Since I moved to Tucson and don’t know other families with children, I spend a lot of time while playing with my son watching other parents. I have discovered that there are actually two types of parents: active parents and sleeper parents. I’m sure at some point all parents vacillate between the two types; however, I personally find it important to try to stay in active parenting as much as possible. This is how I define the two.
Sleeping parents:
1. They never really spend time with their children. They may be there in body but mentally they are unprotected. These are the parents who constantly make their kids wait while they text or ignore their kids while they’re doing adult things (like talking to another adult, surfing the web, etc.). I think everyone is guilty of this at some point or another, but what I don’t understand is taking your child somewhere to play with them without actually being present with them. What is the point? No parent should be their children’s constant play, but all children should receive their parents’ undivided attention for at least a small part of the day.
2. Letting your kids get away with murdering kittens! That’s a bit graphic, but it gets the point across. Sleepers never take the time to properly discipline their child for his misbehavior. Every misbehavior is truly a learning opportunity. When I taught, I was never afraid to discipline my students, and I never avoid disciplining my son. Every mistake is an opportunity for growth. By avoiding those opportunities, sleepy parents are missing out on one of the most crucial points of parenting, and their children are incredibly annoying to begin with! I love kids, but not annoying ones, and no, not all of them are annoying. The only ones who are annoying are the ones with sleeping parents.
3. They buy their kids a bunch of junk to keep their kids entertained. My son has what Matt calls the toy dungeon. My son definitely has a lot of unnecessary toys and junk. Lots of kids do. The difference is, however, that sleeping parents buy toys to entertain their children rather than having to do it themselves. Then they are annoyed or surprised by their children’s boredom and say, “But you have hundreds of dollars worth of toys! Why don’t you entertain yourself?” Well, they’re not entertained because you can’t replace the enjoyment of human interaction with toy interaction, although some may argue.
4. They complain about their children’s behavior. They say how difficult it is to discipline their child and that sometimes it is easier to give in. This is both a truth and a fallacy. I still vividly remember how difficult, challenging, and downright horrible it was to teach those first few weeks of first grade. I kept thinking: “These children are sick and horrible, even mental!”. However, she constantly sang Dory’s song from Finding Nemo of “Keep swimming. Keep swimming.” I knew that if I didn’t swim through the bigger waves, I would certainly drown, and none of those 29 little brats would have thrown me a life preserver. Finally, the hard work paid off. I remember telling Gina, my teaching assistant, that she felt like my class and I had finally frozen. This was towards the end of the semester. She told me that she thought we froze long ago. Then I realized that it wasn’t the fact that we had finally learned to get along, but the fact that she had finally come to love and appreciate them. My point is that if teachers can handle 29 different moods and behaviors daily for 180 days, surely parents can handle just a handful. Not to mention that they have the option of beating their own children! Just kidding… mostly.
So, in contrast, we have active parents. They basically do the opposite of sleeping parents most of the time. Again, I don’t think anyone stands alone on one side of the fence, but I do think it’s important for parents to take the time to see if they’ve stayed too long on the sleeping side.
