Effective parenting in the modern era

Being a parent is not just about giving birth to a child; it is way beyond that because every parent tries to strike a balance between their lives and also wants to be active in their children’s lives, which is not easy to do, and that is why it seems like immediately someone has a child, they pause their own lives for their children’s lives to move forward.

I am not a parent yet, but based on my sister’s experience with their children and with all I have seen in my sister’s home raising kids, I would like to share some ideas on how to be a good parent and also strike the balance between parenting and the child’s life without disturbing the children’s personal lives.

The truth is that every parent wants to be active and also have a say over their children and their children’s decisions, which I think is quite important and good at some point in the children’s lives. But most parents always forget that once a child is up to 18 years or above that age, they have every right to decide what they want, even if not everything they want to do, but in some aspects of their lives, they have the right to choose as well.

the image is mine

My elder sister has a girl who is in the university; she is not 18 yet but almost. Whenever this girl comes home and tries to buy something, my sister would be like, “Hey girl, you can’t keep buying things anyhow because when I was just like you, I didn’t even get a chance to do that, so keep the money for something else that will be more important.”.

My sister has forgotten that as a girl child, she needs so many things in order not to look elsewhere. My sister forgot that in their own era, there were not many things to buy compared to now, when every child nowadays sees things, and they want them.

The girl came back home one day, and she told her mom she needed to visit her friends in the neighborhood. My sister snapped and started shouting at the girl, “I didn’t raise you to be jumping from one friend to another; all I want from you is to study and be successful in life, so there is no time to visit anyone.”.

After their argument, I told my sister instead of restricting this girl from going to meet her friends, why don’t you tell her to bring them home to know the kind of friends she keeps? After all, she wanted you to know she has a friend; that was why she told you where she was going, because she might decide not to tell you again and then go to them from school, which will be unknown to you.

Later, my sister sat her down and apologized, then told her she was just trying to be active in her life as a mother since her father is not always around and, of course, protecting her from the world she knows nothing about. And the girl agreed to bring them over instead of going to meet them.

the image is mine

Sometimes I wonder how I would handle mine when I eventually have one because we were raised with a strict hand, and that was why my sister thought she could just tell the girl not to do things and then believe that the girl was okay with every decision she made for her.

My opinion on creating balance as a good parent is that parents need to cut their children some slack by listening to what they want and then discussing it with them like a friend, not commanding them as a parent, because that would only create a gap between them, but if the parents give good listening ears and have a discussion, their children would see things from their angle, and that would make them understand each other better. By doing that, the parent can be active in their child’s life because the child would have no reason to hide things from his or her parents.