How To Love A Child

Editorial-How to Love a Child
         When parents hold their newborn babies for the first time, they are excited and thrilled. During their child’s maturing process, they are frequently puzzled about what values to impress upon their child, how they want their child to grow up, and when they believe that their child has gone too far or misbehaved too much. Although all parents have their own definitions of how to love a child, here is what I believe are some of the key virtues and values that need to be stressed in order to foster a great child.
From the day your child starts school, you need to emphasize the importance of good work ethics. If you tell your child the importance of getting good grades from day one, your child will have a better foundation, so, when they reach high school, they are pros at getting straight A’s.
         In addition, children need to learn how to get organized, which is an important component of good work ethics. As my 5th grade teacher told me, organization is the key to success, and I found out she was right. In middle school, I saw that if you are not organized and have papers everywhere in your binder and backpack, you won’t be able to find the documents needed for class. Even worse, you will get points subtracted from your grade. Grades in high school are very important if you plan to get into the college of your choice. You need to tell your child the importance of organization since it can mean the difference between an A or a B.
         You also need to emphasize the significance of having pride in your work and being neat. From my experience, I found that to be especially important in studying for the SAT. You are now required to write an essay in the SAT and you need to be neat. I learned that if your handwriting is sloppy, with marks everywhere on your paper, the scorer, having many papers to grade, will not attempt to decipher your essay. He or she will probably give a bad grade or even a zero, for illegibility. This could mean the difference between getting into a college or university that you would like to go to versus getting your second or third choice. The best time to learn neat penmanship is when your child starts to learns to write their ABC’s and to practice cursive.
         Furthermore, in order to really love a child, I feel that you can’t pressure a child into a certain profession. By the time your child is old enough to choose his or her line of work, they know what their strengths and weaknesses are and what they’re most interested in, whether it be in computers or in medicine. They have to decide for themselves what field that they want to have a career in and what profession they would be happiest doing. You have to remind them that this is probably the job that they would be doing for the rest of their lives, and it’s really important that they pick the right job.
If they are interested in flipping burgers, they can flip burgers. If they are most interested in fixing cars, they can become a car mechanic. If parents get between their child and the career that they want to do for the rest of their lives, children often tend to not do as well as if they did something that they wanted to do. Parents can nudge their child by weighing the pros and cons of each profession, but, in the end, the young adults have to decide for themselves; and follow their heart.
         In addition, one of the main things required to love a child is to discipline them when necessary. The one topic all parents have trouble on, whether they have read a book or not, is when to discipline them and how to discipline them. There is a fine line between disciplining them for a minor thing, such as not listening, and punishing them for a major thing, such as stealing or vandalizing. When your child is in the early stages of growing, it’s important for the parents to catch any problem early, when they are more impressionable. If you discover a problem early in your child’s life, you need to sit down and talk with your child about the problem and how important it is not to do that anymore. If they don’t listen after a talk about any problem, you need to take disciplinary action.
         Disciplinary action can include a spanking or just sitting down in a chair for a time-out. Continue this every time he doesn’t listen to you and continue to remind him what the proper thing is to do. One thing that you can not do is to take such severe actions as to make him cry. If you do this, this might make him or her think that you hate them. As they get older, the disciplinary action is similar to the younger ages; tell him or her to stand in the corner or to get a spanking. Another punishment that you could impose is a restriction of privileges of something that they enjoy doing, such as video games or computer games. In some ways, this is a more severe punishment. The middle school and high school years can be very difficult. The child’s desires to express their independence and peer pressure make it very hard for parents to discipline their children. But, this is the time that proper discipline is most important
         Although it might be discouraging and it may take a lot of work, raising and loving a child also has its rewards too. Later in the life of your child, you might ask yourself the question, “Did I do a good job raising my child?” If they pick the job that they aspired to do all their life, if they succeed in work, and, most of all, if other people look up to them as an example of someone with exemplary behavior, you will know that you’ve done a great job parenting and raising your child.