Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Intentional Mommying

Posted by Tracy Wainwright at 8:27 PM
When we teach our children to go potty, we do it intentionally. When we teach our children to read, we do it intentionally. When we teach our children math, we do it intentionally. When we teach our children to drive, we do it intentionally. When teaching children these types of lessons there tends to be time set aside, specific instructions, often books read to assist in training, and sometimes even other adults are corralled in to help. Although traits such as respect, obedience, taking care of material possessions, patience, responsibility, integrity, and fairness are important, it is often assumed that children will just kind of pick up these traits by osmosis. Most parents understand the importance of modeling in teaching children, but by no means does it end there.
Modeling appropriate behavior is one of five aspects of teaching character traits. This is realized very early on, as children as young as one mimic behavior. It just makes sense that parents need to exhibit behaviors they would like to see in their child. Often a child mimicking the behavior of a parent will bring to their attention that maybe it’s not something they should be doing. Sometimes parents use these opportunities to make positive changes in their own choices. Sometimes parents take on the “do as I say and not as I do” mentality (which, by the way doesn’t even come close to working – it causes a child to see his/her parent as a hypocrite and decreased the child’s respect for the parent.) And sometimes parents just choose to ignore the behavior in their child so that they can continue to ignore the behavior in themselves.

0 comments on "Intentional Mommying"

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Intentional Mommying

When we teach our children to go potty, we do it intentionally. When we teach our children to read, we do it intentionally. When we teach our children math, we do it intentionally. When we teach our children to drive, we do it intentionally. When teaching children these types of lessons there tends to be time set aside, specific instructions, often books read to assist in training, and sometimes even other adults are corralled in to help. Although traits such as respect, obedience, taking care of material possessions, patience, responsibility, integrity, and fairness are important, it is often assumed that children will just kind of pick up these traits by osmosis. Most parents understand the importance of modeling in teaching children, but by no means does it end there.
Modeling appropriate behavior is one of five aspects of teaching character traits. This is realized very early on, as children as young as one mimic behavior. It just makes sense that parents need to exhibit behaviors they would like to see in their child. Often a child mimicking the behavior of a parent will bring to their attention that maybe it’s not something they should be doing. Sometimes parents use these opportunities to make positive changes in their own choices. Sometimes parents take on the “do as I say and not as I do” mentality (which, by the way doesn’t even come close to working – it causes a child to see his/her parent as a hypocrite and decreased the child’s respect for the parent.) And sometimes parents just choose to ignore the behavior in their child so that they can continue to ignore the behavior in themselves.

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