Proof an Example Essay

Effective Parenting

Being an effective parent is a challenging task. As I so not have any children of my own, I will base my observations on my own experiences growing up in a household with one older brother, Chris. Each child is different and what will be effective for one is totally ineffective for the other.
Chris and I are as different as night and day. Parenting us the same way would have been a total disaster. For example, "time out" is an accepted parenting technique. My brother would misbehave, my mother would put him in "time out", and let the battle begin. He would refuse to sit in the chair, standing up each time she sat him down. He would constantly try to negotiate his way out of "time out", saying how unfair or how unjust his punishment was. By the time he had finally complied with the "time out", his 5 minute punishment had turned into a 30 minute ordeal. When I misbehaved and was put in "time out", I just wanted to get it over with as quickly as I could. "Time out" was an effective parenting tool for me but not for my brother. This was not to say that some punishments weren't equally effective for both of us. For instance, taking away privileges worked well on each of us, though my parents had to find the item that meant the most to each one of us. My brother's "weak" spot would be his video games and mine was the telephone. Telling me I could not play video games for a week would have made no impact at all whereas my brother was devastated. Talking on the telephone was no big deal to my brother but I would certainly follow the rules to keep that privilege!
My mother constantly tells me that parenting would be much easier if every child came with an owner's manual. Unfortunately this is not the case and effective parenting is trial and error to see what works best with each child.