Raising kids (Part 2)

After writing the first post about this matter, I realized I don't have much of a leg to stand on regarding these issues because I don't have a child.  Nonetheless, I have to stress that, under no circumstances am I trying to say that there is a certain way to do things, I am just simply saying that there may be other options, although unconventional.

So the next topic I wanted to quickly touch up on is socialization.  I think this is the decision that could be the toughest one to make, for quite a few reasons actually.

The process of socializing your child is not a one time thing, unlike the vaccination choice of the nursing choice.  The socializing process starts from infancy and basically keeps growing into adulthood, at which point, typically, the child has become "their own person" and actions are no longer dictated by the parent.

Starting from the beginning though, at what point is the ideal time to start with socializing your baby?  Is it with other babies?  Is it in adult settings?  I have seen both sides of the coin and still have not been able to grasp what could promote the best scenario.  On one hand, I have a friend that speaks Norwegian at home along with his child.  Due to professional circumstances, he and his family had to relocate in a German speaking country which made a potentially difficult for the 7 year old child.  Fortunately, at that age, a child's brain is soaking up information faster than you or I could imagine and the young boy ended up learning German through his peers and became bilingual at 7 years old.  This particular instance holds a great case for promoting a second language at a young age.  On the other hand, I have a friend that was in the exact same scenario but with English as the first language and chose to have his children attend an all English school while in a foreign country.

Is one better than the other?  I think so, but this is only having spent the last few years in Europe.  There is a saying that I learned in personal marketing class in college where the professor stated, "if you can speak 2 languages, you are bilingual.  If you can speak 3 languages, you are trilingual.  If you can speak 1 language, you are American."  While in school, and in the States, it didn't make sense to me.  I understood to a certain extent where he was coming from because I figured he was referring to the world knowing their native language and, of course, English.  Then I got to Europe and I was completely mistaken.  When I visited Spain, I was amazed to see that in addition to Spanish and English, the common language of the area was French.  I knew that France was near but would have never guessed that if someone didn't speak Spanish, the next would be French.

In Austria, the way that I saw it, was that basically everyone under 25 years old, spoke English.  Anyone from 25-50, it was kind of hit or miss as to whether or not they spoke English and beyond 50, English was almost impossible to find.  When I got to Norway, I realized that everyone spoke English.  Once again, I am not sure why, besides possible historic revealings, why the English language differs regionally.  On the other hand, while visiting these different countries, you can also see who has adopted Western cultural aspects and who have maintained their own.  This is usually a determining factor as well.  Then it comes to the multicultural family I am close with where the wife speaks Russian to the child, the father speaks Swedish, and when speaking together, may chose English.  Keep in mind this is a 1 year old child understanding commands from 3 different languages.  To me, it is amazing how much more potential that has than the traditional 1 stressed language or learning English in America.

For some reason it just seems like knowing one language here is not good enough.

Spanish might be a better option

So a little off topic, the point is that if you have the ability or means of helping your child learn two or three languages while young, I feel it can only help. 

Next, I don't know how parents make the decision of when and with who the child interacts.  The reason I question this is because I know a family, Canadian but lives in Europe, with a 2 year old daughter.  She is obviously not old enough to go to any type of school and therefore spends a majority of her time, if not all of her time, with her parents.  The daughter, not unlike the 1 year old I was speaking about earlier, is constantly gathering information and ultimately acts in such ways that she is accustomed to; whatever happens at home.  When this family tried to socialize their daughter, they found another English speaking family with a daughter around the same age, and figured it would be the best for both of the kids if they spent some time together.  Most of the time, this would seem like an ideal scenario, two children with similar backgrounds in a different country spending time together.  The problem arose when my friend's daughter would come home with a new found violent streak, using inappropriate words, and now hitting her parents when she didn't get her way.

I am by no means a child psychologist but I am going to venture a guess and say that their daughter could have possibly picked up this behavior from the other child, or perhaps the other family as a whole.  After a few weeks of this, my friend decided that it was probably best that the two girls did not spend much time together.  AT 2 YEARS OLD!

Then as they get older, parents hear so much about bullying, cliques in schools, and more violence.  So this is why I ask, when is it the right time to socialize and when is it time to trust that other parents have done their part in providing a safe and stable environment for their children as well as others?

Public vs private school...

I went to both.  I have seen both sides of coin, each with their greatness and each with their faults.  Each in America and each in Europe.  To be honest, I don't know, just based on the educational system, which is the better choice.  In public school, the greatness has been almost thoroughly diminished with the poor teacher qualifications and poor teacher salaries.  It has also been diminished by the students behavioral issues.  There are so many poor things going on with the educational system right now it is disgusting.  I saw a video link, and I'll try to find it and repost it, of a girl, the schools valedictorian, describing, in depth, the failures of the current educational system.  In a nutshell, she said that the only reason that she was a 4.0 student, was because she knew how to retain information that was told to her.  This seems like a logical explanation and most people are sitting there saying, "that is was you are supposed to do in school.  You are supposed to listen to the teacher and what he says, retain it, and score well on the test."  Then the girl states that, by no means, does that make her any more intelligent or gifted than the person in math class daydreaming about inventing a gas engine capable of 100 miles per gallon.  It does not make her any more intelligent or talented than the kid practicing guitar at home for 6 straight hours while she is making last minute revisions on a science project.  I hope you get my point that perhaps the educational system needs to look at allowing kids achieve their full potential, in their field, rather than a dummied down "retain redundant information and succeed" mantra.


Here is that video...   listen to the message, not the monotone, clearly-reading-every-word-off-a-piece-of-college-ruled-notebook-paper speech she is giving.

This brings me to private schools.  At least to a certain extent, the private school I went to did allow for dreamers to dream, and to follow a path carved by you.  The main issue that I have with them is they sort of seem like an elitist group.  Sort of, "if you have the money, you can come in."  While there, I met some great people and still speak to some of them to this day.  I do think that it is still a bit too early for kids to not have proper parental figures in their lives.  I was fortunate enough to live close enough to the school where I could go home every day, but some of these kids are 13 and 14 years old, away from their parents for 9 months at a time, some coming over from Europe and Asia.  I feel this can work itself out in two ways,  a) you grow up extremely fast and become self-reliant very young, or, b) you rebel.  At the school I went to, at the time, most chose to rebel, and it was even worse when I was younger.  A major flaw in the school was the guidance that was given to the kids, because there was none.  Most of the dorm parents (people who were supposed to watch over the kids) did not understand that their job, besides keeping order, was to have an open door policy for the kids.  They did not understand the concept for parenting considering most of them had never been parents, and had no previous experience with 150 young, free minded kids with no parents within earshot, bogged down in a dorm facility with no one to turn to.  This is a disaster waiting to happen.  In my tenure there, I was one of the rebellious and eventually was "kindly asked to relieve myself" from attending school my senior year.  At the time, it was devastating and I thought my life was over.  Then as I got older, I realized no one really gives a shit what you did in high school besides murder or drug trafficking, so I ended up being ok.



http://www.cracked.com/article_19001_17-images-that-will-ruin-your-childhood.html


I'll try to get to the last part soon, thanks for reading