The Hardest Job in the World?

We have all heard the cliche, “Parenting is the hardest job in the world.” This is true, but with one caveat. If you are doing it right, it is the hardest job in the world. If you are not doing it right…well, then, maybe not so much!

There are so many parents that have adopted the parenting model of being their child’s best friend. On the surface there seems to be nothing wrong with that idea. You get along better, there is less arguing, you know what they want, you give it to them, the lines of communication are open.

HELLO! These are junior human beings we are talking about! They were not born with all the life experiences they need to make good decisions. They don’t automatically know right from wrong. They don’t know where the boundaries of acceptable behavior are. They only learn those things by being taught by parents and loved ones, and by having been given boundaries in their everyday behavior.

When my children were very small, a friend of mine with no children told me that she thought I ran a “tight ship,” because I put my kids in a time out when they did things that they knew they were not supposed to do. The theory behind, time out is that eventually the child will understand the consequences of their actions and not do it anymore. This approach worked well with my second child, but failed with my first child. My older child constantly asked to get down from the time out and had tantrums during the time out. He needed more drastic measures to get the point across. I had to take a favorite toy or a privilege away from him when he exhibited the bad behavior. That seemed to get the point across with him.

Back to my friend; since she had no children, my reactions to my children’s bad behavior seemed excessive to her; she thought that if I just asked my children to stop the bad behavior, they would comply with my request. I don’t know about your children, but my kids NEVER complied when I simply asked them to. They needed to know how badly I wanted them to comply and what they would lose if they did not comply. This was the system we had for dealing with unwanted behavior and it worked for us. They learned that their behaviors had consequences both good and bad. If they were playing nicely at the playground and asked to stay longer, many times they did get to stay longer. If they cleaned up their toys when they were done playing, then they got to watch a video on TV. When they hit each other or were acting out, if they did not stop doing it they got a time out or had a toy or privilege taken away. My children learned that there are rules that need to be followed. Period. There was no grey area there.

From the time I became a Mom, I saw immediately how difficult parenting could be. It was exhausting, emotionally draining, and surprising how mad such a tiny creature could make you! Some days it took a lot of extra emotional strength to conquer the day. I also saw some examples of people around me who were taking short cuts on their parenting duties and it was really surprising to me. I never thought about how those parenting short cuts would manifest when those children became adults.

Some parenting short cuts are probably the result of exhaustion. These are the people that have children that have worn them down, thus they let the children do whatever they want because they are too tired of arguing about why they cannot do it. These children learn early on to keep nagging for what they want until they wear the parent down!

Some parenting short cuts are the result of not having enough hands or not paying enough attention to your children. These are the parents you see in the store parking lot who have a toddler following 20 feet behind the shopping cart. Both parent and child are oblivious to the danger that a 36 inch tall child can be in while walking by himself behind a parking lot full of SUV’s that can’t see him. I feel like screaming when I see these parents but they are usually too busy chatting on their cell phones to notice. This child is under the false impression that nothing can hurt him; if my Mom or Dad thinks its ok for me to walk (almost) alone through a parking lot, then it must be ok. They are relying on the parent to be a parent and make a decision on their safety. This results in a false sense of security.

Other short cuts are the result of an attitude of “we did it when we were kids and we turned out fine.” These are the people who hold the baby on their lap while driving ala Britney Spears. If your child is crying while strapped into a car seat in the back of your car and you are driving, there is not much you can do. You can ignore it, or you can pull over and try to calm the child. Those are your only safe options. When we were growing up as children, there were no car seats or seat belts. Guess what? Back then, many more people, including children, were injured and died in car crashes. It is not rocket science that car seats and seat belts save lives a lot more than they take lives. The children who grow up having been taken onto someone’s lap in a moving car will undoubtedly be the people who don’t think they need to use seat belts when they grow up.

This week, a news story appeared in Massachusetts that was stunning. There was a couple in East Bridgewater that had left for a trip to Paris and had left their teenage son with a neighbor for the week. He invited a few friends over for a party at his parent’s house and it turned into a total calamity. A few local troublemakers heard of the party and invited many, many more people via texting, twitter and Facebook. The local troublemakers went there on a mission to destroy the house. You heard it right. They went there with the sole purpose of wrecking a stranger’s home for fun. And they did a good job of it. They kicked and punched holes in walls, urinated on every bed, carpet and pillow in the house. They spilled beer and blood everywhere. They tore carpeting, pulled down ceiling fans, broke lamps, antiques, carved profanity into wooden headboards, left cigarette buts, beer cans and litter everywhere. In total, they did about $45,000 damage. Needless to say the couple returned from their Paris trip to find their home in a state of ruin.

To me, the part that is so shocking in this story is not that the son decided to have a party when his folks were away. That has gone on as long as we can remember. Did you see the movie Risky Business? The part that blows me away is that these kids (all are between 16 and 21) made a conscious decision to go to someone’s house and wreck it for fun. All I can conclude about these kids, who have since been arrested, is that they had to be the result of either bad parenting or no parenting. They have no sense of right and wrong, no sense of consequences to their actions, no sense of knowing better than that. I am really hoping that the judge on their case acts in a parental way and throws the book at all of them. They need to learn these basic life lessons and better late than never. They also need to repay the homeowners for all of the damage and maybe pay a punitive damage fee for mental anguish they caused.

So where am I going with this? I am not saying that if you don’t give your child a time out they are going to go out and destroy a stranger’s house for fun. But I am saying that good citizens, good students, good friends are not created in a vacuum. Their parents did all the hard work to teach the lessons of life (that one can learn as a child) and these children grew up applying these teachings to all aspects of their lives.

Not every axe murderer has had a bad parent and not every Mother Theresa type has had a saint for a parent. It’s just that the odds are in your favor if you have parents that behave as parents and leave the friend area to work itself out.

A potential bonus of behaving like a parent is that for a lot of people, eventually your child will be your friend. They just have to get through the business of growing up first before they can give you kudos for all you did for them :-)

Parenting is hard work, it is physically tiring when children are small and it is mentally taxing when they get older. It is the hardest and most important job that anyone can do. Putting a good human being out into the world shapes that world in ways we cannot even imagine.