Parenting

The intentional raising of your children into an identified product that will be respected by the adults around them. It constantly amazes me how many parents put so little intentional thought into the job of raising their kids. So many people seem to exist from the standpoint of I give them food send them to school and put them to bed appropriately what more do I need to do. So little thought is given to the idea of creating an environment that produces certain outcomes.

I have been involved in a few different projects over the years. I have built houses boats etc. all of these have involved taking a pile of materials and following a plan over time to produce a finished product that looks nothing like the materials but is a product of the plans and your imagination. Many times in the middle of the project it looks like nothing is happening or the job can feel to large to ever complete but bit by bit implementation by implementation the job comes together and finally you have the finished project. So it is in parenting lots of work on the little jobs produces a great final picture.

Behaviour, so many parents get this wrong(from my point of view) the inverted pyramid is  the best way to describe the way to teach behaviour. Give your kids little to no independent freedom when young with lots of boundaries and responsbility, a healthy respect for authority needs to be taught at a young age, as they grow up you give them more and more freedom and relax those boundaries as they show they can handle responsibility appropriately. So many parents try it the other way and then wonder why they can’t control their kids as teenagers. 

If you want a friendship with your kids as adults then you need to transition your relationship from parent to friend in the teenage years, this does not mean you abrogate your parental responsibilities but you do start to do the things that they enjoy with them as a friend would. This means spending time with them doing the things they like rather than making them spend time with you doing the things you like.

Teach them about money early, I didn’t do a great job here so my kids love spending money… with not so many of the skills needed to save it.

Teach your kids to catch and throw a ball. Teach your kids to do a handstand. I believe that an involvement in sport is healthy for a kid however there are a number of sports where kids can pick up injuries that they will carry with them for the rest of their life. For that reason as a parent I have avoided my kids playing the following sports netball, soccer, tennis, league or union, ankles knees shoulder injuries, cricket can also lead to broken fingers and shoulder injuries but is probably safer than the others.

I do believe however that it is important to teach your kids to kick, catch and throw a ball. Flexibility is also important and your kids should be able to do a handstand. Table tennis is a great game to teach eye hand co-ordination. where i to redo parenting i would put all of my kids through year of gymnastics for flexibility and BJJ for some awareness of using their body. this would only be for a year.

For my families physical fitness and sports fitness I discovered a sport called underwater hockey which involves an excellent cardio workout whilst being low impact and relatively injury free.

Give your kids the benefit of a musical education, A guitar is probably the most useful instrument out there.