Quote Originally Posted by katfight View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Scrap View Post
Its fucking hard being a parent, and takes a lot of time and patience. On my travels it seems that the People that have most Children, dont have the time or the patience and mentality to be parents. Always makes me smile in bewilderment at there mindsett. Theres always an excuse and its always somebody elses fault.

thats not fair scrap
all my children are well looked after and i have time for all of them
and i have 6
they dont back chat they dont swear (at least not in my presence )
they are rowdy as children are but are very very well behaved i can take all of them together shopping and get people saying how well behaved they are
we have a buddy system in our house so somebody is always holding somebody's hand
i make all my food from scratch including the baby's food (which is the inli thing i have in my freezer)and i have breast fed all of my children until they are at least 2
its parents that are just shite that this problem comes from not the amount of children they have
i have more children than most and my partner works every hour he can the children get whateva they need they go to clubs etc...... because i feel i hd those children and it is now my responsibility to make sure they have a beautiful happy life
I'm not a parent and I just get overwhelmed at the thought. I think I'd need a lot of mentoring to learn to become a good parent. People like you Katfight are inspirational.

The whole many versus few thing got me thinking about my flatmate's boyfriend - who is fom Papua New Guinea. His mum had something like 11 children before she died during childbirth. She brought him up very well but using ideas I'd think are unusual in modern western culture.

One example being that she taught him to wash his own clothes and finish all his chores when he was told to. One day he left his good clothes soaking in a bucket of water and went off to play without finishing up. His mum took them out and cut them all up to teach him that if you don't look after your good things you don't get to keep them!

He is almost too fastidious but as one of the older brothers in the family he takes a lot of responsibility for his younger sibling - which reminds me of Katfight's buddy system.

I also like the idea of teaching kids to cook and clean etc as soon as possible is all part of it.

I found living out of home relatively easy compared to my older brothers becuase I knew how to do that when I moved out. They did work growing up too but it was 100 % farm work so when living out of home in the city those skills didn't help in such a direct way. I think for a while some of the food they ate was pretty boring!

One of my first flatmates ended up moving back in with her Grandma not long after moving out because she couldn't handle cooking and cleaning for herself. She didn't know how to use a washing machine or anything!

I did/do have a difficult time due to not getting my driving licence before moving out and if I ever have kids that's one thing I'll insist on teaching them as soon as it's legal.

That's why I don't disagree with the clothes washing thing and buddy systems. I think you need to teach your kids responsibility along with the skills they need to be independent.

I think you mostly hear about the nuture aspect of parenting but little about the idea of teaching your kids responsibility. Too many kids are brought up spoilt and without basic self care skills.

I'm not sure if other people would see a connection between this and this really bad behaviour but I think it's all part of where the western culture often falls short in it's education of parents and parents to be.