Too Busy

LAF/Beautiful Womanhood linked to Enough of Parenting Misery Lit, a critique of another article about raising kids in North America.  I thought there were some great things in it:

...I am not sure what is meant by the “lack of an adult life”. You generally should not become a parent until you reach adulthood, and the years spent in active parenting do, by definition, mostly revolve around the kids. In order to raise children well (to be secure, healthy, confident, well-trained, ultimately decent and productive human beings) you need to put in some time and effort. With a little more effort, spouses can make time for each other. The key is balance, and for most families this is the challenging part.

As a parent, you have to make a lot of choices. One of them is how much time you will spend together as a family, and how much time you will be involved in various other activities. This should include, by the way, not just sport, culture and recreation, but also things like community volunteering, which teaches children that life is also about making it better for those less fortunate....

Many North American parents feel not just a desire, but an obligation to offer their children the widest possible range of leisure experiences and activities. The choices are myriad: music lessons (Pick one—or more—of a hundred different instruments and musical styles, then decide: solo, ensemble, band, orchestra, choir, or a combination thereof?); sports (Which to choose? How many at once? Highly competitive or just for fun?); dance, drama, clubs, hobbies. Multiply by the number of children. Calculate the extra hours you as a parent will spend chauffeuring, waiting, fund-raising, cheering, volunteering, assistant-coaching. Multiply by the number of children. By this point, there is no need to wonder why you don’t have any “adult life”.

How much is too much? Where does “life enrichment” end and pushy-parent, stage-mom or hockey-dad syndrome begin? Should a pre-schooler’s life be so tightly scheduled that he develops severe anxiety issues? As children grow, they develop their strengths and preferences for how they wish to spend their after-school hours. The hard part for parents is knowing when to encourage, when to accommodate, and when to (regrettably) say no—or at least, not right now. Ultimately, the decision belongs to the parent. If it doesn’t, are you still the parent, or have you been relegated to chauffeur, lunch-packer and grudging financier?...

 The alternative is to tell your children that, unfortunately, they cannot do it all. This is not deprivation: it is reality. No one can do it all or have it all, not even people who seem to have all the time and money in the world. It is all right to tell your children that they will have to give up some activities entirely, or wait until next year or possibly even adulthood to experience them. Many North Americans are not willing to do this. They want their kids to do it all, play it all, learn it all, experience it all. And then they wonder why their life seems like the Neverending Story of Hellish Exhaustion....

 Life is burdensome for many; when it’s burdensome as a result of our own choices, it is time to find a new balance. It’s basically a matter of priorities, which each family must decide for itself. Parents simply have to be aware that every choice has consequences. There are only so many hours in a day and days in a week, and only about eighteen years in a child’s life until they leave the nest. How many of those do you want to spend in the car—or the studio, field, track, gym or stadium, and how many do you want to spend strolling in the park?

(I added the emphasis.)

Teaching Children Gratitude -- a late Thanksgiving post?

I'm really bad at planning to write specific posts like Thanksgiving posts or Christmas posts; I just have to let them come naturally, and sometimes they just don't come.  I have read two great posts recently on how to teach our children gratitude and not entitlement/consumerism -- goes along well with the Thanksgiving topic, don't you think?  I enjoyed this first post from the idea room by Heather Ann:

Good research has found that adults who are grateful report having fewer health problems (like digestion and headaches), more energy, and a greater feeling of well-being than those who complain. Most studies show that the more gratitude we show, the healthier and happier we are.

Can’t we assume findings would be the same for children? Children who express gratitude are kinder, more appreciative, more empathetic, happier and more enthusiastic. Grateful children understand that other people have needs and they look outside themselves. They are more polite, usually better behaved and generally more pleasant to be around.

Kids who are not taught gratitude struggle with feelings of entitlement and are usually disappointed, feeling that nothing is good enough for them. 

In trying to teach our children gratitude, parents have been making the same mistakes for years. Avoid pointing out to our children that they are more blessed than others. That doesn’t teach them to be grateful. When it comes to meals, don’t tell them “you should be grateful for your food, and eat it, kids in other countries are starving”. This won’t work either.

Her major points on how to teach children gratitude:
 
1.  We need to model gratitude ourselves.

2.  Say “No.”

3.  Give your children responsibility.

4.   Teach your children to be grateful for adversity.

5.   Role Play. Practice saying “please” and “thank you” with your children. 

6.   Teach your children to write Thank you Notes.

7.  Point out the simple things.


8.  Provide your family opportunities to serve.

Along these same lines, I also enjoyed Why do ye adorn yourselves with that which hath no life? at Empowering LDS Women by Kels.

Update on Entitlement

The Deseret News ran, The age of entitlement: Selfishness is rampant, but can be corrected, experts say, recently.

..."The gratitude is vanishing," Greer says.

This change in behavior is a symptom of a greater phenomenon that psychologists, family experts, sociologists and scholars say is gripping the world. Now, more than ever, entitlement — the idea that "I should get everything I want when I want it, even if I haven't worked for it" — is rearing its ugly head.

But the problem isn't just in preschool classrooms; it's in homes, high schools, offices and even the highest levels of government. It impacts the way children treat their parents and siblings, interferes with education and can contribute to a lifetime of unhappiness, financial instability and disdain for work, experts say....

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Talk about entitlement:  Stand Up and Say Something.   The article's mainly not about entitlement, but about respect, but the examples just show how entitled our kids feel.