Best Compliment

I had to blog about this. I received the best compliment today!

Our family is comprised of myself and my spouse. We have our daughter who is a toddler. We also have my spouse’s two children (15 and 7) half the time. We also have a ton of animals so life is busy, but that is another blog!

Today, my spouse’s 7 year old came home from school and told us that parent’s day is coming up at school and she has to bring only one parent to school with her. She told us that she wanted to bring me as her one parent on parent day! She has a choice of her two biological parents and their spouses (me being one fo them) and she chose me! I don’t think that I have ever been more flattered in my life!

I had to blog about this for two reasons, one I felt proud of my parenting because of this incident and two because it made me reflect on my parenting style. I by no means am a parenting expert. I have read a ton of books on parenting to try to fill my head with ideas on ways to approach things.

All I know is that I believe that children need structure. They need to know the rules and what is expected of them or they feel lost. It would be like us going to work and the boss not telling us anything. We could get through the day, but we would not know if we were being productive if we had no direction. We would feel lost! I believe kids feel lost if they do not know what is expected of them. They need structure, stability and familiarity.

I also believe in being firm, fair and fun. The three f’s! Firm with your expectations and dealings with children. Fair with consequences and expectations. And fun as often as you can. The kids know that they can have a ton of fun with me and we can joke around, but they also know that if I ask something of them I expect them to get it done.

I think that the most important thing I have learned so far though, is to always acknowledge the childrens’ feelings and emotions. It might seem silly to us to cry over a broken crayon, but it is a big thing to a child if their crayon that was their favorite colour in the world has just broken. This might seem like a silly example, but my point is that sometimes kids have big emotions over something that seems silly to us. We have to remember to stop and look at life through their eyes too.

Like I said, I am not a parenting expert. I just try my best each day to be a great parent.
I must be doing something right if my spouse’s seven year old wants me to be the parent to attend her parent day with her.

If there is one parenting book that I would recomment reading it would be the following book.