HW 58

From all the perspectives that I have heard over the past week or two it seems that the most popular method when raising children is too guide them and provide structured time for them to develop skills. However, many people, as do I, believe that letting the child come up with things on their own is equally important. Marguerite explained that with the first child she had she was extremely cautious and was always around worrying what she was doing but when she had another child she was much more relaxed and let the child go off and play. She was not as worried about the second child because she was used to raising a child and she let the child go off and have unstructred time with out worrying. She also explained that she let her children become who they wanted to be and her children's personalities are all very different. However, she taught each of her children the same set of values in which she believed. She wanted them to be honest and although she gave them the freedom to be who they wanted to be and allowed them to create their own personalities she gave a bit of structure and gave them a direction to head in. Mr. Marks on the other hand plans to have a lot of structure in his child's life. This means he gives the child planned activities and develops certain skills that he thinks his child should have. He is raising his child to be a certain way but also understands there is no formula to raising children and that you can guide them but you can not shape them.

Parenting has nor formula. Nothing is for sure when you are raising a child. No matter how hard you try to make child a certain way it is never sure that the child will turn out this way. For this reason it is essential to not overwhelm the child but simply guide it. You can guide a child in certain directions and provide them with many opportunities while still allowing them to come into their own as an individual. You can teach children certain values and you can teach them certain skills but it is essential to give the child the space to do what it wants, as long as it is not detrimental to health, future, etc. It is a fine line between enough structure and too much structure. There are certain things you do not want your child to be involved in and too much structure can cause them to want these things more where as too little structure can expose it to them too much. It is important to be honest with your child even at hard times. In the same way a vaccine works, where you are given a bit of a certain virus but not enough to hurt you so that you can then be immune to this virus, a child needs exposure to the world around them however the amount of exposure must be right in the middle. Parenting is not a science, and therefore it can not be broken down in to a step by step guide. It is up to each person to figure out the right amount of guidance, freedom, exposure, etc. to give their children when raising them.