Practical Parenting – Chapter 2

2. Foundational Concepts

Some children at their birth or adoption are welcomed into the world with celebration, regarded by their parents as a true gift from God, a blessing like no other who becomes the center of their universe. Other children, like the unavoidable product of the accidental “oops” pregnancy, are grudgingly ushered in and accommodated.

However they come and whatever the circumstances through which they are grafted into the family, the occasion of their arrival is almost always a time of celebration of life itself. Well-wishers outnumber nay-sayers, and everyone who sees or holds the newborn feels connected, if only for a moment, to something larger and more profound than their own insignificant existence. With each infant comes the potential for someone in the human lineage to accomplish something meaningful, to just get it right for once, or perhaps even to make a lasting contribution to the advancement of civilization.

But what life holds in store for our children is as uncertain as a game of casino blackjack, and a parent never knows whether the next card will beat the dealer or bust the hand. We can’t know how the genes have lined up in the children we birth or adopt, or how they have been pre-wired mentally and emotionally. Lurking in that infantile DNA is every conceivable combination of physical and behavioral characteristics needed to create Mother Theresa or Osama bin Laden, Thomas Edison or the village idiot. You can debate all day whether the product of our child-rearing is shaped more by nature or nurture, but whatever the particular combination of genetic composition and environmental influences in a given child we can say for certain that in the raising of them there will be both pleasure and pain.

The purpose of this book is to provide parents with the wisdom and skills to parent effectively, and thereby enjoy more pleasure and experience less pain. Before we begin, let’s discuss (in no particular order) some underlying principles that form the foundation of a back-to-the-basics approach to child rearing. We will refer to these concepts throughout the book.

Our True Mission As Parents

I’d like to expand your way of thinking about parenting in general and the way you parent your child in particular. We often hear parents refer to “raising kids”. Instead of “raising a kid” I’m asking you to consider that our true mission as parents is to grow a child to become a functional adult.

During the day-to-day grind of parenting it is common for parents to get caught up in the moment, particularly if there is conflict or chronic tension in the parent-child relationship. When we focus only on the emotionally charged here-and-now it is easy to lose sight of the greater end goal, that of shaping and refining a developing child until they are able to function as an adult.

But what about this term “functional adult”? This is a label that could have vastly different meanings to different parents, influenced in part on how we each function in our own adult world. To get us in a mindset of envisioning our kids as the grown-up finished product of our parenting, let me propose some characteristics of functional adults. What follows is a list, in no particular order, of qualities which are present to some degree or another in adults who are able to cope, manage their own affairs, and get along with others as responsible grown-ups.

A functional adult is able to enter into lasting relationships. To succeed in relationships, the adult has to be able to give as well as take, which requires an appreciation for the needs of others.

A functional adult has a practical understanding of right and wrong, legal and illegal, and exhibits enough respect for the law to stay out of legal mischief.

The functional adult has a working understanding of their responsibilities to self and others and displays the maturity to place the needs of spouse, children, and perhaps aging parents ahead of their own.

Beyond one’s understanding of right and wrong, the functional adult has a practical understanding of the importance of being appropriate. To be appropriate in speech, dress, and behavior requires mature levels of judgment and discernment, and enough respect for others to want to avoid offending them in any way.

The functional adult makes sound decisions based more on information than emotion, decisions that assign a high priority to the needs of others.

The functional adult has put aside the activities and amusements of youth and is focused on being a productive, contributing member of society and their family.

The functional adult has self-respect, and takes pride in providing for their self and others for whom they are responsible. The functional adult is gainfully employed, or working hard to become so.

For the functional adult, recreation is a relaxing reward that follows work, not the focal point of one’s day. Working to meet responsibilities is a top priority, so the functional adult gets off the couch and gets a job.

The responsible adult values their personal reputation and recognizes the importance of having other people think well of them.

The functional adult manages their finances responsibly and has their spending and debt under control. They routinely make the distinction in their spending habits between what they need and what they want, and only spend money on unnecessary items after all the necessities have been purchased. They routinely exercise enough maturity to admire some non-necessity without having to acquire it.

The functional adult is not driven by emotions. They have emotional moments, as we all do, but their life is not one big soap opera. There is no place among adults for the the angry, brooding male or the drama queen female. There is no evidence of bullying, passive-aggressive behaviors, or emotional manipulation in their relationships.

The functional adult fights fair with their spouse, and makes up quickly. Their relationships, when bruised, are healed by forgiveness and a spirit of reconciliation, which requires the laying aside of bitterness and grudges.

Within their family, the functional adult is a recognizable leader and a role model for sound and wholesome values, beliefs, and morals.

We’re All Bozos on This Bus

We often lose sight of this subtle but crucial distinction: the ability to reproduce biologically does not make one a parent. Although the biological miracle of conception is complex, the process of becoming parents is fun and relatively simple, the world’s favorite indoor sport. Once birthed, though, the proper upbringing of the child is another matter altogether, and a formidable undertaking indeed.

We people enter into parenthood pitifully unprepared, stumbling and stupid about how it all works and largely bereft of the parenting skills we will surely need to deal with the problems that will surely arise. The reason: for nearly everyone on the planet, the only thing we know about parenting is what we picked up from our parents while we ourselves were being raised.

You were perhaps fortunate enough to be raised by two wholesome parents in a healthy, stable home with adequate resources. As a result you may be pretty well grounded in life skills and have acquired by first-hand experience a parenting model that will serve you well in the raising of your own children.

Good for you, but you are the exception. Most of us come from families that are broken or weird in ways we don’t like to talk about, and the list of all the potential ways a family can be dysfunctional is a lengthy one, to be sure. Even the families that look from the outside as though they have their act together aren’t as healthy on the inside as they would like you to believe.

And The Beat Goes On

Dysfunction breeds dysfunction.

Our local sheriff has just retired after 32 years and he told me recently there are certain families of whom four generations have been guests at his jail. Probation officers, judges, social workers, and teachers can readily attest that bad begets bad, violence breeds violence, and the propensity to royally screw up one’s life with dumb choices is a birthright inheritance for certain family names.

This perpetuation of dysfunction is just as entrenched at the upper end of the socio-economic scale as it is down near the bottom. Indeed, some of the most warped kids I’ve worked with have been the children of wealthy parents, who were themselves pretty whacked. Their values and priorities are just as distorted as the kids from the other side of the tracks, only better funded. For the wealthy child, their parent’s money often insulates them from the consequences of their dumb choices. The particulars of the choices may differ, but the choices are just as stupid.

More Is Caught Than Taught

The reason the beat goes on the way it does is the nature of the human process for learning life lessons. Unlike the process for learning traditional skills and academic knowledge, with its emphasis on mastering the mechanics, memorizing facts, and passing tests, when we learn about how to live life we do so largely by watching someone else do it. It is a subtle, intuitive process by which we are taught through imitation.

Unfortunately, often as not the person we are watching is a flawed role model, so what we learn from them won’t serve us any better than it served them.

Consider, as an example, how we learn to make decisions, of which we each make hundreds per day.

A structured decision making process typically includes some discrete steps: defining the problem that requires a decision, gathering and analyzing data, identifying all potential success paths, evaluating alternatives, and then effectively implementing the best apparent option. But it is the rare parent who, at some point in a child’s development, will sit their kid down and give them a well thought out lesson in how to march through those steps to optimize the decision making process. Rather, a child learns to make decisions, in large measure, by watching parents make decisions.

If mom and dad make expensive purchases on impulse, for example, the kid will come to believe spending decisions are made spontaneously and likely hit his 21st birthday deep in credit card debt. If, on the other hand, the kid helps in the family business and witnesses the deliberate research that goes into the decision to buy a new piece of equipment their approach to making decisions will be a more disciplined one. Whatever the outcome, no one taught the lesson in the traditional sense. Rather, each kid caught the lesson by watching someone making decisions in real life.

Ignorance of Parenting Skills Is Not a Character Defect

You should not feel ashamed, guilty, or inadequate if, as you read this, you think you may be in over your head as a parent. Traditionally, parenting skills, as I’ve said, are largely caught from our own parents, so what we do looks as much like imitating as it does parenting. Understand that parenting skills are, at their heart, a package of tools and techniques that are readily taught. There is no shame associated with not having those skills the day your child is born.

To illustrate, I was not born with a guitar in my hands and did not grow up in a house where we sat on the front porch in the evening pickin’ and grinnin’. I never caught any musical skills from anyone, but I learned guitar, and a little bit of fiddle, from classes, videotapes, and other musicians at jam sessions and bluegrass festivals. It took focus and practice, but today I’m a somewhat seasoned guitar player, although my fiddling could charitably be described as a work in progress. Guitar playing is just a skill that comes from study and practice, even for musicians born with natural talent.

The same is true of parenting.

To climb up on my soap-box for a moment, what saddens me is not that parents are, at the outset, ignorant. What troubles me is the destructive fallout from a parent’s choice to remain so. Over the last few generations we have abandoned many of the traditional values that made us a great and moral nation. As a result, today we have children raising children, doing so with virtually no parenting skills other than the defective set they inherited during their own upbringing. Many of the kids I’ve worked with come from families who parent them with the same care they would give to a litter of mutt puppies born beneath the front porch. I have worked with irresponsible parents who simply don’t care enough about their children to feed and clothe them properly, and have no motivation to learn the skills needed to properly raise them into functional adults. Theirs is the dual offense of ignorance and apathy; they don’t know, nor do they care. And, alas, they don’t care that they don’t know. The result is one generation upon another of defective, misbehaving, underachieving children who will be a drag on America their entire lives.

Begin With the End in Mind

The purpose of parenting is not to raise a child, but to raise a functional adult.

I was for many years a manager in industry and government, and when I was coming up in my profession I made it a practice to watch closely the successful executives above me to identify what made them effective. One trait I saw in all the effective managers I studied was that they always kept before them a vision of the desired outcome of whatever they were working on, and everything they did was structured to contribute to that successful end. Put any of the effective ones on the spot to define success for their current project, their organization, or their career, and they could immediately define it and describe it so clearly anyone in the room could visualize it in its finished form. What’s more, they could enumerate for you all the milestones along the way they would use to measure progress. So, if their project was, say, to build a new plant scheduled to begin production in five years, these managers could describe in great detail what they wanted to have accomplished in one year, three years, or any other point in the process. They could tell you the obstacles they anticipated and how they planned to overcome each one. They could list the resources they would have to acquire and when they would need to have them in place. Each of these effective managers was intimately involved in the task at hand, but always with an eye toward how today’s effort contributed to the project’s success tomorrow, next week, and next year.

Effective parents are in many ways like effective managers. They are deeply involved in what is going on today in the life of their child, but are focused on the bigger picture. Ask them to define success as a parent and they paint a future portrait of their child as a responsible, functional adult shaped by their guiding and loving hand. That parent will handily describe their grown child as a young adult with the ability to make responsible decisions, manage money, and obey the law. The grown child they envision will have acquired the education needed to provide for themselves and the family they will one day have, and be living an upright, balanced, and productive life. Like the effective manager, the future-thinking parent establishes milestones for their child’s development and puts plans in place to be in a position to help their child succeed at every point in their growth.

The counterpoint to the effective parent, who is fully engaged today with an eye on the big picture tomorrow, is the parent who simply lets life happen to their child. I have seen it is not uncommon for a parent to take virtually no responsibility for their child. These slothful parents fail even to adequately feed or clothe them. There is no priority to guide or educate them, and there is no consistent effort to protect them from life’s hazards and predictable mistakes. Somehow, though, the sun rises and sets enough times in the life of that child, and they grow up. They never become all they could be, but they grow up. Their welfare and their misbehavior become a burden on society, but they grow up. Their life is set on a bent path by neglectful parents, but in spite of all that is not provided life continues to happen to them and they inevitably grow up.

Kids Grow Up Too Fast

Our purpose is to raise an adult, but not all at once.

Kids today grow up too fast. You’ve probably heard that before, likely from old guys like me who are always gassing about how things were when they were a kid. My life only spans six decades but in that time American culture has redefined itself over and over again, and with each rendition things get faster and looser. As it pertains to children, fifty years ago we lived in a society in which everyone understood there were absolutes of right and wrong, legal and illegal. Moreover, there were limits on what was appropriate and acceptable. Children were taught those limits, and each adult the child encountered in the course of their day enforced those limits. That level of adult oversight was for the child’s protection, because adults understood that kids needed to be shielded from certain knowledge until they were old enough to put it in perspective and use the knowledge responsibly.

Not so today. Kids are exposed to visual images, music, cultural influences, humor, trends, and values that they are not prepared to handle. An irresponsible media puts sex, violence, darkness, and immorality before them at an early age, and irresponsible parents allow it. Kids acquire knowledge before they have the judgment and maturity to handle it safely, and then are given permission by an “anything goes” society to act on that knowledge as though there would be no consequences.

The responsible parent shields their children from adult matters until the child has the foundational knowledge and maturity to properly utilize it. To do anything else is like giving a toddler a loaded pistol to play with and not expecting them to shoot themselves or someone else.

Life Happens In Relationships

Contrary to Paul Simon’s lyric that one can live as a rock or an island, none of us exist in isolation. All of the life that happens to us, all that we endure and experience, occurs in the context of relationships with other humans. Indeed, just as we cannot define dark except in terms of light or regard good except in terms of its counterpart evil, there is no way to understand who we are apart from the others to whom we relate.

No matter how the human experience is explained, whether through philosophy, theology, or psychology, every theory is presented through the perspective of how one gets along with others. Freud, for example, portrayed us as ego-centric in the extreme, driven by needs and appetites and selfish, primal urges. That may be true, but we cannot be all that Freud asserts we are apart from a relational connection with another human being. The same can be said for the various theories of every other philosopher, theologian, and psychologist.

We experience our very being only through the lens of relationship, and that is all the more true in the apparent absence of relationship. The infant orphan lying alone and untouched for weeks in a crib will grow up with attachment disorders that impede their ability to engage, trust, or express affection. That’s if she does not physically die from the malady known as “failure to thrive,” the apparent result of desperate loneliness. The human simply can not survive, much less thrive, apart from relationship. It follows, then, that every problem is, at its heart, a relationship problem, and every solution has to be implemented in both the individual and the troubled relationship.

Parent-Adult-Child

There is a time tested concept known as Transactional Analysis that is worth keeping in mind when considering relationships.

TA maintains that in every “transaction” between two people – that is, every exchange in which one person needs or wants something from another – each person will take on one of three roles: parent, child, or adult. A person may change roles and assume different roles in different transactions with different people. However, each person can only be in one role at a time. (Sounds like instructions for a new board game, doesn’t it?) The implication is that while relationships go along pretty smoothly when everyone is in their proper role, things can get tense when a person finds themselves in a role in which they are unable or unwilling to function, or a role that is inappropriate for the transaction at hand.

A parent, for purposes of this discussion, is someone who has responsibility for, and authority over, a child. They have been charged with the care and feeding of one who is chronologically, mentally, or emotionally younger and is not yet able to safely fend for themselves. The parent exercises his or her judgment, and their will overrides the will of the child.

A child is one who requires provision and supervision. They are, in one or more areas of their life, too immature to function reliably, responsibly, or safely. They are a work in progress, are at their heart insecure, and are always keenly focused on their own needs. Because they are people, at their core they naturally desire to have everything precisely their way and to exert their will over their own lives and the lives of others. Because so many children today grow up too quickly and are indulged to the point of being spoiled, a child might often act like an adult wanna-be with a sense of entitlement, which only exacerbates the natural desire to have things their way.

An adult is a person of mature judgment who is able to enter into a transaction with another adult. Adults have the ability to meet their responsibilities, recognize and respect proper boundaries, and exhibit good manners. They have the ability to enter into social contracts, and have the maturity to understand that a win-win outcome beats a win-lose every time. They are confident, perhaps even secure, in their own skin. They are prepared to sacrifice for the common good, and they are not dominated by pride or driven by the need to exercise power and control over others.

When each party to a transaction intuitively understands their proper role, and is comfortably functioning in that role, relationships roll along smoothly. For example, when the parent knows their rights and responsibilities and has the skills to comfortably execute that parenting role, and when the child understands and accepts their subordinate role as one under authority, there is harmony in the home. The problems come when one party to the transaction doesn’t accept their rightful role, or finds themselves in a role where they don’t belong.

Consider, for example, this illustration from the world of grown-ups. Imagine the young wife who, two years into her marriage, realizes she has come to function as a parent to her momma’s-boy husband. She resents having to rein in his irresponsible spending, hates having to nag to get him off the couch, and is just generally sick and tired of having to push him to take responsibility as she imagined a grown man would. For his part, he resents being told what to do as if he was a little boy and bristles at being held accountable. Marriages are only truly healthy when each party functions as an adult. Mismatched roles like these, where his child-like behavior forces her into the parental role, introduce a lot of tension into the relationship.

What’s the point of all this in a book on parenting? Just this: In dealing with your kids your role is always that of the parent. Your child is pre-wired to exert their will to have their own way. It is just part of the human persona, but it sets up the parent-child relationship so that it will always be a contest of wills. As you raise your child in this tug-of-war you must be the parent. You can never let the child call the shots. Certainly, you must give them enough freedom to grow and to make safe mistakes that are key to learning, but you never allow them to dictate to you how things are going to be.

Likewise, you never want to find yourself relating to your child as though you were both adults because your child is not prepared to function as an adult. You will, ideally, transition into an adult-adult relationship as your child grows into true adulthood at the appropriate age, but while they are your kid they are not your equal and you are not their buddy.

Other People Teach Us Who We Are

Life happens in relationships, and we may assume different roles in each relationship we have. The role we take is determined largely by what we think of ourselves.

It is the other people we encounter throughout our life who shape our view of ourselves. They do it by telling us, directly or indirectly, whether we are acceptable or unacceptable, sufficient or deficient, valued or despised. These other people may be the significant people in our lives, like parents and spouses, or they might be total strangers. They could have been a key player in every day we’ve been alive, or they could be a walk-on in the stage production of our lives. They do it by what they say and don’t say, and by their demeanor toward us. They do it with the compliment, the cheap shot, the hug, the rolling of the eyes, and the dismissive tone. They do it when they choose us first for basketball, and when they choose us last. It is what you experienced as a child, and you are still experiencing it as an adult. The same process is underway in the life of your child, and right now others are teaching her who she is.

Each of us receives input from others in a variety of forms, some subtle and others painfully direct. Some inputs affirm us and build us up in our own sense of ourselves, and others are put-downs that undermine our self-esteem. Some of us are severely sensitive to input in any form, and our self-esteem surges up and plunges down violently with each new cheap shot or compliment. Some small number of us, perhaps because we are self-assured, oblivious, or just don’t care what others think about us, can just let it roll off our backs.

However it is telegraphed to us, and however it is received and processed within us, other people are constantly telling us whether we measure up to some arbitrary standard they’ve defined. They are always busy telling us we are too tall or too short, too aggressive or too meek, too intense or too laid back, and on and on. The “input,” which often takes the form of criticism and fault-finding, never stops. And because ten uplifting compliments are wiped out by one cheap-shot criticism, we spend a lot of our days feeling inadequate.

The most damaging input your child can receive, the most dangerous affront to their developing sense of self, is rejection. It is a form of emotional bullying that is prevalent among girls but is seen regularly among boys beginning early in elementary school, at a time when children urgently need to feel they are acceptable enough to be included in the social groupings. It is almost a given your child will, at some point, experience the pain of being told they must go sit at another lunch table or experience the humiliation of being banished from group play. With time they won’t remember the name of the playground bully who wounded them with a word, but the pain of rejection will stay fresh in their memory for years.

In the processing of that pain, a child begins to question their own worth as a human being. It is up to you as a parent to counter that with uplifting, encouraging affirmations, and it can’t wait until the day their spirit is bruised by some anonymous little snot on the playground. Tell her today she’s beautiful, inside and out. Praise her for who she is in her character, her inner self. Tell him he’s intelligent. When he can’t remember the multiplication tables, never infer by word or tone that he is too dumb to get it. Tell him instead that you expect him to do his best and that you believe in him. When he misbehaves, make it clear he’s a great kid and you love him but his behavior has to change.

You are now, and forever will be, the most important and influential person in your child’s life. What you tell your child about their worth matters more to them than any other input they will receive. You must begin building up your child and you must begin now.

You Have Authority Over Your Child.

There are parents out there who realize they are responsible for a child’s upbringing but feel powerless to discipline, punish, or correct the child. It has simply not dawned on these parents that, because of the nature of the parent-child relationship, they already have the authority they need to carry out their responsibilities. That parent needs only to begin exercising the God-given authority they already have. As a parent locked in a contest of wills with your child you only have as much authority as you are willing to claim as your own.

Let’s look at the world of work to illustrate aspects of the parent-child relationship that may not have occurred to you.

If you’ve ever been part of an organizational hierarchy – that is, if you’ve ever worked anywhere with an organizational chart that makes it clear who is the boss of whom – you know that everyone who has a responsibility must have a degree of authority required to carry out that responsibility. When a supervisor’s authority is not sufficient to meet their responsibilities they are doomed to fail. In your workplace, for example, you know that your direct supervisor must carry the authority of their position to give direction and impose discipline if they expect to get any work out of you or your co-workers. You know that if you do not do what your supervisor tells you to do there will be consequences. Like your supervisor, to properly meet your responsibilities as a parent you must have sufficient authority to get your job done. Specifically, a parent must have the authority to give direction and impose discipline, just like the supervisor.

There is one significant point that differs from the workplace analogy, though. In the workplace, a supervisor derives his authority from some boss higher up the food chain, but in reality he only has as much clout to get things done as the people he is supervising grant him. Workers can refute the supervisor’s authority by passively undermining his efforts or by quitting the job, which is the ultimate statement of rejection of authority. Children may give you a hard time but they don’t have the luxury of taking themselves off the family org chart. Unless and until things in a family become so dangerous and dysfunctional that the courts get involved a child can’t just quit and walk away. That fact gives you an important psychological edge in the battle of wits that is child rearing.

Each Family Has An Organizational Chart

Continuing for a moment with that theme of the organizational chart from the world of work, did you realize your family has its own org chart that shows the hierarchy of authority and responsibility in your home?

Let me describe the ideal org chart for a family. It is wide and flat and shows the husband and wife together in one box, holding down the post at the top of the chart. As husband and wife their first loyalty should be to one another, and they should function as one office in the management of the household and the raising of children. Directly below the husband/wife box is a straight horizontal line containing the names of each of the children, all at the same level, and each one subordinate to the parents. Each child has direct access to the parents and doesn’t have to go through any “supervisory siblings.” Until one or more children approach adulthood in the legal, emotional, and functional sense and begin to take on some parental responsibilities (e.g. watching the younger children while Mom and Pop get away for a weekend alone), all children are on the same horizontal line. There are no boxes above that line for “Assistant to the Parents” or “Parental Liaison”.

I always ask each member of the stressed-out families who come to see me to draw the org chart for their family in a way that shows how the family really functions. I routinely find kids who draw their box level with or slightly above the parental box. Even when the kids draw their box beneath the parents it is common to find one sibling who regards their status as superior to the other kids, believing they hold a favored position with one or both parents. I sometimes find parents who draw themselves subordinate to their kids, as well. I frequently find parents who draw themselves in different boxes and at different levels, reflecting the disunity in their own relationship that interferes with consistent parenting. And I often find children who draw a dotted line to the step-parent, depicting an obvious intruder in the life of biological parent and child.

It might be an instructive exercise to ask each person in your home to draw the family org chart to see what it says about how each member perceives their place. Whatever their various charts look like, if you reasonably expect any of the rest of this book to change your family dynamic you have to begin moving your family toward the traditional hierarchy of Mom and Pop in one box together at the top and everyone else at the same level below them.

Be Consistent and Predictable

You can’t underestimate the importance of consistency and predictability in your child’s growth and development. The reason: kids crave structure.

Parents have the authority in their child’s life to set limits, define and enforce routines, establish schedules, and preserve traditions. Children can not be expected to do any of this for themselves because they do not know what is healthy and in their own best interests. Children, even while they are trying to impose their will, view the world largely from a posture of fear. Kids feel secure in their routines and become anxious and unsettled when no established routine is in place. Family meal times, bedtimes, bath times, and blocks of time set aside for homework, chores, and play should go on essentially unchanged one day to the next.

You should also be consistent and predictable in your demeanor toward your child as you provide routine direction and correction. Moreover, you should be consistent and predictable in your response to decisions as they arise in the child’s life. Your child should already know where you stand on the big issues in their life, and what choices you would make if you were in their position. They should already know how you would likely react should they make the wrong choice. They should not have to wonder whether their decision will be greeted with a shrug or a nuclear meltdown. It is always unsettling for a child when they never know for certain whether the pin is in the grenade.

We’re Off and Running

We will refer to these foundational principles in the chapters to come, but now it’s time to get into the heart of this back-to-the-basics approach to child rearing.

In the upcoming chapters I will introduce you to five pillars of parenting.

1. Expectations: what we want
2. Standards: how we want it
3. Limitations: building their box
4. Consequences: what goes around comes around
5. Values: what we teach as we parent