The Hardest Job on Earth

For the past 20 years, like many parents, I have read articles, magazines and books telling me the best way to raise my children. The best part of these articles is that if you don't like what one expert tells you to do just wait five minutes and you are guaranteed to find another one telling you to do the exact opposite of what you were just told, the problem with this is deciding which is the right way. So many 'experts' say one thing the same and that is that you wouldn't start a career without training first yet many of us start parenting without a clue of what we are doing. I was 20 years old when my first child came home from the hospital and I was totally clueless and now 20 years later I still have no idea what I am doing.

One expert will tell you that you need to comfort your child and never let them feel pain and this will ensure that they will grow up to be a confident adult. While others say that coddling your child will make them weak and you need to all natural consequences as well as imposed consequences teach them that life is cruel and they need to learn how to deal with the real world. As a mother I don't want to see my children suffer, but I also want them to grow to be a capable adult. I know the answer lies somewhere between these two approaches the question is how do I find it?

The past year or so has been very trying for me. My eldest son has moved on and his father and I can only hope we gave him what he needs to be a productive decent member of society and so far it seems to be that way. Our daughter being 16 is pushing for her independence and of course driving us up the wall. Then we have an 11 year old daughter who is also pushing to be treated like a big girl not a child anymore, yet still expecting to be treated like a child when she doesn't want to deal with the responsibility of being more grown up. But the most challenging of all is the littlest one.

With a history of ADHD in my family I started researching just before Connor started preschool at age 4 for alternative ways to deal with the behaviours of ADHD. Connor isn't a bad child per say he is just a very active little boy, who in most cases doesn't stop and think out what he is doing before he is doing it. He can get very excited and has difficulty calming down. I learnt from my research that food colourings, additives and preservatives that were added to most of the foods we were consuming could cause these behaviours in some children. So we changed our diets, we removed as much food colouring, additives and preservatives from our diets as possible and noticed so drastic changes in his behaviour. Last fall when starting into grade 1 we were having some other issues that I wondered if they could be somehow connected to his diet, something I had missed or maybe more serious like a gluten, milk or other food allergy/sensitivity. I looked into a pediatrician (which I am still waiting for a call back for and it has been 4 months now), and while filling out these papers it was suggested that he see a chiropractor. Now I was a little leery but thought it couldn't hurt. Well for the past 4 months he has gone to the chiropractor and we have noticed even more changes in him...now to be fair there are many things going on and it would be difficult for us to say that it is all the chiropractor that is fixing it. He has matured he is almost 7 now...it is over half way through the school year and kids calm down after the first couple of months. He takes a pro-biotic, an enzyme, omega 3 and multivitamin supplement daily...but his reading and writing have improved drastically and his overall behaviour seems to have improved most days...

So that brings me to the whole reason for my post... This last couple of weeks we have been having issues that are new to his father and I. Once again we are doing things that seem to be done without taking the time to think things through. Every morning at his school they do a respect quote and part of it is to say 'Stop Think Act Right' so he knows that this is an important thing to do, yet he seems to have forgotten. There are other students in his class that are suggesting things to him that he knows are wrong or inappropriate yet he does them. Now I know this is not the fault of the other student, that Connor needs to take responsibility for his actions but I am at a loss for how I teach my child to stand up and say this is wrong and I am not going to do it. I haven't had this issue with my other children they seemed to be okay with standing up and saying no, but Connor seems to be very happy to follow his friends in the land of crazy ideas.

As I continue to read the parenting books looking for the answers I see that many say to use positive discipline and not to dwell on the negative. To allow him to think out what he should have done or what he thinks the punishment/consequences should be if he doesn't think before acting in the future. Well you ask a child what he thinks and surprisingly his answer is 'I don't know'. I can not even get an answer from him as to why he is doing these things that he knows are wrong. I will continue to read and hopefully I will find an answer that will work for my little guy, I will try to get him to think things through but I am not sure how you make a 6 year old boy look past the moment to see that what might be funny right now won't be so funny when you are picking garbage up off the playground at -20.