Raising Children from Past to Present

Raising Children from Past to Present

Recently I was having a discussion with my fellow bloggers at KUNM Youth Radio about how children are raised. This discussion got started because in the local newspaper a grandmother asked if it is right to praise your kids even when it’s not deserved. The further we got into this topic the more I came to realize that it was very different for many people in the past from how they were raised to how many children are raised today.

 

Back in the day for many children they would get hit if they misbehaved and did not earn praise unless it was deserved. Now I want to be very clear it depends on family-to-family or different cultures but I have heard many different stories from older generations of how hard they had it compared to my generation. I believe that if children misbehave there need to be consequences or else they’re never going to learn, but I think there are different ways of giving consequences. I think we have a disconnect between kids and adults especially with teenagers. I believe that there should be more conversation between child and guardian to better understand each other because if you keep on punishing the child without trying to talk to them the child is likely to keep misbehaving.

 

I also think parents should be able to spank their children because like not having communication if you give the child the same punishment all the time like no video games for a week they just might say, this is what’s going to happen to me and I don’t care because I can find other things to do, but if you spank them and they see what is going to happen maybe they will stop because I have never met someone that liked a spanking. I also think that many teens are living their own life and making all the decisions without their parents and I think that causes a lot of the problems because then teens think that they’re their own boss. Parents need to take control and say I have the final say.

 

I know my mom does and even though I talk back or get mad she still does not let me get away with it. I also think you should not praise or reward someone that does not earn it but I also think that telling someone they need to work harder or that it was not that good needs to be said in a nice way or told how to make it better, not just ‘that really sucked’. I don’t like that because I feel that that just lowers a persons self esteem and make them think they will never succeed, but I have been raised by people who tell me that was bad but also give me advice on how to make it better. That is my two cents on this topic. What do you think?