Nigel Latt's Ten Simple Rules For Parenting

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

REGULATIONS

1. Memorize the three most important words.

2. It is easy to love children; it is difficult to find pleasure in it.

3. Children are piranhas.

4. Encourage the good, ignore the bad.

5. Children need boundaries.

6. Try to be consistent.

7. Don't forgive terrible behavior.

8. Be sure to have a plan.

9. Any behavior is communication.

10. Don't fight chaos.

1. The three most important words

Relationships, relationships, and more relationships. This is perhaps the most important rule. Even if you forget about the rest of the rules, it should firmly sit in your memory. Human relationships are everything. Anyone who forgets about it risks losing everything. Controlling children is easy - just enough to intimidate them. But sooner or later they will grow up and stop being afraid. The roles will change, and then you will no longer envy you. If you rely only on fear, then expect big trouble.

Discipline can be taught to children only by showing respect for them and treating them as full-fledged people. It depends on how they will behave and who they will become later. The most important task of parents is to teach children to communicate with people around them, including you, and this is impossible without a sincere human attitude. If you focus on this task, then 98.6 percent of the time you will be fine.

2. Loving children is easy, finding pleasure in it is difficult

Most children believe that their parents love them, even if they are punished or neglected. Children take it for granted that they should be loved. But the same cannot be said about the feeling of sympathy. The overwhelming majority of the children that I met felt that they were not very popular with others. Many of them were even convinced that their parents disliked them. The reason for this is that most of the parents I have seen struggled to get themselves to be sympathetic to their children. When they approached me, they felt so morally depressed that they could hardly restrain themselves from speaking.

“I love him, but I can't stand him” - these words I hear all the time. Children need to feel sympathetic to their parents. Love is an automatic feeling. They love not for anything, but just like that, because they want to, and not because they need to. Sympathy is when you are interested in communicating with another person, when you enjoy being around him.

Sympathy, as well as the general tone of relations between family members, can be judged by the spirit of playfulness and play in the house. Ease and playfulness is a kind of lubrication of family life, without which its wheels and gears will hardly rotate. When I see that there are strict, tense relationships between family members, then I immediately begin to worry.

If discipline and order in the home is above all respect for others, then sympathy equally cannot exist without playfulness. You can love even in the blackest mood, while sympathy and playfulness require at least a little fun. If you don’t know how to distract yourself from worrying thoughts, don’t worry, I’ll tell you how to cheer up a little.

3. Children are piranhas

Children are piranhas demanding attention, and they devour it greedily. Like real piranhas, able to eat a cow in a few minutes, children lash out at any attention they never get enough of. They are ready to do anything to be noticed, even if it harms not only others, but also themselves. They will definitely take advantage of every slightest chance to attract attention to themselves, regardless of the possible devastating consequences. In search of attention, they will jump out of their river at any opportunity. This must be firmly grasped, because if you forget that children are demanding attention, they will not get enough of it and lash out at you.

For piranhas, the main goal in life is to devour everything that comes their way. For children, the main goal in life is to constantly attract the attention of others, no matter what it costs them. You don't want greedy, capricious and hungry piranhas in your house. Feed them well and they stay in their river.

4. Encourage the good, ignore the bad

From the analogy with piranhas, the following rule can be deduced: you need to monitor what exactly you feed these voracious creatures. At first glance, this is obvious, but children can be so crazy that you forget the most obvious truths and do everything to keep your peace of mind. But remember to reward good behavior and ignore bad behavior.

If you feed something, it will grow. If not nourished, then it will gradually fade away. This is a simple principle, but most of those who have trouble communicating with their children overlook it or have never thought about how and what kind of behavior they really encourage.

Great attention must be paid to good behavior - it is simply impossible to overdo it in praise for it. Bad behavior should be ignored, or at least cold-faced.

Paying constant attention to bad behavior will result in monsters being raised.

In the future, I will show you how to apply this principle in your daily practice, but for now, keep in your memory firmly: encourage the good, ignore the bad.

5. Children need boundaries

If you do not set any boundaries for your children, then you are an idiot. It may sound rude, but how else to tell an idiot that he is an idiot? But as with everything, idiots have their own subclasses.

Hippies, for example, have no boundaries. Hippies believe that children should move freely around the world. "Peace be with you brothers." Lazy people don't set boundaries either. It seems to them that it is easier to do nothing. If! Anxious mothers don't set boundaries either. They do not want to embarrass their precious Tarquinians in any way for fear that this will damage the fragile self-esteem of their offspring. If you're the type of person who rolls your eyes and pouts, it's time to do it. Slobbers also do not set boundaries, because they want to become not parents, but friends of their children. They want to be on an equal footing with their children.

All these people sooner or later end up in my office: hippies, lazy people, restless mothers and slobber. All of them in excitement ask the same question - why are their children behaving so monstrously?

Children need boundaries. Define rules, set boundaries, and stick to them as tightly as possible.

It is in the nature of children to move forward until they hit some kind of obstacle. Some children just need to know that there is an obstacle, others need to bump into it several times from the full extent, but the boundaries are necessary for everyone.

A world without borders is a very dangerous and frightening place for a little person. The borders seem to say: "You can go here, but you can't go further." Peace and security reign within the borders. Borders help define your place in the world. Borders not only do not allow to go out, but also do not let the bad in.

Again, children need boundaries.

6. Try to be consistent

When I was just starting out as a young and romantic psychology student, everything seemed simple and clear to me. I sat in my office, looked at worried, desperate parents and wondered how they did not notice the root of all their troubles. It seemed obvious to me.

“The secret is,” I proclaimed with the clever air that a trainee in his early twenties can assume, “you have to be consistent.

I uttered the last word with the intonation of Moses, who came down the mountain with the news of the ten commandments. Sometimes, after all, it is necessary to highlight some important and wise words so that they are more strongly imprinted in the minds of others. Moses and I understood this perfectly.

Be consistent. So obvious!

Now I understand what an idiot I was then. Yes, I was driven by good intentions, I sincerely wanted to help people, but this does not change the essence of the matter.

At some point, I myself had children - two boys - and then everything changed. Now, for me, consistency means that I consistently avoid the urge to throw children out the window, and this is in a relatively good mood.

Everything else is relative. Everything, even consistency - especially consistency.

When people become parents, they make most decisions based on the desire not to go crazy or to maintain at least some remnants of peace of mind. If I now turned to a young professional like I was in those years for help, and he told me that I need to be consistent, I would take and spank him. Just like that, without any further ado. "Consistent?" I would scream in an almost hysterical voice, spanking him as he tried to crawl under a chair and screeched like a baby. "Wonderful!" And I would add another blow to my words. "You think you eat, why didn't it occur to me, you smart guy?" And I would continue to beat him until his hands get tired and until I feel complete moral satisfaction.

So now my advice is: at least try to be consistent. You will not always succeed in this, so do not scold yourself if in some cases you cannot adhere to the outlined rules.

7. Don't Forgive Bad Behavior

It never ceases to amaze me that some people can tolerate the worst behavior from their children. I saw a seven-year-old boy monstrously insult his parents, but the only one who was embarrassed was me. Or how a girl throws a tantrum, pounds and scolds her mother, but she sits quietly, as if nothing had happened.

Hello, is there anyone at home?

In my office, I will not tolerate such behavior. The first thing I do is make a remark, and if that's not enough, I put the unbelted juvenile hooligans out the door. After that, when the children are exposed, I make a remark to the parents who did not pay attention to this behavior.

Of course, it is impossible to require children to behave perfectly at all times. They, by their nature, play pranks and hooligans from time to time, but this does not mean that such behavior needs to be reconciled. If you do nothing and calmly follow what is happening, then it will only get worse in the future.

You don't have to be a dictator who suppresses the slightest signs of disagreement. It is natural to disagree and argue. Disrespecting is another matter. The controversy proves that you are doing your job as a parent. They show that children grow up and that they have their own opinion about everything. Their own opinion is even good, because sooner or later they will leave your home, providing you with such a long-awaited opportunity to relax. Their own opinion will be very useful to them, believe me, so it's even good that they sometimes argue.

But disrespect is another matter. This behavior is terrible and cannot be forgiven.

8. Be sure to make a plan

The only thing that happens unexpectedly is the unexpected. You probably don't want to rely on chance when raising your children. I saw how parents relied on chance - you better not repeat that. It is much better to approach education purposefully, having a specific plan of action.

I do not mean to say that you should sit down and write a detailed plan with diagrams and graphs in a separate thick notebook. You don't have to list all the goals with precise metrics. There is also no need to write a report at the end of the year or quarter, setting aside a few days specifically for this (unless, of course, you use this excuse to send the children to grandparents for the weekend).

So relax, I'm not asking you anything like that. But, nevertheless, you need a plan.

This means that from time to time you need to sit down and think before taking action or before something happens. If you have problems, then you need to think about what exactly they are, what are their causes and how you can fix them. Sometimes it takes just a few minutes, sometimes more time is needed. In any case, you need to give yourself a break, think and make a plan.

9. Any behavior is communication

This is a simple but extremely important principle.

When I analyze the behavior of any child, regardless of who he is and what he does, I always proceed from the premise that by his behavior this little person is trying to express what he cannot or does not want to say in words.

Behavior is simply a form of communication. Getting out of the window at night and running away from home is a kind of saying. Children are much more willing to express their thoughts and feelings through behavior than words. The main reason is that they still have few words. They have many feelings, but they still do not know how to choose the right words and expressions to express these feelings.

As a result, they tend to communicate their feelings through their behavior.

Bad behavior isn't just bad behavior, it's a way of communicating.

It usually indicates that the previous eight rules were not followed or performed poorly. With bad behavior, little piranhas usually attract attention. They are hungry for attention, so they get their food in any way they can.

10. Don't fight chaos

With the birth of children, the forces of chaos penetrate your life. At the same time, relying on some kind of schedule in your affairs is like paving your way through a hurricane. When a strong wind blows, there is no time for routes. This must be understood and resigned to the inevitable. If you do not accept, you will begin to fight chaos. You will complain about your failures, blame yourself and others for them, try to fix the inevitable, and be disappointed.

The inevitable chaos and madness must be resigned to. Treat him with the calmness of a true Zen Buddhist.

Sometimes in the evenings a real holiday of madness begins in our house. The impression is that all the planets are lined up in a particularly insidious way, sending inevitable disasters to us. Take today as an example. Just three hours ago, we had a terrible fight with our children. At first they sulked and grumbled, then they were capricious, after that they desperately argued. Then, it seemed, all the misfortunes fell upon us. Just like in the TV series about crazy families, we all ran and screamed randomly.

At times like these, it is best to retire to safety and ride out the hurricane. There is no point in fighting him, because such madness cannot be overcome. Just keep your hands on the steering wheel, keep your eyes on the compass and wait for the sea to calm down.

At the moment, when I am typing these lines, there is a mug of hot coffee in front of me, the boys are sleeping peacefully in their beds, like angels who have just come down from heaven, and their mother is napping in front of the TV. Order and harmony reign in the world again. In eight hours they will wake up, and we will again set off on a voyage on the stormy seas, but this is what life is wonderful.

So my advice to you is not to fight what seems inevitable. However, you still have no choice.