To praise or not to praise?

An interesting discussion last night has had me wondering how you possibly bring up children and don’t screw them up somehow. 

Too much time with mum or too little time with mum

Too much independence or too little independence

Too much education or not enough

Too much praise, praise for the wrong things, or not enough praise of any form

Not enough encouragement of interest or so much that you are a ‘helicopter’ parent

Really and truthfully how the hell does anyone do it and how did we all make it to adulthood and society  continue to function?

 

I was brought up being constantly told that I was too clever for my own good, the result was that I gave up trying because I thought that was the right thing to do.  I got reasonable GCSE’s, not great A-levels, an OK degree and a reasonable PGCE but had I put any effort in at all I could have done so much better.  My reaction to this with my kids is to make sure they know I value them for doing their best.  Not being the best but doing the best they can. 

It was shorty’s parents evening last night her teacher told me she is a happy, confident little girl who shows great commitment to her work.  She also told me that shorty’s being given extra one on one time for literacy and numeracy because she is ahead of the rest of the class and gets bored at the repetition if they teach her within their ‘top’ group.  Very proud mummy.

I could have walked out of there and told her and all the other parents what the teacher had said but I didn’t I nodded at parents and said ‘yeah she’s doing ok’ and I spoke to shorty and told her I was proud of her working hard to do the best she could and told her I’d help her with things if she wanted me to.  Was that the right thing to do? I’m sure it wasn’t and that I got it wrong but I did the best I could.

 

I currently have two nurseries fighting for Tiny to be signed up with them for her preschool year, she won’t be going until September 2014 but they want her signed up.  Why? Well because she smiles, laughs and has fun, holds conversations with people and looks after others when they get hurt apparently.   She is the grand old age of 2, I am told by the nursery she currently attends that she is way over where she should be with most things, toilet training would be good but you can’t have everything, and that she is very pleasant to have around.  I haven’t told her that or anyone who would come into contact with her, she doesn’t need that pressure at her tiny age and she really doesn’t need to think she’s clever now or she could well give up and stagnate.  I am proud of her, I tell her that a lot but I focus most of my input into the things I know she’s not so good at.

The right thing to do? Who knows but one day I’ll find out.

 

My dad told me that parenting is the hardest job in the world and its made harder by research and theories created by people who have little knowledge of real children in the real world but somehow think they are qualified to advise parents who are doing it for real.  I’m not sure its fair to say that those without children have no idea what they’re talking about, we all come into contact with children in some way so we all have opinions about them but I suspect you can find a theory or idea to prove everything when in truth the only proof of the quality of parenting is the adult that walks into the world at the end of it.

 

Lots of thought but no real conclusions can you tell? I’ll keep thinking about it though and one day it will make some sense ;-)