Children

I've been a Mom now for just a few years.  My husband and I have a wonderful little boy who is extremely bright, happy, bossy, a pokey-butt and sometimes, downright frustrating.  We raise our son to be respectful of others, to have good manners and to understand that his actions will have consequences, good or bad.  We have rules in our house and we expect him to know AND follow them.  The "Rules Lessons" that we are teaching now will spill over into the rest of his life.  We are not perfect parents and we make mistakes.  We also admit those mistakes to our son so that he can see that adults make mistakes too.  I see so many parents get lost in trying to be great friends with their children that they lose track of the really important lessons that a PARENT, not friend, should be teaching. 

Some of our lessons are:  

• Table Manners - no burping, no farting, chew with your mouth shut, don't feed the dog from your plate, finish your milk, ask for permission to leave the table & if you don't want to eat what is on your plate, you don't have to eat it, but I'm not making a separate meal for you.
• Television - turned off during meals (unless it's movie night and then we get to eat in the living room while watching a movie), no "kid" TV during the week, I (as parent) CAN turn the TV off even if you are watching it.
• Respect - no sassing (I sometimes lack when it comes to enforcing this one), be careful of the "tone" you're using when speaking to others (our 4-year-old knows exactly what this means), and "shut up" is a bad word in our house so don't use it unless you want your dinner to consist of Dial soap.

I'm not a complete hag, even though some of you will think I am after reading this.  Because of the lessons, our son knows how to order his own meal at a restaurant, he has NEVER had a meltdown when out in public and he acts this way no matter who he is with (it may be grandparents, babysitters, or friends).

Maybe over the next 20 or so years, I will continue to update our list of lessons for everyone to read.