Greetings to you all. Well it's been a while since I last contributed my thoughts for your consideration, so I'd like to do that today. L left off last time mentioning the 4 P's of parenting which are; presence, patience, persistence, and finally power. Allow me to break these 4 down starting with presence. If you imagine yourself to be an effective parent to your children and adults-in-training (teenagers), then there is no substitute for being physically and emotionally available to them, starting from birth!!!
At the risk of making anyone feel bad or guilty (that is not the intention of this forum), one of the biggest disappointments to parenting, as far as I'm concerned, is our societies' need for day care. Let me be absolutely clear: Mothers are designed by God to physically care for their own babies around the clock!!! You see, Mother Nature equipped you with something day care could never provide for your precious little one; breasts full of milk! What's the significance of this you ask? God told me to tell you that when a baby is forming in her mother's womb, milk is naturally and systematically forming at the same time to meet the physical and neurological needs of your baby in particular. That means the milk forming in your breasts is designed to meet the needs of that baby only! No one else's baby but yours!
If you had four kids at four different times, the milk formed at each pregnancy was different!!! Did you know that? Now I'm not trying to speak a bad word against Similac, for example; thank goodness for them. All I'm saying is that if your baby isn't getting the benefit of the milk specifically and personally designed for him, he's missing something important that can only come from mom's presence. It's unfortunate that having to get out and work a job interferes with this very important time in a baby's life.
Since we as a society have comfortably placed our babies in the hands of day care, by the time they are eight, twelve, and sixteen years old we think nothing of being so busy with other things (work, church, bingo, extra marital affairs, etc.), we don't really know our kids, and they don't know us! And we wonder why is it that we have such a tough time relating to our teens. If you want a solid and positive influence on your teens, it starts with always being there for them from the early years. You need to be there for their first words, the first tooth, the first steps, the first fever and trip to the doctor; the first tears from a scraped knee. Be there for the first trip to kindergarten, and so on. If you start this trend of being there from the start; both moms and dads, the teenage years won't be so tough.
A final word about being present; it's not just physically being seen, but it's emotionally being involved.
There are parents who think that just because they're around the house that this counts for being present. But watching All My Children, washing clothes, and changing the oil in the garage doesn't really count, unless you invite your kids to do it with you. The key is Present Interaction; it's about relationship building that starts with buying diapers and continues with their drivers learning permit.
In my next piece we'll consider the second P, which is Patience. Stay tuned.
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