Anne Pflaum's List: Parenting Styles

• Dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb. Tubby time is now all-out war at my house. Why? Because I brilliantly said, "Yes!" to my oldest child, who begged and pleaded and carried on with a full week campaign to paleeeeeeeeeeeease let him shoot a water gun in the bathtub. Now he feels that he is entitled to this water play at every single bath. This also means that now we suffer big fat temper tantrums when I say, "No!"

• There is a balance somewhere that allows for parental peace of mind on one side, and the wild child's freedom to explore and express on the other. I have yet to find that balance. Every day feels like a tug of war between my rules of sanity, safety and good manners versus my 4-year-old's Kung Fu nation and ceaseless demands for snacks and PBS.

  But that balance is somewhere. I just know it. And until further notice, I will keep looking for it!

• r excellent book, The Mansion of Happiness, Lepore explains how that type of
• worrying created a boom
• industry for parenting advice in the 21st century. She profiles
• George
• Hecht, the founder of what later became Parents magazine, who promoted the type of journalism that exaggerated ch
• dhood illnesses and hidden household dangers
• with the goal of scaring mothers into subscribing. “To protect their babies and children,” Lepore writes, “[mothers] would buy anything, so long as they could be kept good and worried.”

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• n with Intention Deficit Disorder, the emphasis becomes the product or the appearance as the outcome, rather than the development of the skills and abilities we otherwise only hope for.  Intention implies planning.  As we select activities we have to ask ourselves, “What is the purpose?”  I’ll be the first to admit that I’ll sometimes pick activities to do with the children I love and teach simply because they catch my eye, sound like fun, or fit with my scheduled theme.  Even with these activities, if I simply ask myself, “What is the purpose?” I can often find something that I can emphasize to maximize a developmental outcome.  And if I can’t, I find a better use of time.
• tention has a lot to do with planning, not just in direct planning but in being prepared to take advantage of the opportunities that lie in unplanned mo
• Life is busy, and as they say, it comes at you fast.  We all have to learn to roll with the punches, and no one knows how to adapt like a parent or teacher of young children. But when you know what you’re about, what you want to teach and encourage, you can find opportunities to do so in almost everything around you.  A trip to the grocery store becomes a letter hunt with your preschooler.  Outdoor play time becomes a springboard for a discussion about observable aspects of the changing seasons.  Even spilled orange juice provides an opportunity to teach and train as you involve the child in cleaning up instead of doing it for them.  There are teachable moments everywhere, if you are prepared and intentional.
• Consider what you really hope for and turn that into intention.  Use your intentions and purposes as filters. 
• Begin to recognize that we don’t have to do everything.  We just have to do what matters most.

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