Parenting 2

Last week, I’d caught up with a good friend of mine, Jacob. We were chatting on our family and stuff. Jacob has a son about a year older than mine. He recently had an argument with his wife, Eve, who happens to be my friend too. Normally, argument between a couple is very normal, but the topic of discussion really interested me. It is about parenting. Eve’s idea is that their son, Samuel is their only son, and she will just give him anything he wants with her best effort regardless. Jacob’s idea is that he will give Samuel what he needs and what’s good for him, rather than simply blindly doing things that simply satisfy his son’s desire.

Certainly, the two approaches have overlapping areas. However, there are gaps. Cos, kid’s desire has no limit and reason sometimes. We were all kids before and we know that sometimes what we wanted were not what we need or are best for us when we looked back. Certainly, our parents couldn’t and didn’t give us everything that we wanted, but Eve’s attitude towards such ‘blank’ check approach simply scared Jacob tremendously. Cos, though their kid is still very young, but with years to come, argument and even fights between Eve and himself seems unavoidable. Also, kid is smart, if he knows that he has an easy way with his mom, will he still listen to his dad? Then, all the discipline, hard works, lecturing, motivation to excel will be thrown out of the window if his son can simply beg his mom to give him what he wants.

I told Jacob that he can only take it easy for now and spend time to talk to his wife on occasion basis. Eve has a point, but it doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t change. Also, he shouldn’t always look at the worst cases. Since both Jacob and Eve love their son, so they can build on trust and understanding from there. We all know that bringing up a kid is hard work, it isn’t easy by any mean. Feeding, bathing are not the hard part, negative returns from parenting effort is the worst nightmare for every parent.

I hope similar things will work out in my nest as well.