Modern Parenting and how to gear up for challenges.

As a youngster you might have had an idea of parenting, like how you would want to raise your future child different from your mother's way of child rearing. But when you fail tremendously in the act and seek your mother's, grandmother's help, you have passed as a modern day parent facing innumerable difficulties bringing up your little munchkin. There is certainly no one particular way of parenting which could be deemed as the best.You must follow a realistic type which suits your own family and lifestyle.

Old-fashioned parenting can never be shunned from your entire agenda, because at various situations it actually makes sense, not to mention common sense. Yet, insensible in some ways compared to the contemporary methods.

There is no village

There is an old saying, “It takes a village to raise a child”, meaning in olden days, it takes a whole community of different people who interact with children in order to raise and make sure your children grow in a safe environment. In our current society it can be a great challenge to create such a village environment for our children which would act as eyes and ears when the parent is away. We live in the ultra modern world where we hardly recognize our next-door neighbour leave alone the school employees and our child's friends. Even if we do we strictly limit them not to talk to any of the community members in a child's world like bus driver, maid etc. A parent is not to be blamed but the untrustworthy urban soceity takes credit to a parent's mistrust. Moreover an unruly child is warned or disciplined by the members other than family in the olden days, but now nobody dares to correct a child as it gets the parents' disapproval or sometimes even anger.

Outsourced Parenthood

Working parents dole out chunks of salary to do the difficult work or put the grandparents in charge of all the dirty work. What do parents outsource these days? Cleaning potty, playtime, reading time, feeding, pick up and drop to schools, needless to say steering a stroller. The mentioned are the parts of the day a child actually tries to communicate with parents, thus developing and nurturing the bond. If you give in or lose out on these, then your child will be out-of your hands in no time. Nannying is not a new concept, even our ancestors in the super-rich society had nannies who happily offered services to take care of the dirty details of child rearing. But this is the age of surrogacy, micro families and compact homes which need much less time to do the chores and have enough time to work at office. To be an active part in your child's life all you have to do as a parent is spending time with them no matter what we do, it may be even to just sit through the child's favourite cartoon or hear out about a child's day at school or way back home. As a parent you may be the only who seeks best for your children which your paid nanny who never care. Facing difficult work with children will make one appreciate the sweeter time better.

Learn to say “No”

As a parent one must be ready to deny and refuse things to one's children. This is an effective way of teaching the trying ways how life works. Buying the regular chocolate from your neighbourhood shop to appease a child's whim is not going to get you any far than instant gratification. So refuse and postpone the chocolate and teach the child how to resist a temptation and tell him what adverse effects sweets have on health. Bending to all their wills and whims will only bring them up as rude, impatient, expectant and dependent adults, which is not their faults but the parents'. For the children to face the real world, a parent must talk about his or her troubles and how he/she overcame it and how harsh the reality is sometimes, to the children. Thus it helps the children to straighten out their attitude and be prepared for the tough world.

Urge children to surpass the lowered standard

Modern parenting has terribly lowered the bar in many aspects like discipline, eating habits, respect to elders etc. When a child couldn't behave or have emotional outbursts in public, parents tend to shrug it away and say “that's how it's with children”. But seriously it is not. I don't mean to say that children must be trained to behave like robots in public. Parents should teach them to be natural in public yet not succumb to bad temper. Hence parents must raise the standard and preach them self control. If you think a child can't tidy up a room, or eat without making mess or sit through a dinner or can't treat elders with politeness you are wrong. A child is more capable to do all these things then you think he/she is. The trick is to make them follow the rules and help them understand what you expect of them.

Don't be overprotective

An over protective parent is in constant fear and confusion about every aspect of his/her child. Children

tend to make mistakes and that is the highway to learn things. So, as a parent you don't have to safeguard from such bad experiences. If they don't go through harmful things, they can never become thick-skinned. Creativity is the fruit of a wandering mind. Don't lay rules that protect children from going out of their comfort zones.

Once you get to realize traditional way is not rubbish, you get to strike a balance between both types of parenting and bring up better children.

There is no such thing as a perfect parent, so try to be a real parent.