Parenting
Order Description
The paper consists of three essay questions worth ten points each. Please write careful, thoughtful, and complete answers, remembering to answer each part of each question. APA format, single-spaced. You may write a little more than the guidelines, but not many pages more. Please be sure to define terms you use from our course, and if it is important, please also provide an example from your experience or an example you invent to explain the concepts in this course. These questions will be graded very stringently, so please write careful and complete answers and define your terms when it is necessary. This paper is worth 25 points, which is 25 per cent of your final grade in the course.
You may use all the resources from our course. In our discussions I ask you to bring materials in from the web and the scholarly databases. Here, however, I ask you please do NOT look up information on the web or in the databases. This paper is designed to test your ability to understand the readings we have assigned in the course. These questions and the answers come from our assigned readings. That means I am looking for specific material that you have read in assigned readings and ideas we have discussed in our course. Why do I make this rule? First, I don’t want you to spend time looking things up on the web. Second, I need to be sure you are reading and understanding the materials in our course.
Please use as few quotations as possible. It usually is possible to say the same thing in your own words. When you use material from our textbook, please cite that at the end of the sentence before the period (Jones, 2015). If you directly quote something (only a short quotation, please!) please put the quoted material into quotation marks and put a citation and page number at the end of the sentence before the period (Jones, 2015, p. 28). Please provide a small, informal reference list at the end of your paper. Please remember that when you copy from a source you must use quotation marks and you must place a citation at the end of the sentence. If you do not, you are committing plagiarism.
The questions:
Question 1: (5 points, one paragraph, approximately one third of a page, single-spaced). What is “serve and return” and why does it matter?
Question 2: (8 points, one half page single-spaced). Please carefully read this essay by a classmate a few terms ago, then define and discuss the types of parenting shown in the essay. Please discuss reasons why those styles of parenting achieved the results they did. What would you recommend to this classmate as a style of parenting to use today with his own children and why?
The Essay:
“Discipline in my family growing up was very relaxed. I had a severe behavior problem because of this. I was brought up in a middle class environment where I never went without. I chose to act as if I was from the projects and hung around people whose life was much different than mine on a social level. I surrounded myself with people who lived in poverty and committed crime on a daily basis such as selling drugs, gang banging and living a life in the late evenings, early morning. I fit in well because I was a tough guy that stood out and struck fear in the eyes of many because of my tough demeanor. My parents allowed me to act this way because after a while, they felt that they had no more control over me. I was that kid that was always right and knew all the answers and was smarter than my parents. I did drugs and was caught several times by my parents. I got punished but never listened to them and broke all the rules of the punishment. I was locked up for six months in a juvenile detention center for crimes that I rather not talk about. My parents visited me regularly while I saw that kids in the facility who came from a poor background never received visits. I was expelled from school in the tenth grade for fighting right after I got out of juvenile detention. My sister on the other hand finished high school with honors. I went to job corps while my sister went to college and I was kicked out of job corps for violence but I did receive my GED. I attempted to go to community college at the age of seventeen but failed every course for an entire year and my parents paid for it. How supportive were they. Very. I was then kicked out of my house at the age of eighteen because of my continued deviance and I remembered my father saying to me “son you either sink or swim.”
As I look back my parents provided the purpose, direction and motivation in my life that I needed. They were the type of parents that didn’t come from the life that I was trying to live and therefore their approach to fixing the problem was confusing. Our families are very close and I was always around all my close relatives because morals and family values were very important to my parents. I could see that it was important that they instilled the importance of becoming successful by gaining a proper education. Everyone in my family has completed college with a Bachelors degree but I broke that pattern.
I have three children but my oldest son who is thirteen is the focal point in my life. I have complete control of my kids. What I mean by this is that what I say goes. My son has grown up mostly on a military installation therefore he has never experienced other kids who come from poverty. He is surrounded by kids from the same environment as he is from, so that is all he knows. This is good. I am very active in his life. One thing that he does not know is how I was growing up. I chose to keep this from my children because I feel that if they know how I was and knew what I did as a child, when they tried it they could say that I did it so why can’t they. This is funny because I see myself worrying about my son getting involved in the wrong crowd. I meet all his friends and I am the mean parent in a sense that his friends know that I do not play and demand respect when they call my house or ring my home phone. I just want my son to see that I am very successful and he can be as well. This is totally different than when I was growing up. My son is a great athlete. He is involved in soccer and basketball and has always been the premiere player on the team. My discipline extends to the point that if my sons grades are not good such as one C and the rest A’s and B’s then he doesn’t play sports until the next marking period. My wife and I teach our kids morals and values, which are very important to us.
The difference between my parenting and my parents’ parenting are not much different except the fact that I am much harder on my kids than my parents were with me. I have learned much from my parents as to what actions to take when my kids act up but, I think that in a way I am worried that as my children get older my stern discipline will make them rebellious in that they may want more freedom.”
End of essay.
Question 3: (12 points, one and a half pages single-spaced.) What are the special needs of adolescents and, importantly, what do those imply about your parenting? Hint: This question focuses on all the Week Six readings for this course. You do not need any other materials.