Are we neglecting our children?

We need to let our children safely dictate their own lives, within reason, obviously we can't just let them make every decision themselves but thats where we as parents come in. We are here to guide them gently in the right direction, as opposed to push them like many parents do. If we give our children choices and offer our experience to help them choose, they will eventually choose what's right.

Forming good bonds at birth and maintaining them throughout everything can create strong and trustworthy relationships. Many children are worried to tell their parents if they've done something wrong or made a bad choice, sometimes due to fear of punishment or rejection. If we show our children unconditional love and full trust then they'll be able to come to us, in childhood, teenage years and adulthood, for help or advice knowing we are there to offer what we can no matter the situation.

A lot of teenage rebellion comes from previous punishment, neglect and the way they were brought up. Teenage rebellion is the worst as some of these kids don't understand the consequences of what they're doing, but also may fear telling anyone. Then there is the bullying problem, we need relationships with our kids so they can tell us what is going on in their lives that is upsetting them. It all starts at birth! Build these relationships from the moment you meet your child and maintain them throughout your lives together. Its not hard, just respect them as human beings rather than an object that needs to be owned or manipulated.

A lot of the normal punishment in households now, can be extremely damaging in the long run and cause resentment in adulthood.

Our children need stability yes, they need to learn and to have guidance. They learn from example most of the time, from the very people who brought them here. If all they see day in day out is parents who are stressed from work, depressed from things, anxious over bills and expenses, then they WILL pick up on that! It will affect them and rub off on them.

To sum it up
kids need - gentle guidance, respect, trust, unconditional love and good examples from us.
kids don't need - to be pushed, manipulation, punishment, any other treatment that we would not expect ourselves.

Too many moan that kids have no respect for their elders, I think its the other way around. Kids can only learn respect and nowadays they are forced to earn it by pleasing the adults in their life and following the mould that someone else made for them. They aren't respected so how can we expect them to respect us? Respect that they have legitimate feelings and opinions and they'll respect that you do too. They are free spirits locked away in boxes, forced to do things they don't want to, made to be something they don't want to be, then punished or ridiculed when they speak out. Its unfair. They're smart and capable and should be free to make their own choices because with the right guidance they will make the right ones and choose a good life!

(I rambled loads, very passionate about this)

 

depression comes from the dominance of aggressiveness. from the village idiot-ization of the dominant culture.

coddlng children with censorship doesn't help. its part of the problem too.

its not a question of too much or too little attention, but too much of the wrong kind of attention.
the lack of universally MUTUAL consideration. (i don't like the word "respect" because one of its implications it the lack of need for it to be mutual, again part of the culture, and at the real root of the real problem).

 

Dr Allen Frances who supervised the fourth edition of the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders (DSM 4), nineteen years ago, discusses the latest edition which he says turns normal behaviour into mental illness.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3763502.htm

 

With this, can I safely conclude that we can't depend on advice of these so called experts?

 

With all its well-recognized limitations, well done psychiatric diagnosis remains essential to effective psychiatric care. Diagnosis is reliable enough when it is targeted to real psychiatric disorders, is done by well-trained clinicians, and is not provided prematurely to provide a code for insurance reimbursement.

The single biggest cause of diagnostic inflation and unnecessary treatment is that 80 percent of prescriptions for psychiatric drugs are written by primary care doctors who have insufficient training and too little time in their seven minute visits to be accurate -- and when both doctor and patient are unduly influenced by saturation drug marketing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/