Parenting

Welcome to our parenting page. We hope to give you information here to make your life easier. If you have a comment or question please email Gail at gcohen13@comcast.net.

If you would like a copy of "Guiding Children - A Parents' Practical Manual for Guiding children From Infancy to Responsible Adults and Enjoying the Process", send a request to Gail at gcohen13@comcast.net. The book sells for $17.95. All requests through this website will receive the book at 30% off.

Children are wonderful, magical, lots of love and fun and lots of work. My writings do not focus on child behavior, which is the usual standard for today. Instead, I write about the lessons I believe we want our children to learn and the life skills they will need to know as adults. I do not write about how to get children to obey. I believe we no longer want blind obedience for our children. After all, we do not want them to follow strangers or do everything their friends tell them to do. We do, however, want them to learn about rules and to either live by them or learn the proper procedures to change them. We want them to learn how to make decisions, have confidence in themselves and others and to learn to listen to what other people are really saying. We want to instill values and develop leadership abilities. We want our children to learn to care for their minds and their bodies, to care for the earth, to help others when appropriate and to live in peace.
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I never thought about what my kids would be like when they “grew up”. When I talked to them (or yelled at them) I was never conscious of what impact what I was saying would have on them. I was probably trying to raise my children to be “perfect” so that friends and relatives will think they were “perfect” and that we were great “perfect” parents. I now think we should not raise kids to “obey” and be “good” but we should raise them to be special, confident and loving adults. Our focus should be on raising children to discover their own true core values and abilities and how best to live within who they really are and how to support them to develop the skills necessary to meet life challenges and to be happy adults. We need to guide our children to learn the necessary skills and values we all need to be productive members of our society.

All children are uniquely brilliant and deserve to be heard and loved. Raising children is not simple. It is an incredible challenge! However, it can be the most important job of our lives and it can be fun. I don’t think we have to be perfect. And, by the way, kids don’t have to be perfect either.

The very early years of a child's life are the most important for helping a child grow into the wonderful person he is meant to be. We need to start early. In preschool, play games like store, using money and change, to help develop the brain. Play house to develop relationships. Play a game like "Jotto" to learn spelling and play number games to learn math. While children are learning we can also observe and recognize each child's gifts. Everyone has gifts and we need to explore those gifts with each child and guide and encourage them.
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Everywhere there is violence, crime, shootings, rape...are your children safe? Do you think about what part your children will play in these crimes? We want our children to be neither the victim nor the perpetrator of these horrible incidents. We can influence and guide children to help make their world safer and better.

We all have an innate desire to want to belong to a group, a club or a gang; a group that makes us feel important, safe and gives us a sense of purpose in life. Which group or gang our children decide to join will have a great deal to do with what our children hear and see at home. The family is our first group and is where we should feel welcome, safe, encouraged, responsible and loved. If this does not describe your family, we can change it now.

Wouldn’t it be nice to come home to a place where we felt important and loved and not abused or put down. We can and deserve to have that! Remember, though, we can really only change ourselves! So it must start with us; each day, slowly, a little bit at a time. Start now and don’t give up! Share with the others in your home safety, encouragement, responsibility and love.










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