What A Parent Should Be

Or how a parent should be. Who determines (or determined) what kind of parent you are (were going to be)?

Does society dictate your role to you?
Is your parenting based on your own parents methods?
Do you read those stupid parenting books?
Are other parents your role models?
Do you follow your gut?

Maybe your style is (or was) a combination of those things and even more.

I'll tell y'all a little secret about my own parenting style. It was based, basically, on three things:

• Piaget
• My gut
• Doing the opposite of what my parents did- mostly

I LOVED that Piaget studied his own children from the moment they were born. I was bowled over with what a fantastic idea this was. And I loved his conclusions. He was the reason I got my MS in Early Childhood Development. I won't get into the details but I will say that there was no need to read any child development books when my own girls came along. I was all set. And I so enjoyed watching the lovelies through all their developmental stages. Of course, once they reached the ripe old age of the pre-teen years, I was lost. Sort of. So I learned to depend even more upon my---

Gut instincts. I paid attention to my gut WAY more than I did to anything else. I found it to be true that being a student of the lovelies resulted in knowing them thoroughly which resulted in being able to understand their needs, wants, moods, etc. I paid little to no attention to what others had to say or what they did, I trusted my instincts based on my knowledge of each individual daughter. It worked for me. Of course, I did tons of babysitting when I was growing up so I was not a stranger to little ones. And I think that helped ease my mind. When your mind can be eased, things don't seem so daunting.

Ok, that last one is not meant to be mean or anything negative. I just knew that I wanted to do things differently from my parents. They were from a generation where kids were not paid that much attention. Kids were put in front of the television or sent out to play without supervision, anything as long as we didn't bug our parents. Which was ok. Except when it wasn't. We were a generation of kids who realized we weren't being supervised and we tended to take advantage of that fact. Our parents didn't show up at everything we had going on. In their defense, we really didn't have that much going on for them to show up and watch anyway. So I knew I was going to be there for the lovelies and that I was going to expose them to activities in an effort to enable the to find their own, individual niches. And they did.

Those are the three main things that I based my parenting style on IN A NUTSHELL. I could write a freaking dissertation on it but I'll certainly spare y'all that. Basically, this is what worked for me.

Now, share your parenting styles with us!