Gordon Neufeld in his book ' Hold onto your kids'
warns us about losing our kids to their peers.
Kids today are very peer orientated and no longer to
seek the guidance and acceptance of their parents. They rely more on their
peers and their behaviors revolve around being accepted by the group rather
than developing their own personalities and integrating family values in their
lives. Neufeld encourages parents to
avoid the use of rewards, punishments and consequences because they undermine
the foundations of a trusting relationship between parent and child.
Gordon Neufeld is not alone in his views on negative
peer influences. Robert Epstein wants to ' abolish adolescence ' and teen
culture. Put teens together, they act
worse than preteens. Let them mix with people of different generations, they
then show incredible ability and responsibility.
I agree with Gordon Neufeld that we must ' hold onto
your kids ' by putting the relationship first , but this is not enough to
counter negative peer culture.
Today , friends are so important and influence the type
of kid Jonny will be.
The reason is -
kids mirror themselves on their friends,
they measure themselves against their friends ,
who they are is seen in terms of friends.
We have to find good friends for our kids. Even better
is to find friends from different generations – an older brother or sister,
buddy-tutors, young adults or even older people. This type of mentoring
relationship has the ability to promote so many cognitive skills, values and a
trusting relationship. Kids can find these friendships at different clubs and
organizations such as charities and sport – mountaineering , hiking etc .
There is often a lot of emotional baggage surrounding
the parent-child relationship so kids will actually hear what the mentor says
and not the parent even they both are saying the same thing.
If we want to hold onto our kids we need to adopt a '
mentoring relationship' with our kids. AP – attachment-relationship parenting
books often tell us the 'why ' but not the how or the how is pretty vague.
We need CPS –
the collaborative problem solving model to deal with unmet expectations in a
way that promotes relationship and skills.
We need a GPR – guided participation relationship so
that kids are in an informal learning/ parallel learning relationship with us. We can transcend the day to day commands or
instructions we give kids and use them as a window of opportunity to help learn
and engage the world .
We need to listen more , let kids speak – we use
dialog questions to direct the conversation.
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