You know, there’s no instruction manual for raising a child.
Sure, there are thousands of resources now but even back thirty years ago, when
my wife and I were experiencing parenting for the first time, the resources
were somewhat limited compared to today’s computer age with the internet and
everything and whole TV channels devoted to parenting. We used our parents’
behaviour and tactics as our guideline, like so many generations before us, and
tried to keep the good stuff and discard the bad, or as it may be
termed…“flying by the seat of our pants”.
There was Dr. Benjamin Spock, of
course, not to be confused with Star Trek’s Mr. Spock or you’d really be
raising a weirdo, who, along with his wife Jane Cheney, (Doctor Spock’s wife that is), penned the 1946 book, Dr. Spock's Baby & Child Care. The book has
sold 50 million copies in 49 countries and if you Google “#1 Child Rearing
Doctor”, Dr. Benjamin Spock’s name still comes up first.
Then again, with a brand new baby in the house
who had time to read a book anyway? What with the feeding and the diaper
changes, and to start with we used cloth ones if you can possibly imagine, and
bathing and dressing and undressing and feeding and diaper changes and bathing
and rocking and walking them to sleep…then along comes baby number two and then
number three and years and years go by and we’re like… “where’d that book go?
You know the one…the Mr. Spock book or whatever it’s called…the one that tells
you how to do this stuff.”
And time, as it is wont to do, passes by so
quickly and the children are graduating high school already and none of them
has done jail time, or anything, so maybe you didn’t do such a bad job anyway
and you continue on your merry way because what’s the sense in looking up how
to raise a child now that you’re almost done. But…you’re never done. You are
always a parent and they are always a child…your child.
So what’s the litmus test? What are the
indicators that you have performed the task properly? The above mentioned jail
time could be considered an indicator. How they care for their own children is
another indicator. Of course, they won’t do it as good as you did it but
neither did you to your parents, if you know what I mean. School marks, extracurricular
activities, interaction with others, maturity, ethics, (work and otherwise) are
all clear indicators of how well your parenting skills are.
Without breaking my arm patting myself on the
back I think Debbie and I did a pretty good job with our parenting. None of our
three children have been to jail…too long…just kidding…and they are
hard-working, well-adjusted, civilized adults with two out of our three
children raising their children and improving on the parenting they were, and
are, subjected to.
But you don’t have to believe me. If there was
ever a doubt that we were worthy of our parenting skills it was cast aside last
week when we toured Casino Regina with our youngest daughter, Emily, who has
been employed there as a Marketing Analyst for the past three-and-a-half years
and will be leaving her job and her Casino family at the end of August to
further her education. The interaction with her fellow employees and their true
affection and respect for her was quite evident. They impressed upon us time
and again how she will be terribly missed and what a “wonderful young woman
you’ve raised there”. That…was all the litmus we needed.
“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you
do matters very much.”-Jackie Kennedy. (1929-1994).
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