I had a ten minute break this morning at work so I turned to the Journal De Montreal.
I was reading an article that was discussing the usage of Ritalin in Quebec amongst children is much greater than in all of the Canadian provinces added together.
The author was questioning why this would be the case.
Are the Anglophones more tolerant of their youths? Are Francophone children more hyper than their Anglo friends?
What I found interesting is the lack of information about the different parenting styles.
From my own personal experience I can easily note the differences.
Look at the school system.
Wherever your child attends school, are they allowed to call their professor by their first name?
I have spoken about this on a previous post.
To recap, I was trying to figure out this new little friend to which Little Man was constantly referring. Turns out, it was his teacher.
There goes an easy step to clearly defined boundaries right there!
Another notable difference, Children will be children!
Oh really?
So because they are simply a child, they get to call all the shots.
We have to be careful not to stifle their creativity.
We need to talk with them.
Cannot use punishment because my parents used punishments on me and I did not like them.
You are afraid your children will not like you?
Why?
Do you not have any friends your own age to talk, laugh and joke?
Honest truth.
If you tell your child no, I swear they will not self destruct.
they may scream, call you names, say they do not love you anymore, but I swear they will not die.
In fact, when they hear that little word no in their adult life, it will not come as such a shock to them. They will even be prepared to deal with the aftermath by actually finding alternative solutions.
They may even learn how to form persuasive arguments.
Wouldn't that be a blast?
A high functioning adult able to look after their self in the real world.
All of that takes a lot of work.
We want things now.
We hate to wait.
Short cuts are big money makers because of this attitude.
Instead of reading the book we buy Cliff's notes.
Instead of writing the essay, we google, copy and paste.
Instead of trying to create high functioning young people, we pump them with drugs so they can be better controlled.
Yeah, I don't see this exploding in our face 10 years from now.
