Quick Guide To Good Kids Preface
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It seems like yesterday that I brought my first baby home from the hospital.
Cindy weighed just five pounds, no more than a sack of sugar, but she already
had her bright blue eyes that missed nothing and a few tender wisps of chestnut
hair. Her brother David arrived four years later, a hefty eight-pound towhead
with a lusty scream.
In fact, it was nearly 23 years ago. Now, my babies are both young adults,
one about to finish college, one just beginning. Both have earned scholarships
to a highly ranked university.
My children are pleasant, hardworking individuals who are highly motivated
to succeed. They recognize their obligations and perform them without argument,
while finding plenty of time for friends and recreation. I love them dearly,
and in addition, I like the young adults they have become. I enjoy their
phone calls and visits. I’m glad I brought them into the world, and
I would trust them with my life.
In raising them, I’ve made a contribution to future generations that
is better than anything else I could have done with those 23 years. It took
a lot of time, energy, and patience, but it yielded results like no other
project or occupation I have experienced. This includes my Ph.D., my years
of teaching college English, my free-lance writing, and other jobs I have
held. Raising children was eminently more difficult, but eminently more
satisfying, too.
Children require 18 years to reach legal maturity. This means they are influenced, more than any other species, by the actions of their parents. For most, the life their parents teach them is the life they will live as adults and into old age. It is the life they will teach their own children, and the life that will go on and on through the generations of that family. If you doubt this, look at the people you know, and look at their children. Notice the similarities in outlook and lifestyle. The apple truly doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Now that they’re grown, I’ve examined my children’s
early years for things I did that helped them succeed. Our family conditions
were never perfect. Financially, we were always getting by but never wealthy.
Health-wise, I experienced two chronic diseases and two major surgeries,
including a total hip replacement. Though we seemed to live in a “nice”
neighborhood, both kids saw violence, drinking, and drug use among their
peers.
Perhaps most devastating, when they were 13 and 17, their father left the
family, filed for divorce, and married a girlfriend he had met on the Internet.
Sounds like a bad soap opera, doesn’t it? Hardly the best environment
for raising children.
There were so many slippery slopes for my children to fall down, so many
quicksand pits of serious trouble to sink them at various points along the
way. They had every reason to be angry and rebellious and refuse to cooperate
with their parents’ requests. Yet my kids were able to avoid most
of these pitfalls, perhaps all of them.
As I ask myself why, I can isolate ten things I did as a parent that I believe
helped them to avoid serious problems and to blossom from screaming helpless
infants into fine young adults of high moral standing. I will list them
for you, and in this book, I’ll explain how they worked for me as
a parent. You’ll get the full benefit of 23 years in just 224 pages.
(That’s the quick part.)
- Spend huge amounts of time and attention and love on your children when they are babies and toddlers. This creates a powerful bond.
- Strive to be supportive and affirming; avoid making critical remarks.
- Beyond the necessities, don’t worry too much about material things.
- Inform your children that when they are in school, you expect them to do what the teacher says, and, if there is a conflict, you will back the teacher.
- Be present at occasions that are important to the child—and remember, what’s important to the child may not seem important to you.
- Allow extended family to help parent your children.
- By example, teach duty and fulfillment of obligations -- i.e., going to school every day, going to work every day, doing homework on time, completing projects on time, putting dinner on the table every day.
- Be aggressive at protecting adolescent girls from sexual abuse. In some cases, realize that boys may be at risk, too.
- Talk to your teenagers, know where they are, and keep phone numbers of their friends handy.
- Admit when you are wrong and your child is right. Apologize when you screw up. I will even admit the ways that I screwed up, and hopefully you can avoid them. I’ve found that it’s okay to make mistakes, as long as there is a solid basis in love and acceptance between parent and child. In general, children are much more forgiving of us than we are of them.
Parenthood is an evolving skill, and you will contribute your own unique talents to the task. It begins anew with each baby born. From each infancy through each adolescence, infinite possibilities once again unfold. You will have the privilege of being close enough to see each exciting developmental burst. You will be able to help that burst become a little more productive, and a little more focused in a positive direction.
When you become a parent, you affect the nature of the people who become our future generations -- the way they will behave and the decisions they will make. You don’t have a choice about that. All parents mold their children, whether consciously or not. But you can choose how you affect them, and you can affect them into success and happiness and high moral standing.
In my opinion, it is fully within every parent’s grasp to raise fine children. It just takes a deeper commitment, more time, and more effort than most people realize. At the same time, it yields a fullness of satisfaction with life that swells and sweetens in mid-life and old age. I’m glad for what I did for my children. It was a privilege.
Download PDF file with excerpt of Quick Guide To Good Kids
Click here for information on purchasing Quick Guide To Good Kids, by Virginia Bentz
For an interview with the author,
or an advance copy of the book,
please contact Dottie DeHart,
Rocks DeHart Public Relations,
At (828) 459-9637 or DSDeHart@aol.com