his mother." (Proverbs 29:15)

6. Foster Independence: It would be the last resort for teenagers, as well as every one of any age, to be independent out of rebeliousness or disrespect. If so, it would not be totally their fault. Quite in contrary, it is often their parents that should be to blame. It is a good idea to teach your children how to be independent, how to make their own living, and how to build the sense of responsibility. Allow them, as always, to try out their ideas and help them step out their first move. Nevertheless, don't make them leave you because they hate being with you. That's not independence, but recantation, which is of the biggest failure of parenting.

7. Explain Your Decisions: As closely coherent to rules No. 1 and 4, the final rule indicates that obnoxiously and arbitrarily reining in the nose of your kid makes no sense in terms of their growing up and matureness. Reasoning and identification are always the elixir to break a deadlock. Tell your children the reason why you hope them to do this or not; analyze the dos and don'ts to reach both ends meet. Teach them to learn to evaluate a condition on a balanced and wholesome scale, rather than plundging oneself carelessly out of one's own emotional drive, jerking like a buffoon. Later on they will gradually realize the true wisdom of life and be enjoying a healthy, peaceful, and successful life.