Parenting - Teach and learn with a child in the art of life.

Teach your child in the art of life and at the same time learn about who he/she is. Parenting begins the moment a child is born. Whether you are a little or a lot involved in raising the child, the guidelines are the same with consistency being the key to making it a part of the child's character. How active your are in your child's life reveals what kind of parent you are. Even a deadbeat parent is being a parent, just not a good one, and there is that part in a child that knows it as neglect.

Being a parent is a state of mind. It is like being a mentor with the honor of exalted emotional attachment to a part of you that is apart from you. In being a parent we guide our children in learning.

About:

Natural and logical consequences to their actions
Our language, values, and customs
Personal responsibility
Their likes and dislikes
Their natural talents and how to develop them

How:

Their mind and body works along with the things that affect them, i.e., emotions, drugs
To create a good situation out of a bad choice
To discern fantasy from reality, especially with violent and gory video games
To handle grief in loss
To handle peer pressure
To love themselves
To recognize their options and make right choices
To set personal boundaries
To temper strong emotions, especially in the face of raging hormones

Mostly:

That they are very much loved and important to us.

Why would a person think that being a parent gives license to be a tribal dictator?

Parenting is a leadership during the training period of a child from birth to young adult. It is guidance in the art of being human for someone who is new to the planet and all of its strange experiences.

Why would a parent think that they know "everything" more than their children?

Children have a whole new world of things to learn along with new ways of learning as each generation brings new challenges that surpass the one before.

Why would a parent think that what they want is what their child wants?

Children are not clones so parents can have a second chance at a better life.
Children are not little dolls that you can dress-up in cutesy outfits to take out in public only to set back on a shelf when you get home.

See entire page on Parenting at http://www.dedan.com/Parenting.htm

Author's Bio:

A single parent of one son with a deadbeat dad since 1981. My son and I had a unique relationship in that he treated me more like an older sister than a mother, which allowed us to be friends, but made discipline hard. We've gone through ADHD, father neglect, family interference and jealousies and of course the raging hormones of the teen-age years. He is one of those miracles where I had planned to never have children and got pregnant with protection, but didn't find out until I was 19 weeks along and I had just split up with his father two weeks prior and moved back to my own town. I have almost lost him a few times through a neglectful babysitter when he was three where he was about to be picked up on walking along the highway and a near abduction when he was four while playing in the park.

I still remember the first time I ever felt real love in my life and it was just a few months after he was born, so he truly taught me that.