{"id":925,"date":"2008-04-21T00:05:10","date_gmt":"2008-04-21T04:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/925"},"modified":"2008-04-21T09:58:34","modified_gmt":"2008-04-21T13:58:34","slug":"isn%e2%80%99t-it-obvious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/925","title":{"rendered":"Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it obvious?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently led another parenting workshop<\/a> for a group of suburban parents. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been doing this workshop for about fifteen years and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gotten to the point that I know when to pause to wait for specific questions. No matter the city or the crowd, when I pause at certain points I can anticipate the questions the parents in the room will ask. This time it was no different. At a certain point in the presentation I just paused and waited. A woman raised her hand and asked the question I anticipated. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an interesting phenomenon.<\/p>\n

One question that always comes up is related to sibling rivalry, sort of. During the point when I address sibling rivalry inevitably a parent will raise his or her hand and ask how to handle the situation when a younger sibling is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153picking on\u00e2\u20ac\u009d an older one. When I ask, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How old are they?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d inevitably the offending \u00e2\u20ac\u0153troubling\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sibling is a pre-language preschooler, a two- or three-year-old, while the older sibling is in elementary school. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when I ask myself, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it obvious?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

What is obvious in this situation is that the parent is more of the problem than the troubling child. When you leave a pre-language preschooler or toddler in the same room with an older sibling without parental supervision what do you think is going to happen? Parents get frustrated that they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u0153explain\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the toddler about not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bothering\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the complaining older sibling, or to leave the sibling\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s toys alone, or to not pull on his or her hair or kick over or crawl over whatever it is the older sibling is playing with. <\/p>\n

What I want to ask the parent (but don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t) is, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So whose fault is it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The obvious answer is that it is the parents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 fault for leaving those two alone unsupervised. What parents don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to hear is that the formula for successful parenting is: 100% for 100%. Meaning that parenting must be done at 100% capacity for 100% of the time. You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t decide to not parent for ten minutes and leave a toddler and an older elementary sibling in the room unsupervised. This is a simple problem to solve: be proactive, be the parent, and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t leave the kids unsupervised. With that age configuration you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being unfair by setting them up for failure. <\/p>\n

It can be overwhelming to hear that parenting is done at 100%, one hundred percent of the time. But here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the good news: you only need to do it for seven years.* <\/p>\n

galindobanner5.jpg<\/p>\n

*To find out why see 10 Best Parenting Ways to Ruin Your Child<\/a> by Israel Galindo. See also, 10 Best Parenting Ways to Ruin Your Teenager<\/a>, by Israel Galindo and Don Reagan. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently led another parenting workshop for a group of suburban parents. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been doing this workshop for about fifteen years and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gotten to the point that I know when to pause to wait for specific questions. No matter … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,16,27],"tags":[42,214,215],"class_list":["post-925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-recommendations","category-children","category-personal-growth","tag-israel-galindo","tag-parenting","tag-sibling-rivalry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}