Parenting is essential to the Creator’s plan. He emphasizes the importance of family which starts with the parents. Parents have the solemn responsibility to raise children and teach them.
Purpose of Parenting:
I wanted to make this a little more personal, so I decided to ask the parents around me, this included my mom, my dad, my sister, and my brother in law. These were there responses when I asked, “What is the purpose of parenting to you?”:
Mom: “To teach my children to be functioning adults and strong members within the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Dad: “To teach my children to always be happy as well as productive members of society.”
Krystal (sister): “To make sure my children grow up to be responsible members of society”
Brad (brother in law): “To keep them alive, but for real building up their confidence and ability so they can function on their own and within the society as they grow up.”
I found it interesting that when I asked each of them how they felt about the purpose of parenting, they all had very similar responses. All of them separately had brought up that making sure children are prepared for the future and are able to function in society. I feel that many parents also feel the same about that and believe that first and foremost as parents, it is most important to teach our kids to be productive members of society. As parents, there are many things that we can work on with our children but the main focus should be how we can prepare them for their future endeavors and how they will be able to join the workforce being able to function with every other member from other generations especially.
What to do?
Everyone has their own idea what to do with parenting and how they parent. I think we need to remember that and realized the importance of not judging when people talk about parenting because there isn’t a right or wrong to what we do. I feel it is most important to realize that you can’t expect your children to do everything you want; this would take away their agency and we have to allow our children to do what they want. As hard as this may be to give children this kind of freedom, one of the biggest issues with parents is them trying to get their kids to do what they want. Children will make mistakes, it’s inevitable but we can’t expect them to be perfect and we still have to love them even with the mistakes.
Children need choices, we can’t expect them to know what they want at a young age, it is the responsibility of the parents to give them choices. This should start as early as 3 years old by giving your child the choice of what to have for snack or what to wear. We need to allow children to have choices so that when they grow up, they aren’t stressed out with trying to make choices. When they are given choices then they are able to experience the consequences that come with choices and its important that children experience consequences because that is where the learning comes from. If children aren’t given the chance to experience consequences, then when they grow up, they won’t have the same learning that other kids may have which developmentally can put them behind.
The best way to teach is by example. Parents examples are so important to their children because children are constantly watching their parents and seeing what they do. That’s a lot of them paying attention to exactly what parents are doing so they often will follow the words and actions of what the parents show. It is important to teach assertiveness and be an example to the children around.
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