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Parenting structure & the particular Parent Paradigm

 Nurturing children from birth to adulthood is a huge responsibility for one person, but it can be done successfully. Children need a lot of love and tender care. They take a lot out of you, but they give a lot back, when you've raised them with loving influence.

Love & Discipline

Getting the order straight as to who is the child and who is the adult has to be done early, or it becomes difficult. There's that important part about setting a good example, and also the other part about being a strong parent. Children need parents. There are fullness of "friends" later in life, but as they move through the formative years of babyhood and toddler-dom, they need strong parents who understand the point of setting and maintaining boundaries.

Rule estimate One - Love them.

Give them everything they need and fullness of love. Feed them, keep them warm and dry, and contribute a safe environment in which they can grow.

Rule estimate Two - Discipline them.

Set and contend strong boundaries within which they can grow safely and securely.  Don't allow them to push those limitations. This is an absolute. For instance: if bedtime is a set time, every night, contend that time and teach your children to obey the rules.

Guidelines for Raising Strong Independent Children

Often, parents resist setting rules for their children, because they mistakenly believe that allowing children to make those choices is creating an independent buildings for the child. Nothing could be supplementary from the truth. Children need buildings and rules in order to understand freedom. Once they learn the rules, they should be given adequate freedom to make choices within the buildings that surrounds them. As they learn to make choices, the buildings can be changed to accommodate the increase and maturity of the child.

A child who understands that coming straight home from school in fourth grade means no hour long delays and is at home, on time, every time, may be ready for a petite convert in the rules. Perhaps, giving the child an extra hour on Thursday afternoon to stop at the library and study with his friends in fifth grade is enough. Or perhaps, an extra hour in seventh grade to share in sports after school is allowable. The objective is to teach the child how to respect boundaries and therefore how to self-manage his freedom.

There's nothing wrong with always knowing where your child will be, at all times. This isn't part of a controlling parental maxim, but rather a parental responsibility - and part of the safety and safety paradigm.