Parenting (and teaching) in the 21^st Century

There are no user manuals for parents. It is on the job training in most respects.  Often we learn or reject parenting styles based on our own upbringing. However, raising children since humankind first formed clans and then villages has been based on the following:

• Active teaching of the laws of the existing society and manners that serve as a necessary part of those mores
• Role modelling of just, decent and selfless values in the home
• The home as a repository and love for all children.
• Valuing education as a means of self-fulfilment and improvement
• Providing protection and a nurturing environment for the child
• The passing down of rituals, stories, traditions to children

As late as the mid 1900’s grandparents lived in an extended family and afforded the child additional guidance and support. Alas, this is no longer the case. Many adolescents do not have access to their Pop or Nan due to a variety of reasons including family separation and “the tyranny of distance”. In About A Boy by Nick Hornby, Marcus advises a boy who has used him as a mentor that the shape of the family structure is in some respects, irrelevant. Marcus argues for a pyramidal structure incorporating those members of the extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins) and decent role models from the local communities to become part of the child’s development. We teachers are for 7 hours per day “in your place “ and we seek to support the parent’s role.

Effective parenting takes a great deal of courage; sometimes it is drawing lines in the sand. But that’s a good thing. Every child understands boundaries and, even though they push these lines of non-negotiation, they will generally respect them later in life. Here are a few home rules to consider:

• Do I know my children’s friends? With which friends would I allow a sleep over?
• Where is the internet located in your home? Why cannot it be placed in heavy traffic areas for ease of supervision rather than secreted away in bedrooms?
• Is homework (independent study) valued in the home as a toll of revising the day’s work or consolidating skills?
• Do your children have both rights and responsibilities? What are the obligations, such as jobs and chores that must be undertaken? Boys, in particular, often escape these tasks because we as parents would rather do it ourselves than cause a fuss or have it half done. This only encourages “learned helplessness” that does not serve anyone’s needs.
• How much quality time do I have with my children? Toys and possessions are poor substitutes for intimate time- shared reading, talking while doing a task together
• Do I know who my children’s teachers are? What they are reading in English? The HSIE topic? The next Science experiment? If the adolescent knows you are interested, there is a better chance of engagement with the subject.

William Wordsworth wrote a poem about children two hundred years ago. It elegantly chronicles their frailties and strengths, but as he rightly points out, they are children and we must love them for what they are :

Behold a race of young ones like to those

     With whom I herded-

A race of real children; not too wise,

Too learned, or too good; but wanton, fresh,

And bandied up and down by love and hate;

Not resentful where self-justified;

Fierce, moody, patient, venturous, modest, shy;

Mad at their sports like withered leaves in winds;

Though doing wrong and suffering, and full often

Bending beneath our life’s mysterious weight

Of pain, and doubt and fear, yet yielding not

In happiness to the happiest upon the earth.

Simplicity in habit, truth in speech,

Be these the daily strengtheners of their minds…”

Whilst valuing them and loving them for who they are, we nonetheless, have an obligation to model good parenting and that does, at times, mean (what has become a cliché) the notion of “tough love”. So it is for teachers, also.

I will be contributing articles on adolescent health, literacy development and the role of parents in the education of adolescents. I hope you find them useful.

Mr. Paul Cullen

paul.cullen@cg.catholic.edu.au