Children test boundaries. I suppose it is part of the healthy development of the ego. Boundaries must be in place or your child will grow up thinking that there are no boundaries in life or will deal poorly with them and expect the world to give them what they want sans conditions. There are conditions however, and there must be if you wish your child to grow up being sensitive to their environment and to the needs of others. Adult temper tantrums do not really go over very well nor are they inwardly fulfilling or beneficient to one's spirit.
As they grow, the placement of these boundaries are tested. They need preceptual consistency. If there are no clear boundaries at home they will assume, by no fault of their own that boundaries are in general unclear with others outside of the family. They will be in for a shock as will others. This will not bode well for their relationships. Respect for others, for instance must be properly role-modeled and taught. The benefit of this is that respect for oneself is also taught as they are two sides of the same conceptual coin.
In order for precepts to be taught, or anything for that matter it has to be consistent. Otherwise what they come away with is not the principal itself, but the 'principal of inconsistency'. The inconsistency is the thing that sticks out, not 'what' you are inconsistent 'about'. That fades to the background.
A child has freedom within certain boundaries. If they have total freedom with no ground rules that newly forming ego and sense of self will spawn a sense of false 'entitlement' that will only hurt them and you, by default later on. This leads to a skewed view of life and the way that relationships actually work. As parents, our job in these formative years is the most important and will truly 'set the tone' for the rest of our child's life. This is likely the most influence we will ever have on the type of adult our child becomes. To me, it looks like the most important time of all. I want serve her properly as she has enlisted me to do. I think of her person and her future. This Is my job. Her's is to be a kid and therefore she may not always like or agree with what I ask of her or sometimes deny her, and certainly does not understand it and may not for some time, but it is her well being that she has asked me to look out for--to her Future--so it is to that Future that I look in the desire that we both look back from our future, pleased.
Parents have to learn how to apply these truths, and since there is no mandatory pre-parent exam we learn by doing, ultimately feeling and intuiting our way along. The hope is that one figures it out as best one can within the 'formative window' that is given to parents to make such things part of the bedrock of a child's psychological core concept. This is the challenge for parents: to ascertain and apply the appropriate principles in the right way, with the right insistency, and at the right time to give a new human being the fundamental tools with which to later build a happy and full adult life in the world outside.
In the end every parent does the best they can. God bless the parents. It is a Job of jobs.
As they grow, the placement of these boundaries are tested. They need preceptual consistency. If there are no clear boundaries at home they will assume, by no fault of their own that boundaries are in general unclear with others outside of the family. They will be in for a shock as will others. This will not bode well for their relationships. Respect for others, for instance must be properly role-modeled and taught. The benefit of this is that respect for oneself is also taught as they are two sides of the same conceptual coin.
In order for precepts to be taught, or anything for that matter it has to be consistent. Otherwise what they come away with is not the principal itself, but the 'principal of inconsistency'. The inconsistency is the thing that sticks out, not 'what' you are inconsistent 'about'. That fades to the background.
A child has freedom within certain boundaries. If they have total freedom with no ground rules that newly forming ego and sense of self will spawn a sense of false 'entitlement' that will only hurt them and you, by default later on. This leads to a skewed view of life and the way that relationships actually work. As parents, our job in these formative years is the most important and will truly 'set the tone' for the rest of our child's life. This is likely the most influence we will ever have on the type of adult our child becomes. To me, it looks like the most important time of all. I want serve her properly as she has enlisted me to do. I think of her person and her future. This Is my job. Her's is to be a kid and therefore she may not always like or agree with what I ask of her or sometimes deny her, and certainly does not understand it and may not for some time, but it is her well being that she has asked me to look out for--to her Future--so it is to that Future that I look in the desire that we both look back from our future, pleased.
Parents have to learn how to apply these truths, and since there is no mandatory pre-parent exam we learn by doing, ultimately feeling and intuiting our way along. The hope is that one figures it out as best one can within the 'formative window' that is given to parents to make such things part of the bedrock of a child's psychological core concept. This is the challenge for parents: to ascertain and apply the appropriate principles in the right way, with the right insistency, and at the right time to give a new human being the fundamental tools with which to later build a happy and full adult life in the world outside.
In the end every parent does the best they can. God bless the parents. It is a Job of jobs.