1. What does a good home look like and provide for both parents and children?
- Everyone has their own demand or need, for both parents and children. There are too many roles to be played and adjustments to be made. Parents are supposed to be family leaders by recognizing their abilities and being more consistent with discipline. Try to have more practical expectations for your spouses and your kids. Try to make parenting a manageable job. Focus on the area that needs the most rather than trying to address everything all at once. Admit your weakness and forget yourself if you burned out. Take time out from parenting to do things that will make you happy as a loving couple. Focusing on every need does not make you selfish. It simply means you care about your own well-being, which is another important value to model for your children.
2. What are some daily routines and rituals that parents and their children can do together, and how might they result in bonding?
Creating structure at any age can help parents and their children. Children can begin learning routines and rules at a very young age. You can begin with routines for important activities of the day, like meals, bedtime, or in the morning. Starting from every morning, say “Good morning” and give a child a kiss and hug after parents wake up. And then waving your hands before leaving your house. This is a good ritual to show your love and caring. I suggested that this ritual can be practiced in early childhood for infants and toddlers, in the beginning, children feel sad and cry too hard, but over time and with patience, this daily routine smoothed the way for parting from daddy or mother at the family care home. Routines and rituals are sometimes used interchangeably. A typical schedule for infants and toddlers consists of arrival, playtime, snack, lunch, naptime, snack, and departure, with diapering taking place throughout the day. Some events happened and interrupt the schedule, but the patterns still need to be consistent and make them know what to expect and when to expect it. Enhancing aspects of routines can make them more manageable a meaningful to the child. It is many little things you do, e.g. making pancake, pudding, playing cards, window shopping, singing rhythm songs together, and reading some books together, that kids will remember and create some vivid family memories.
For example, my mother did not like us to waste any food after a meal, she used to scold us stare at us strictly to make us feel ashamed. Since my childhood, I do not like to retain any waste on my bowls. This behavior is not necessarily good or bad for us, but for sure it has a firmly bonding between parents and children.
3. What does healthy communication between a parent and child look like? Why is it important for children? What should it include? How should it be approached?
You cannot expect kids can do everything that you want them to do. They want and deserve explanations as much as adults do. If we do not take time to explain, kids will begin to wonder about our values and motives and whether they have any basis. Try to explain it as clear as possible, express your feelings, invite kids to work on a solution with you. The most important is to include the consequences based on different suggestions or choices they made. Be open to your suggestions as well and negotiate them. Kids who participate in decisions are more motivated to carry them out.
4. What are the benefits and drawbacks of free-range parenting?
The kids are allowed to have the freedom to experience the natural consequences of their behavior when it is safe to do so. To ensure the kids have the skills they need to become responsible adults. For example, my parents allowed me and my siblings to go to school from 12 years old individually. Our school is far away from our house, we need to take at least 70 minutes by a school bus before 5:30am early morning. If we wake up late and fail to catch up on the school bus, we need to take at least 3 transition buses and consume at least 90minutes and 15minutes by walking from the terminal bus station to the school. The benefits of it are that I have been trained to independently take the bus for a longer period without my parents' company. I am also responsible to wake up earlier or take the school bus on time to avoid any further inconvenience.
5. How much independence should a young child have? How about a tween? A teenager?
