Notes From Mar 18th Class

Today (Mar 18th), I learnt about various cycle of life.

• Early Childhood – Children should be welcome into family and made to feel safe & secure. This is the age till child becomes a teenager.
• Late Childhood – Children must learn to care about others & fit into larger community. Generally speaking teenager onwards till adulthood.
• Adulthood – We must become teachers, caretakers and nurturers. During this time, we put off some of personal wants to meet children’s needs. Average adulthood phase in USA starts around when you get a child (around 26 years of age)
• Elderhood – This is when we must pas on the stories, vision, lessons, culture with patience, appreciation and acceptance.

We talked about “How the child models parents”, means how your good or bad behavior is picked up by child.

We also learnt about importance of

• Personal rite of passage – This is related to helping your child grow as a happy and secure citizen. Help your child develop self esteem, love for self, love for family. Examples of things that you could do for that are.
• Create personal space for your child
• Send personal / special message to your child
• Provide interaction with other role models
• Ask your child about their value system, role models, dreams, aspirations.
• Help your child to be independent and confident by giving working opportunities under supervision
• Encourage self-discipline and hard work
• Clear Instructions – Tell what is expected and remove guessing work. Show, role-play or practice with your child.
• Special Time – Give individual time to each kid separately and let the child know their importance and how much you love him / her. This builds parent child bond. Here are some of the ground rules of special time.
• For younger child – 15 min a day.
• For older child – 1 hour twice a week
• No questions, no directions, no criticisms. Listen to your child, repeat what child says, ask questions to help the child think, Share information about yourself.
• Try to have a set schedule for special time
• Spiritual Rite of Passage – From spirituality, the child will develop courage, love, joy, peace, gentleness, charity, faith, humbleness and patience to face obstacles without complaint.

Evaluate your parenting…

So today (Mar 25, 2010), I went through the evaluation forms in the parenting class. Here are some of the evaluation questions that I could remember.

How often do you ?

• Give Rewards to the kids when they behave good.
• Give hugs and kisses to your kids.
• Yell or Haul at your kids when they make mistakes.
• Have Fun together as family.
• Criticize or threaten the kids when they don’t behave good.
• talk to your kids about gangs and drugs.
• Hit or Spank your kids.
• Spend individual time with kid.
• Ignore the child when they don’t behave.
• Acknowledge or praise the child when they follow rules.
• Have family discussions about rules.
• go to cultural events together.
• get angry when kids make mistakes.
• Talk about sexual responsibilities.
• Listen to your child Ideas.

Do you feel that you are you able to ?

• Manage your own anger in different situations.
• Express your emotions in different situations.
• Teach right or wrong to your child in different situations.
• Handle child’s destructive behavior.
• Enable your kids to do the house chores.
• Make suggestions to child’s teacher.
• achieve your personal goals.
• access community resources for help.
• Have good relationship with your child.
• Have good relationship with other members of family.

Do you feel that your kids?

• Feel good about themselves.
• Express themselves well.
• Have self –discipline.
• Consider others before themselves.
• Ask for help.
• Avoid drugs.
• Avoid violence.
• Are comfortable with their Ethnicity.