How To Be a Responsible Parent

Too many parents today are so twisted up in trying to be their child's "friend" that they forget to be their child's "parent." Then they wonder why their child treats them so badly or completely dismisses whatever the parents have to say.

Ahh, I can already hear the "Boo! Hiss!" coming from all quarters. From out there somewhere I can almost hear one reader yelling, "How dare you tell me not to be my child's friend!"

Pay attention to what I am saying here. I am not telling you not to be a friend to your child. Of course a parent should be the best friend a child ever has but in a different way. You are not, nor should you try to be, your child's playmate, and on an equal footing. A parent is someone who is a unique type of friend, with the responsibilities of a parent coming before the niceties of being a mere buddy. It is this responsibility, that many would be parents today have forgotten or have never learned in the first place.

If you are a parent then you, and no one else, are responsible for teaching your child what they need to know to get along in life. It is not up to the schools, the babysitters or the daycares. This means there may be times when you must maintain the parent "game face" even if you really do not wish too do so.

As I raised my daughter we had firm rules. I made sure she knew these rules and what the punishment for breaking one would be. There were days that I, her friend/parent, had some thing fun planned. A day at the park, a movie, anything we might enjoy doing together. Then, just before the event, she would do something she was not supposed to do. She would break a known rule. Not every time, of course, not even most times, but once in awhile this would happen. Then, no matter how much I had been looking forward to our time together, I the "parent" had to put aside the "friend" persona, put on the parent game face, and enforce the family rules. It usually hurt me far more than it hurt my daughter but I could not let her know that.

Does that seem harsh to you? I can tell you, there were times it seemed harsh to me but I have a military background (infantry NCO) and I understood the need for discipline. Consistent discipline that is, not mindless brutality.

You see, I had been raised without consistent discipline. When my mother or father got angry with me, I got a beating with an old leather belt. I rarely knew if what I had done was going to result in "the belt" or not. It depended upon the mood of my parents. There was little, if any consistency.

After my wife died, when I found myself suddenly a single father I determined a few things right off the bat.

One, no leather belts for my child. While I did utilize spankings, they were always a uniform three hand smacks on the bottom and never, under any circumstances, did I administer them while I was angry. I might have to send her to her room for an hour while I cooled down but never did I spank her in anger.

My second rule, rules and punishments were always consistent. If she broke a rule, without good cause, she was going to face whatever the assigned punishment was for that infraction. Even if I really did not feel like administering it.

Thirdly, she had to understand what the rule was, she had broken, and what the punishment for breaking that rule would be. Before hand. No ex post facto rules. That is to say, I did not come up with a rule after she had done something and then punish her for breaking a rule she never knew about. My daughter had to know what she had done was wrong and what the consequences were for that action.

Fourth and last, punishments were absolute. If she broke a "spanking rule" she was going to get a spanking. If she did something for which the punishment was suspension of TV privileges for a week, then she watched no television for a week. She was not even allowed in the room if someone else was watching TV. Period, dot, end of sentence. Whatever the punishment for that infraction was, she was going to receive it.

Still sound harsh to you? "Oh no, he spanked his child!" Yes I did, get over it. There is a huge difference between a "spanking" and a "beating." Trust me, I know from first hand experience. To top that off, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I actually had to spank my daughter. Once I told her that something was a "spanking offense," she usually did not do it anymore. Mostly, the same held true for other punishment offenses as well.

Also note that spanking was not the first thing in my disciplinary arsenal. There were many other, and lesser, punishments. Spanking was the extreme punishment, rarely used. It was the "capital punishment" equivalent in childhood punishment.

Perhaps I should add this as a fifth rule, let the punishment fit the crime. Conveniently "forgetting" that there is homework to be done so that a television show will not be missed was not a spanking offense. Throwing a complete temper tantrum in the middle of Wal-Mart because she was told "no" to some trinket that caught her eye was. She only ever did that once, by the way. Then she learned that merely being out in public would not dissuade Dad from carrying through with a set punishment. It never happened again.

Also, I do not say that corporal punishment is an absolute necessity. You may well be able to get your childs' attention with other methods. Whatever you use, it must be consistent. If you choose to use spanking know this, in my experience at least, spanking does not really have to be done that hard. It is an attention getter, drawing the childs' attention to fact that what they did was really wrong. It is never a good way for the parent to "work off their anger" about what the child has done.

The harshness of me putting my responsibilities as a parent before the comforts of being her friend resulted in my daughter having a somewhat stable environment as she grew up. Or, at least, as stable as this single father could possibly make it for her.

Was I successful? She graduated high school with honors last year. She is now a member of the National Honor Society, the National Art Honor Society and, later this month, I go to see her being awarded the Girl Scout Gold Award (the Girl Scout equivalent of the Boy Scout, Eagle Scout award). She was able to thrive and express herself, as she grew, often having her artwork displayed regionally. Not too bad, daughter of mine. (my apologies, I had to brag on her a bit).

As she grew I associated with other parents and single parents in particular. My commitment to responsible parenting over "being her friend" was often reinforced by what I saw around me. How many times have you seen a 10 year old child stand up to their mother, or father, and inform the parents (and I use the term loosely) "how it's going to be?" I doubt there is any reader out there who has never seen a child openly defy their parents in America today. In my experience, almost every instance of this, which I have been around, involved a parent who told me something to the effect of, "but I'm (their) friend!" Oh, really? You could have fooled me. Things don't look to "friendly" from where I stand.

Several weeks ago I was in, as chance would have it, the same Wal-Mart which I mentioned earlier. As I made the circle in Wallyworld, I had the intense displeasure to keep finding myself in the vicinity a mother and son (about 4-5 years old) who were having "difficulties." The child was screaming his head off to be precise and throwing everything, he could get his hands on, out of their cart.

The mothers' response was "the three count." You know that one? She would begin counting, "one, two..." "Don't make me get to three!" Of course, she never actually went past "two." All through the store her chant was heard, when her son stopped screaming long enough to take a breath, "one, two..." "One, two..." One, two..." Once I got in the checkout line, as luck would have it, who should chose my line to pull in right behind me? Sure enough, Mrs. "One Two" and the human siren. I wanted, so very badly, to turn around and say, "Good God woman, will you stop saying one two, one two? Quite possibly the only person in this store, including your child, who does not know you are never going to say three is you!" Just shut up and let the child scream if you are going to do nothing about it. At least half the annoyance would be gone anyway.

That mother would never dream of actually enforcing the somewhat obvious rule of, "we don't scream and throw things all the way through Wal-Mart." If she will not enforce such a simple rule now what is she going to do when that boy is sixteen and confronted with drugs and alcohol? It is too late to begin enforcing the rules then. In all probability, there was nothing wrong with that child. There was a great deal of something wrong in the parent who would never get to "three."

I do realize that some children have problems and simply cannot be readily controlled. However, I suspect that is really the case far fewer times than our society tells us is so. Most often, it is simply a case of a wishy-washy parent who is too concerned about being their child's friend and not too concerned with taking the effort of responsibility for raising their own child. I refer to this as "lazy parenting."

The lazy parent expects the school system, or the babysitter, or the daycare to actually "raise their child." While the lazy parent gets to be the child's playmate and then wonders "why can't my Johnny read?" Maybe because you never helped Johnny learn to read since you were to busy doing only what would make him laugh at that moment?

It takes actual effort, on our part, to be a parent. We have to work at it and take an active interest, beyond yelling at the school teacher when your child fails, in order to ensure our children learn how to get along in society. If you really love your child, you won't be "the lazy parent." You will be the "responsible parent." Sometimes we must take the difficult path instead of the easy one.