"Survival" Skills
One of the biggest deceptions out there is the myth that children need to stay away from stressful situations that might impose on their having fun! Afterall, kids are kids and they should have fun, do school, clean their rooms and .....that's it, right?
My personal philosophy is that children need to experience real-life situations and taught how to handle them or else you will end up with children that have no preparation in real-life skills.
For example, children that grow up playing computer games, watching sit-coms all day, being indulged in their whims (spending too much time 'shopping', talking on the phone, not given any real responsibility....)will unfortunately grow up to be young adults that have no way to pull on their own resources to handle danger or make decisions in stressful situations.
There is a difference between sheltering your child as they grow, opening the door a bit as they mature and giving them a little less restraint as they learn the rules you have mapped out and NEVER opening the door until your baby turns 18 and you push them out of it!
My husband has done a wonderful job with our children. He started taking them to work with him when they were still at a very early age. My son was barely three when dad would take him out to cut grass and do landscaping. He made it fun for him by purchasing a play mower for him to bring to ‘work’ and having him do some menial chores like weeding, picking up sticks, etc. He didn’t go every day, just a couple of days a week until he got older. My son is now 16, knows the business like the back of his hand and even though he doesn’t have fun with it all the time like when he used to bring his “Bubble Mower” years ago, he has learned with experience how to run equipment, do his own repairs and how to deal with customers. Many of those people have watched my son grow up and turn into a young man.
My daughters also have gone out with their father to work and have spent hours of quality time with him learning the meaning of working hard. It’s good for them!
The girls also are taught to do the daily at-home chores. Right now the teens shy away from it and need to be coerced or forced to follow through at times but they know how to do at least light cooking, cleaning, laundering and child care.
Without a TV to rob them of their brainpower, they can find other, more creative things to do when they are not helping with family work. I have tried to encourage them to find ways to keep themselves busy by NEVER allowing the words “mom….I’m bored” to pass from their lips UNLESS they want chores! It’s amazing how quickly they can find things to do with that as an incentive.
As a home schooling mom, survival skills have been at the top of the curriculum in the past. One of the best things we ever did was to obtain a copy of the Army Survival Handbook and experiment with some of the skills taught there. We had the kids in the woods at one point, finding brush and branches to build a temporary shelter, they learned how to make cookers for meals and talked about poisonous and edible plants. These things are fun but also useful and are skills that build confidence.
My husband and I are not ‘anti-fun’ but we do believe that the less idle time the better. The few times that we let that rule slip, the more opportunity we had for problems to develop.
You have to ask yourself as a parent, who do you want influencing your children?
Is it Hillary Duff? The latest flavor of celebrity and godlessness? Where do you want your children to go when they leave you? Is it the movie theater where sodomy on screen is becoming a common theme? The mall where materialism reigns? Do you REALLY
want your children to worry about fashions and nail jobs above being good parents and godly men and women?
It's all in our hands.
One of the biggest deceptions out there is the myth that children need to stay away from stressful situations that might impose on their having fun! Afterall, kids are kids and they should have fun, do school, clean their rooms and .....that's it, right?
My personal philosophy is that children need to experience real-life situations and taught how to handle them or else you will end up with children that have no preparation in real-life skills.
For example, children that grow up playing computer games, watching sit-coms all day, being indulged in their whims (spending too much time 'shopping', talking on the phone, not given any real responsibility....)will unfortunately grow up to be young adults that have no way to pull on their own resources to handle danger or make decisions in stressful situations.
There is a difference between sheltering your child as they grow, opening the door a bit as they mature and giving them a little less restraint as they learn the rules you have mapped out and NEVER opening the door until your baby turns 18 and you push them out of it!
My husband has done a wonderful job with our children. He started taking them to work with him when they were still at a very early age. My son was barely three when dad would take him out to cut grass and do landscaping. He made it fun for him by purchasing a play mower for him to bring to ‘work’ and having him do some menial chores like weeding, picking up sticks, etc. He didn’t go every day, just a couple of days a week until he got older. My son is now 16, knows the business like the back of his hand and even though he doesn’t have fun with it all the time like when he used to bring his “Bubble Mower” years ago, he has learned with experience how to run equipment, do his own repairs and how to deal with customers. Many of those people have watched my son grow up and turn into a young man.
My daughters also have gone out with their father to work and have spent hours of quality time with him learning the meaning of working hard. It’s good for them!
The girls also are taught to do the daily at-home chores. Right now the teens shy away from it and need to be coerced or forced to follow through at times but they know how to do at least light cooking, cleaning, laundering and child care.
Without a TV to rob them of their brainpower, they can find other, more creative things to do when they are not helping with family work. I have tried to encourage them to find ways to keep themselves busy by NEVER allowing the words “mom….I’m bored” to pass from their lips UNLESS they want chores! It’s amazing how quickly they can find things to do with that as an incentive.
As a home schooling mom, survival skills have been at the top of the curriculum in the past. One of the best things we ever did was to obtain a copy of the Army Survival Handbook and experiment with some of the skills taught there. We had the kids in the woods at one point, finding brush and branches to build a temporary shelter, they learned how to make cookers for meals and talked about poisonous and edible plants. These things are fun but also useful and are skills that build confidence.
My husband and I are not ‘anti-fun’ but we do believe that the less idle time the better. The few times that we let that rule slip, the more opportunity we had for problems to develop.
You have to ask yourself as a parent, who do you want influencing your children?
Is it Hillary Duff? The latest flavor of celebrity and godlessness? Where do you want your children to go when they leave you? Is it the movie theater where sodomy on screen is becoming a common theme? The mall where materialism reigns? Do you REALLY
want your children to worry about fashions and nail jobs above being good parents and godly men and women?
It's all in our hands.
posted by Eileen Slattery | 7:31 PM
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