Parenting

“Let me explain… No, there is too much to explain. Let me sum up…”

I guess if I had to pick one thing, I was always reminded or punished when I did something wrong but I was never reminded or congratulated when I did something right.

My method of teaching with my son is both correcting him in the moment and remembering to thank him and award him when he’s doing a good job, even if it’s something mundane.

The result so far has been people constantly telling me how well behaved and obedient he is for his age. So I must be on to something.

Mine: My dad never really spent much time with me / showed much interest (he died fairly young so we never got a chance to rectify that but he was a good soul otherwise).

I've invested a lot of time with all of my kids and it has paid huge dividends. I've always loved kids so I'm not sure it's directly related / I feel like I would have anyway but I do think about it from time to time as a possible motivator.

In fairness I feel like I landed on my feet pretty well with my folks, especially compared to some of the stuff I've read on the internet. My mum is an absolute legend. Love her to bits.

I am not raising my children in an organized religion (or any religion, for that matter). If religion is something my kids are interested in, they’re free to pursue that, but I won’t be indoctrinating them

One of the biggest ones I've corrected is taking an active role in their education. My parents would get so mad at me when I got bad grades. I'd constantly get grounded and told you can do better, or literally slapped up the side of the head. But my parents never asked me if I had homework or tests coming up.

If I asked for help with my homework my dad would talk down to me and be like, why don't you get this. It took me running away from home at 15 to finally get sent to a doctor and low and behold get diagnosed with ADHD.

My wife had a similar, but thankfully a less physical situation. Her mom would ground her if she got a bad grade. But she got straight A's outside of math, so it obviously wasn't for lack of trying. But no offers to help or asking what was wrong just you got a bad grade your grounded until your next report card.

Anyways, all of that is to say, I stay involved with my kids school work. Not to a helicopter parent level, but I check with them daily if they have homework, and make sure they know they can come to me if they need help. I remember the first time my daughter failed a test, I didn't yell and she didn't get in trouble. We sat down at the table and reviewed it, and made sure she understood it by the end of the night.

Both of my kids get wonderful grades and I reinforce to them that their hard work is what got them those grades, and reward them for it. Not punishment for bad grades.