Three Solid Rules to Great Parenting

 

 

 

See the birds in the sky, how they fly, thousands of them, identical in color, shape, mind, an assemblage flying with the wind then poof, swooping off in unison. How has that consciousness been communicated? Who directed them of a mind to swoop and dive? As above, so below. Fish perform the same burlesque. Nature flows as one, the water, trees, the clouds. Nature is cohesive and knows itself. 

Humans are different. Not of one mind, we're a clashing, heaving mob spinning in our personal orbit, oblivious of other, a billion random thoughts, opinions and emotions - an expanding consumer horde. Crossing over the River Lethe, there may yet be little left of the planet for humanity to inherit, but we still have to nurture and train our children for their future. So here are three important pointers about child-rearing I would like to pass on, little gems that could possibly help the perplexed because for us, unlike the birds, we have no innate knowledge of how to raise our young. 

Rule #1

Teach your children how to clean. This may be the most important thing you ever teach your child and will save you hours of arguing, cajoling and threatening once they become teenagers. The moment your child's fingers can grasp a broom handle or a dish cloth, get him or her involved in clean-up around the house. Make it fun. Let them do the dishes, even if they do them badly. Let them dust the furniture, even if they leave streaks. Dance around to music as you help them clean. Get out the vacuum cleaner and let them play with it, turn it off and on, show them the spare parts. Most of all, make clean-up a weekly chore that you chalk in on the To Do List. Children need to learn about dirt and dust and cleaning up, even more so if you ever want them to help around the house. Here's why:

When I was growing up, my family had a cleaning lady who came once a week. I never cleaned and I was never asked to clean; dirt wasn't on my radar. So when my mother blew into my room one day when I was 15 years old and said 'the cleaning lady is not doing your room anymore, it's time you did it yourself,' I shrugged. All of a sudden I'm a janitor? My sheets turned gray. A thick layer of sticky dust coated my dresser and night table. And finding my socks under my bed one day, the grit and hairy dust balls attached to them were blown off. Soon, when I moved out to share an apartment with a friend, cleaning was never an issue. Upon moving, when we saw the grit and dirt and rolling balls of dust captured in our bedroom cupboard under the shoes, clothing, boxes and piled up crap we had thrown in there, we collapsed backwards on to our beds in laughter.

Rule #2

Don't give or loan money. Not only so your child will not be dependent on you once they've moved out, but mostly so money will never become an issue between you. Children should learn to value earning money. An allowance for chores, perhaps. An address on the value of saving money, of course. Mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, babysitting, a part-time job - these are all ways that your children can learn to make money for themselves and feel pride. It teaches them to liaison with others and earn for themselves rather than depend on you for money. Here's what can happen:

I had friends who had a son who continually asked his parents for money for rent, clothing, school, moving expenses and groceries. They sent their son hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, every year for years. And every time he wanted money, the parents sent him some. They felt they HAD to help him, an obligation as parents. However, one day I heard the son on the phone screaming at his horrified mother. 'If I had a kid I'd help them as much as I could! You never help me! You've never helped me!'  Evidently, she had turned down a request for money. I was surprised at the invective, the severe tongue-lashing at two people who had done everything for their son, but perhaps they hadn't. It became clear why the parents sent money. Fear, intimidation and guilt. A lesson that no matter how much money you send your kids, it's never going to be enough to make up for all the things you should or should not have done as a parent. 

Rule #3   

Kick your kids out when they become rubbishy adults. There's no excuse for letting your adult children take over the house if they can work and take care of themselves. Some adult children don't pay rent, borrow money and never learn to clean. If that's a fate you allow in your home, you're deserving of it. Adult children, like birds dropping out of a nest to fly or smack the ground, need to learn how to fend for themselves and not rely on their parents. Here's a good reason why: 

I went to high school with a fellow that I remained friends with for years after graduation. While all of our friends moved into their own apartments, went to college, got married, bought homes and had families, he remained at home with his parents until they finally died in their mid-90s. Even after, he continued living in the basement and sleeping in the same room he'd had as a 12-year-old. He kept the same job as an undertaker at a 4th-tier graveyard his whole life and at the age of 55, Mike was still an adolescent rolling joints in the basement of his parents' home. Hopelessly immature, it was only discovered later he had been afraid of moving out. If his parents had known about Rule #3, they would have kicked his butt out, fears or no, and he might have grown up to become an adult. 

Don't let your kids get the best of you, try to make the best of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Canadian Residential Schools - A National Disgrace

 

Canada has had its shameful racist history exposed with the discovery of 215 child skeletons buried on the property of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Indian children, who had been wrested from their parents and mandated to these schools for decades, were horribly abused. Those who succumbed were discovered buried in indiscriminate graves and forgotten. Parents were 'lucky' if they got notified of their child's death. In most cases, they were not. But wait, we've known about the heinous acts of the church for years now. As Canadians shook their heads after WWII  and gasped at the horror of Nazi extermination camps in Europe, we continued to herd our own unacceptable underclass into residential schools, our own brand of extermination camp where, if performance ranked high, nothing would be left of the 'savage' in the child, or better, nothing left of them at all.

In Canada, the Indian residential school system started back in the late 1800s and was administered by the Catholic Church, the greatest terrorist organization ever created, and funded by the Canadian government, who were eager to find a solution to the Indian problem. The schools were founded in order to 'civilize' the Indians and remove the 'savage' from the child, to separate them from their past and create a new order of Canadian citizen. Approximately 150,000 children attended these compulsory boarding schools after being rounded up from all corners of Canada and wrenched away from their parents, who, if they neglected to hand over their children, could be charged and imprisoned.

At the residential schools upon arrival, children were stripped of their native clothing, bathed, sprayed and given haircuts. They were not permitted to interact with any siblings with whom they had arrived, they were not permitted to speak their own language, and they were expected to follow the rules, in spite of not understanding the rules nor the English language. The food was inadequate, medical attention was next to nil and kindness and compassion were non-existent. Any deviation or protest by the children, or any attempts to escape, were met with harsh beatings from the nuns and priests. As well as being beaten and emotionally abused, children were exploited as child labor and sexually abused by a raft of pedophile priests and nuns, righteous criminals who had no regulatory overseer.  This is how, in Canada, the indigenous peoples were to be assimilated into a superior white culture and indoctrinated into the loving philosophy of Christianity. 

I have lived abroad and when I return to Canada it vexes me how often I hear Canadians say that Canada 'is the greatest country in the world.'  I've heard racist statements for years about Indians, Muslims and Asians, with usually not one having visited a Muslim or an Asian country. Ignorance breeds more ignorance. The other day my neighbor said that natives were all 'dirty, uneducated drunks.'  The most common question a Canadian might make about Muslim society is:  'Don't women have no rights in those countries?'  When I visited a church here not too long ago and I told a fellow I came from out west, he said, 'Good to get away from all those Asians. Luckily, we don't have them here.' We're ceasing to disguise our disdain for others.

When I was in Grade 3 in Quebec and studying Canadian history, my history book had a photo of an engraving, a replication of the Jesuit priest Father Brebeuf being burned at the stake by the Iroquois Indians. There was Father Brebeuf lashed to a stake with a fire lit under his feet and ten archetypical Iroquois Indians with tomahawks all pow-wowing in a circle around the bonfire. I remember studying the photo and thinking I hoped all those Indians were dead because that's what they would have done to me. Yes, Canadian children were very well indoctrinated to the Indian threat. 

I take exception to the superior attitude Canadians have espoused of themselves and their wonderfully clean country as they cling to their upright, ignorant viewpoints and their empty consumer culture. Go to any small Canadian town and you'll find pontificating, drunken fools. I know. I lived in a few and I'm one of them. Canada may have a breathtaking landscape or two, but it's a cultural desert.