Parenting

As I sat in the waiting room for hours at the hospital today, I got to observe different parenting skills and was amazed at the array of styles/techniques. I was sitting next to a family who had a young female getting reconstructive surgery on her jaw. She was apparently having her mouth wired shut for several weeks while the bones healed. The father of the young lady was joking around with his son-in-law, "I guess it's gonna be a quiet few months for luck you, huh?" to which the son-in-law responded, "Yeah...and maybe she'll lose a few while her mounth is wired shut!" It made me chuckle as I thought of what a wonderful, sick and twisted family this was. If my dad were still alive, would he be cracking jokes at my expense to my husband? Maybe....Probably...Most definately! Then I observed 2 young boys running around like they owned the place. A nurse kindly asked them to quiet down and stop running. The boys looked at her and said, "No. You're not my mom. I don't have to listen to you." I was shocked...the parents just sat there, focused on their cell phone and iPad, oblivious to the rest of the world. Never would I have thought to talk back to an adult in that manner when I was young. I saw one little girl, about 6 years old playing with a magazine. The girl ripped a page and defiantly smiled at her mom. All the mother had to do was say, "Alissa, NO." The girl stopped and sat quietly next to her mom for the next hour until they were called in. When I was the girls age, all it took was a certain tone from my mom or a slight look from my dad and I knew to stop. I enjoy people watching and love to see the interactions of family members. You can make assumptions of what's going on in their lives, but you can always tell which parents are truly doing a great job in handling their kids, whether it involves a pat on the butt or an actual conversation with the child. I don't believe in the time outs, the counting from 1, 2, 3...actions have to be caught during the process and the child needs to understand right from wrong before they are punished for something. Recently I was out with my mom and we were both appalled at how children were behaving at a restaurant. I told my mom, "It's a good thing Mark and I don't have kids because I've found I have very little tolerance for that kind of behaviour." My mom looked at me, smiled and said, "Well, YOUR kids wouldn't dare behave like THAT." It made me smile...my mom and dad did a great job raising us. We very rarely were spanked, because we knew better than to push the limits and we knew there was a possibility of being spanked! I admire my friends and anyone who is raising a kid or kids. It's not easy, no one teaches you how to do it and it's a never ending job. Do I hope to one day become a parent? I think yes, but only time will tell if that happens. For now, I love kids but mostly because they're not mine!