{"id":6787,"date":"2018-05-01T08:05:39","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T13:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/?p=6787"},"modified":"2018-04-24T13:35:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T18:35:44","slug":"may-6-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/faithlens\/may-6-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"May 6, 2018–Achtung Baby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kris Litman-Koon, Isle of Palm, SC<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Warm-up Question<\/strong><\/p>\n

Think of someone who is not a member of your immediate family yet who has influenced who you are today. How did they do this? How would you describe their style of influence? (e.g. nurturing, stern, disciplined, laissez faire, hovering, etc.)<\/p>\n

Achtung Baby<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am the father of 18-month old twin girls. That means my life has changed significantly in the last two years, and one aspect of my life that has shifted course is the content of what I read. Our home now has an entire shelf of books (if they were not strewn about the house) that discuss how parents can survive the stages from embryo through toddler. Then there is another shelf of books (likewise scattered) that say in summary, \u201cSo you have twins? Scrap everything the other books say.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Any healthy parent desires to raise a child or children in the best way possible. Yet, there are many opinions and studies on what the best method is, and there is no definitive answer. That doesn\u2019t stop people from publishing their theories, nor does it stop parents from clicking on links to read a new insight. (That new insight is usually a snippet from a newly released book that the publisher hopes will be added to the disheveled bookshelves of parents.)<\/p>\n

One of the links I recently clicked took me to an article on NBC\u2019s website (goo.gl\/9iPtzv<\/a>) about a German method of raising children called Selbst\u00e4ndigkeit (have fun pronouncing it). The translation is \u201cself-reliance.\u201d The first takeaway of the article is that parents shouldn\u2019t intervene in every dispute between children; by the time children are four-years old, they can possess the vocabulary and the skills to work out their own disagreements. Of course intervention is necessary if violence is erupting, however this philosophy inherently critiques the parental methods of always interceding whenever a child has a dispute with another child.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m certain this method expects that a lot of work has already been done in the first three years of the child\u2019s life. Namely, the parent has talked with the child about the benefits of getting along, modeled how to build understanding and consensus, and taught the methods to establish a mutually beneficial ceasefire. Once the child has a grasp of those skills, the parent should allow the child to use them, even if the parent thinks it would be more efficient to intervene. The point is that the parent will not always be present to settle things and force the children to hold hands, so the child needs to develop the skills to resolve their own conflicts.<\/p>\n

Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n