UPDATING: STARTING NEW POSTINGS AS OF DECEMBER 2020. WE ARE LEAVING THE ORIGINAL POSTINGS TO INTRODUCE.
EACH NEW POSTING WILL HAVE ITS OWN LINK.
STARTING HERE.
https://www.blogger.com/blog/page/edit/6084531619182205345/2328630629891149697
Starting today, Thursday, August 30, 2018 I begin to blog. I'm not sure what "to blog" really means or what is supposed to happen on a blog, since I believe I'm late to the party. Now, if you're not on Twitter, Instagram, certainly a Podcast, or whatever the latest (I'm told by a younger group that Facebook now belongs to an older group...the parents and grandparents of those clever ones who first held it up as the "know all, be all" of social media, but now is engineered by those folks who make friends and show/tell them and all family members what they are doing, with whom and where.) This will not happen here. I'm not sure yet just what will happen here. I have to get started and try some things. I do know that I will continue my quarter century passionate efforts to help the world know just how critical our homes and our parents are to the future of our country. We are seeing the results of failed marriages, homes, families and parenting every day and much of what's "wrong" with our country and our lives come from those failed basics of preparing our children for a complex world.
I will try to offer some guidance and support to those who might share my concerns and want to make efforts that they will feel good about because they are effective. I will supply a column and articles of opinion based on research, influenced by research, informed by evidence based practices and years of working in the field with families who have been successful and many who have not found their way. I will also offer resources, videos, links, expert input from real experts, and testimonials from those who have found some answers and are making efforts to grow our next generations with the skills they need to survive and thrive.
I invite you to join me on this journey. I will need your input, guidance and help with the proper directions. I look forward to knowing you.
Still Learning with Sally and Jim is an outgrowth of our company still learning, inc. with a website of www.stilllearning.org. We invite you there for a visit and review. We are now both at a turning point place in our lives and careers and will try to use this platform for sharing some thoughts, ideas, beliefs and hopes with those who might be interested. Sally will be making contributions to the blog in the near future. I will begin by sharing many articles, columns and handouts that I have written over the years through our parenting education program ParentsCare, a curricula that Jim developed over the years and has been offered in many settings from Social Services, to faith communities, to many schools and non-profits and family courts.
Here we go.
REMEMBERING
23 YEARS ON THE PAGE
ParentsCare
August 1995, No. 1, Vol. 1.
The name of this monthly get-together is ParentsCare. It’s
also the name of my baby company which is about Putting Parents and Children
First Through Family Enrichment Programs. I call it that because I care about parents,
and I care about parents who care. I
want you to know that you are valued, supported and cared for in your search to
find effective and loving ways to raise your children. Of course, I care about children, too. In fact, they are my primary concern, because
so many of them are not being nurtured and guided in ways that will lead them
into adulthood free from unintentional childhood damage.
Almost all parents love their children and want the best for
them. That’s not enough...the loving and the wanting. We have to know how to love them and how to help them find what’s best for
them.
There is a traditional belief that parenting well is a
natural-born gift, simply because a male and a female become biological parents
automatically makes them good parents, because they, better than anyone else,
know what is best for their child. That
belief is just not altogether true.
Parenting well is the most important career any of us will ever have and
it can also be the most difficult career we will ever have. And, yet, unlike almost any other career you
can think of, we get no training at it.
Note that I call parenting a career, not a job, or a duty, or an
expectation, not even an obligation. It
should be thought of as having a career.
It’s a profession. Good parenting
is learned. It doesn’t just happen. Parenting is not easy, but it can be
rewarding, gratifying and filled with joy.
Yes, it can be filled with frustration and heartache and disappointment
too, but aren’t all careers like that?
It is how one deals with the down side that decreases it or raises the
up side to wondrous altitudes.
How do we learn to parent?
A main source is our parents, and that can be good, or it can be not so
good. Only you can decide if you want
your children to be parented as you were.
And, that might take some real deep soul searching on your part looking
for truth and honesty about who you are and who you wish you were. As you undertake this search remember that in
most cases who we become as adults and who we are on our way to becoming adults
is most often the result of how we were raised.
The values that we acquire, the role models who model life for us, the
ways we are expected to behave help mold us into the people we become. From our parents, we can take the good parts
that seem to work for us, but what about the parts that don’t seem to
work? What do we do then? Too often we try to force it, or we leave it
to chance, or we raise by the seat of our pants, or from a talk show or from
our friends, whose children are very different from ours, with different needs
and different surroundings.
I often hear adults speaking about “the good ole days” and
the absence of the values of those times.
Before we buy into that, consider that there were many peoples who did
not consider those days “good” at all.
And, consider this. Children are
an honest conscience of what they have been taught. They are a perfect mirror reflection of a
society’s priorities and principles. We,
the adult people in charge are responsible for who our children are.
Children are as
parents do!
There is no question that our community, our county, our
state and our country are in somewhat of a mess. All one has to do is look at the statistics,
read the newspapers or
watch TV news and we see that we certainly do have some
problems. And, even though there are a lot of children in crisis, believe me,
they did not cause the crisis. We adults
are in crisis, too. Did we cause
it? You bet we did, or at least had a
hand in it, but this is not about blaming.
That blame stuff is just wasted negative energy. What we have to do is take the responsibility
for past mistakes and learn from them and grow on from here. As parents, we have to be what is called,
pro-active, and take our responsibility seriously. We have to take on the role of professional
parent and stop looking for someone else to take care of our children. It’s a
tough job, but, just as we would look for help in doing our money-paying
careers, we have to look for help in being an effective parent. There’s no shame in wanting to do a good job,
especially when it applies to the most cherished people in our lives.
This was the first column for a new Regional Specialty Newspaper Parent
News, for which I was a contributor for 19 years! It was to be a new and meaningful way for readers to access information about the role
as a parent. I was very pleased to be a small
part of its beginning wrote these words then...I look forward to talking with you monthly in this space. I hope you will write me with your concerns,
your problems and your solutions, and we will share information about the
behavior of your children and how those behaviors are shaped and by whom. We will also discuss the vital role of parent
and how that role can best fulfill the mission of all parents, to help children
become the “selves” that they are meant to be.
Most of you are doing a good job, the best that you can
do. I applaud your efforts. I am on your side. Let’s come together in our community and help
each other be the mirror we want for our children and our society. We’ll talk about it. A lot. Until then…
Don’t lose heart!
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AND, SO, HERE WE ARE, 25 YEARS LATER. THE MESSAGE I HAD BACK THEN IN THIS FIRST
COLUMN HASN’T CHANGED A BIT. IN FACT I'M MORE SURE OF ITS IMPORTANCE THAN I EVER WAS. I AM STILL
AN ADVOCATE, A DEEP BELIEVER IN PARENTING EDUCATION AND THAT THE HEALTH OF OUR
FAMILIES IS THE VERY FOUNDATION OF OUR SOCIETY.
ALTHOUGH AWARENESS OF THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFECTIVE
PARENTING HAS BEEN RAISED, THE PROGRESS IS ALMOST TOO SMALL TO COUNT. WE STILL HAVE A LOT
OF WORK TO DO. SO KEEP READING. KEEP WORKING TO BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE, AND
DON’T LOSE HEART!
Many of the articles and columns over the years will be found edited and updated from my book for parents and teachers. If you'd like one, I'll sell you one, or you can get it from Amazon. If you want to teach it, it's free.
