Sorry I haven't been blogging much. It is hard to remember to get on here and tell you guys about all the nifty stuff I am learning. However, I hope you do enjoy what I do get posted on here. I do welcome questions about anything and everything. I promise I wont base my answers purely off what I think. I like to look around and see what different people say on subject and form then form an opinion off of that.
That being said I want to talk about parenting based on Principles. This is a really interesting concept that is beginning to reshape how I think and how interact with other people. If you think about your interactions with people it is always about who did what to who. We always are interested in the what people are doing to us or doing for us. I am starting to think that this stems from being focused more on applications than on principles. I am going to try to explain this the best that I can but if nothing else try to extract some of the facts or principles from my words and ponder it yourself.
Applications are those things that you do to your kids, or those you are in a relationship with, based off of some kind of belief that you hold. This could come in many forms. In parenting it is things like taking away privileges, spanking, or time outs. ( which by the way I don't not completely agree with those applications)
A Principle can be a belief that we base those applications off of. Principles are a truth, a doctrine, or a rule that you hold to be true. Principles are what influence us to do something.
When we become more focused of applications we lose sight of the principles we base our lives on. Take for example spanking, I am not a fan of spanking. Our child does something we don't like or don't think is appropriate, so we spank them and tell them to never do that again. Here comes the problem. Does the child learn from being spanked? If they do learn something, is it just that they shouldn't do it because they don't want to be spanked? Now here is my thoughts. If you instead took the time to sit down with your child and discuss what they did, why they did it, and why you think that it wasn't appropriate; would the child learn more? Would they then understand their actions better? I think this would cause our children to better think for themselves. This would give any person a reason to stop and reflect on their actions. It would make people more aware of how they have an effect on the world around. It would make them care more for other people and cause them to firmly believe that what they did was wrong. Instead of you telling them it is wrong they would understand in their hearts and their minds that it is wrong.
I think we as a people need to stop think it terms of "what do I do to make this happen?" And think more along the lines of "what do I or the other person not understand that is making this thing happen?" I think we would be much more productive as a united people if we asked the second question and not the first.
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