"Wait till yer faither gets hame!" (Parenting in general)

Member Name: jimblob

Product:	Parenting in general
Date:	05/01/02 (96 review reads)
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Oh how I wished I had paid more attention when my dad was giving me into trouble as a lad.
If I had paid attention to his ranting, his preaching, and pleadings over my behaviour, I may have had a clue when it came to my own kids!

I believe that there is no “right” way to bring up kids, but there is definitely a wrong way.
The right way is different for every family, what constitutes unreasonable behaviour in my kids, could be looked upon as perfectly acceptable by another family. There are not, and cannot be, any hard and fast rules.

My Mother was brilliant at chastising her brood, she either shouted the immortal words “Just wait until your father gets home!” or she would chase around the house with a carpet beater, she never once caught us!
I used to think it was because we were so clever, splitting up halfway down the hall and retreating into different bedrooms to hide under the beds. I now know that she never had any intentions of actually using the carpet beater, it was just a handy way to disperse five noisy weans in the quickest way, she is very clever is my old ma.

As for waiting until my father got home, well that was a non starter as soon as she shouted it, he rarely got home from his work before eleven PM, and by that time, like all good boys and girls, we were well asleep and dreaming of Choppers*, click-clacks** and getting 10p for five packets of Tudor crisps***.

* Choppers, for those who don’t know, were the dogs b*llocks of bicycles.
** Click-Clacks were toys for breaking your forearms with.
*** Tudor crisps were only 2 pence when I was a lad (and yes, the wheel had only just been invented!)

I have enough trouble trying to raise three kids,(aged 7 to 15), my parents must have had a nightmare with five of us!

Is parenting a natural thing?

Well yes, I mean if you have kids you have to raise them the best you can, that’s a
ll anyone can ask.
Does this mean that we know all there is to know, like a bear just seems to know how to raise a cub?
No, would be the answer to this.
Although we are cleverer than bears, or any other animal on this earth, (I know that statement is open to debate, but for the purposes of this opinion we’ll just take it as read).
We have lost some of the basic nurturing techniques that our predecessors had, animals usually have a set environment to cope with, we have the ability to change our environments at will, we have invented distractions that take us away from what is the natural thing to do, (Television, and babysitters being the ones that spring to mind).

If we were still clubbing our spouses over the head and dragging them to our cave by the hair, then parenting would be the easiest thing in the world..................for us men, that is ;-)
Nowadays we are expected to “do our bit” in bringing up the kids, even if it doesn’t always come naturally.

Instead of the men folk taking the young male offspring out on hunting missions, we are instead, reduced to carting our daughters around Tesco’s hunting out “Always ultra”(with wings) for the real man of the house (the wife).

However, it needn’t always be a chore.
In fact it shouldn’t ever be a chore.
“Enjoy them when their young”, never a truer word has been spoken!
We tend to get so wrapped up with financial problems, stress at work or any number of stumbling blocks, that we forget to just enjoy being around the kids. We can learn a lot about beating stress by just watching what they do, take time out to challenge them to a game of GTA on the Playstation, instead of shutting them in their rooms to play.

During the school holidays, I take my kids to work with me, that way they can help me and have fun at the same time.
Instead of just walking the dog around the park we take
the kids and the dog down to the beach and watch all of them having a bit of fun, or is that just to tire them out?

How many of us have actually found ourselves, saying and doing, exactly what we vowed we would never say or do, because that is what our parents said and done to us? That is how we learn to nurture and bring up our kids, we do learn, somehow we remember all the little things our parents did for us, without actually knowing how we remembered them.

(The reminiscing bit)

When I was a boy, every parent on our street was a parent to every child.
No doors were locked, there was sanctuary to be had in any number of houses should the need arise (either a sudden downpour in the middle of the twenty-a-side football game in the park or a run in with the gang from the other scheme).
Everyone’s mum and dad knew each other, trusted each other and sometimes swapped each other (but that’s another story ;-)
Our street was just like a huge home, our friends were really an extended family.


Lessons on parenting are there for us all, we just need to look into our past a little deeper, trust our own parents judgement and tweak as appropriate.

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