Dr. Gordon Neufeld- What Makes a Child Easy to Parent

difficulty in parenting is a sign that something is amiss parenting shouldn't be that difficult we've been doing it for thousands of years it should be somewhat natural intuitive and instinctive yet in today's society there are signs that parenting is actually becoming more difficult this despite the fact that we have never had more books on parenting and how we've got one more a special one though right that we've never had more experts in parenting telling us what to do that we've never had more information about child development and that probably we've never had less children to parent and despite all of this we seem to be having more difficulty with our children then our parents had with us or their parents had with them so something is amiss and of course that's what I want to talk about this evening what it is that has has come amiss and I want to start with the question what makes parenting so difficult but I want to approach it a little bit different way change the question slightly to what makes a child easy to parent sometimes it's the way we ask a question that leads us to the insights and the answers and I think just changing the question ever so slightly can segue us into that material fairly easy so the question we're going to ask is what makes a child easy to parent now we could discuss this for a bit you and I and we could come up very quickly with some things I think that we would all agree with between ourselves for the sake of time I'll just be rather unilateral about this since I've prepared the slides already and and just get on with it what makes a child easy to parent well obviously a child who listens and attends to us makes it so much easier to parent the child a child who takes our cues for what to do how to act how to be what to wear how to talk that is very very important the child who trusts on us not only trusts us but in trust himself or his self or herself to us a child who looks up to us obviously that plays a very strong part in making a child easy to parent we'll go on who seeks our help our assistance in things who likes our company it's not very easy to parent a child to resist being with us who feels at home with us very important a child who finds we are a place of retreat a comfort who is at home with us a child who follows us who follows our lead we need to lead into values who need to lead into our culture into our society we need to lead into so many things as parents a child who follows our lead who likes us who likes to please us who seeks to measure up to our expectations and the real ringer here of course is is a child who doesn't want to have secrets from us at least ones that would push them away from us this certainly takes care of sneakiness in a child it makes a child much easier to be able to deal with now if you have not yet seen your children represented in that list you indeed are going to have difficulty in parenting now all of this these characteristics are relative of course they're not absolute the more a child is represented in this list the more these characteristics are true the easier that child would be to parent now where do these things come from can a child be born like this no this is not a result of genetics if it was it would be consistent a child can be like this to one parent and not another at one time and not another to one grandparent and not another so this does not this is not a result of genetics while okay there's nature and there's nurture so that means that this would have to be learnt can you teach a child to be like this in actual fact you cannot these characteristics are not a result of learning you cannot teach children to be like this but if these characteristics are there you can teach a child many things that child is highly teachable if a child is like this so these characteristics to a teacher that child will be highly teachable highly open to be influenced well what have we got left how about skills that's the big word in parenting today it must be skill what a parent does well you could have four children three of which were relatively represented in this list one which wasn't you are the same person with the same skill and yet that child who is not represented in this list is going to be very difficult to parent it's estimated that 95% of the parenting literature today is tsums that the key to parenting is in what you do and that parenting can be learnt as a skill I'm going to suggest to you this evening very strongly suggests that we've got it wrong that we've taken a wrong turn it's not a result of skill what else do we have is it a parent who assumes responsibility no is it to remember Stills Nash and young did they they not tell us to teach our children well yes is it is it assuming responsibility and and this was a very common idea of parenting is it the more we assume responsibility as parent that the more a child is going to be like this you know not at all it has nothing to do you might be the most responsible parent in the world and it will not guarantee that a child at all will be easy to parent well we've pretty well covered everything but there's one more thing what about parental love is this a result of parental love no but if your child is not represented in these characteristics you would need a lot of love to compensate for that children who do not display these attributes or characteristics are very very difficult to parent and very difficult to love but at least we're on the right track it's not the love of a parent for the child the key to the ease of parenting and the context of parenting is the love of a child for the parent to put it is simply is I could a child must be in right relationship with the parent for the parent to be able to do the job and to provide a context to parent

Channel: neufeldmedia

Views: 88,565

Rating: 4.83181 out of 5

Keywords: Parenting, Attachment, Gordon, Neufeld

Id: PcaMsZrElnE

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 14 2007