JOB OFFER:
I am looking for someone for the position of a parent.
 
EXPECTATIONS:
§ round-the-clock availability, at least for the first six years of work
§ no days off and doctor’s excuses
§ immense stress immunity
 
ASCOPE OF RESPONSIBILITIES:
 
§ cooking
§ washing
§ teaching
§ advising
§ nursing
 
WAGE: none
 
 Would you be tempted to apply? No way. Surely, there is no way. Yet….
 
Truth is that parent’s role has been presented here in a very dramatic way. Everyone knows that parenthood let us, parents, experience unique and unrepeatable moments. The number of the moments depends on us, on our psychological and living maturity. 

When a child appears in our life, we face various fears and fight with many thoughts. We would like our child to be healthy, happy, to develop at least with the book norms, and it would be excellent if the development would exceed the average.

Stress appears when a child does not meet our expectations is not who we want it to be. The baby does not behave in a way we expect it. It is hard to handle the situation and even more difficult to face it. If financial problems are another bonus to the situation, limitation of parents’ social life, the balance can indicate the loss. That is why in addition to parental intuition we need a knowledge on, inter alia, how to create optimum environment to stimulate child’s development, how to read and satisfy our baby’s needs. We should also be aware of the things that are between parents and children’s needs as well as how to communicate in a family.

We could write a book on each of the aforesaid mentioned subjects. However, I will try to have a closer look to them.
 

When a new resident appears, everything already waits for him, i.e. a bed, baby bath, rattles. Based on our child’s age we satisfy its needs, and thanks to it we relieve us of baby’s importunity.

For a pre-school baby it is not enough just to be at home with mum or grandma. Baby needs a contact with his peers in order to play with them and act certain roles while playing at Indians, at home or keeping a store. These games are for our baby a school of life. The pre-school pupils exchange the norms of behaviour valid in their environment, they develop their social skills.
 
We need to realise that if we delay our children’s contact with the peers, we will deprive him of optimum social life, and we will be forced to play games which do not interest us that much.
 
Children’s needs at school age change all the time and new once appear. Time of going to school forces parents to full mobilization. And this is true, the baby needs us very much. We should help him to adapt to the new environment, create a sense of duty, sense of being systematic, independent, we should help him to discover the ways of dealing with stressful situations.

We need to realise that it is period of most effective learning process, which determines further educational career and they way other children accept him at school. In this case, meeting child’s physical needs is not a problem, the thing looks a bit worse when it comes to mental needs.

The basis for achieving success is clear and not disturbed communication with his parents – need for being safe. Even the most loved parents can evoke frustration and fear, not being aware of it, by saying things like ‘if you won’t eat, a pauper will come and take you away,’ or ‘if you won’t leave me alone I will leave and won’t be back for a long time.’ A person deprived of safety starts looking at the world from the angle of fears, and as a result performs worse than it would in a normal situation. 

Communication is essential skill in educational process.  When we hug our baby, when we ask it to do certain things, when we praise it or criticize its behaviour, we use our communication skills. Our reaction is a sign which tells a baby about a degree to which we accept it. If it has a problem, which is revealed to us, and we will tell him he deserves it, then we won’t achieve anything but anger, avoiding discussion. However, if we listen carefully, we describe our feelings (It was surely hard for you), we accept it and express his feelings (if I were your friend you could always count on me.)

After this kind of discussions, a child knows that his feelings are accepted. When it happens, children realise what they feel and at some point they are able to find the solution to their problems.

When we talk it is essential that we define the problems to which solving depends on us. We will not get any result by using expressions including order (don’t interrupt, when I talk), humiliation (how could you do it, you are awful) or irony and ridicule (we will wait few more days and we will take you away to the zoo.) All the above mentioned comments refer to a child, never to parent.   
 
 In his book “Parent Effectiveness Training”, T. Gordon describes how we should communicate with children in order to improve significantly our relationship and atmosphere at home.   
 
The writer suggests that we should tell about our feelings to children or particular results caused by child’s behaviour (I have a problem with preparing this documents, when it is so loud). This kind of information informs children about the following:

-          their bad behaviour (when I come back from work, and I see so terrible mess, I am very sorry)
-          certain results of such behaviour (I need to spend a lot of time on cleaning the floor, instead of playing ball with you)
-          parent’s feelings (I am tired, and not, you are annoying!)
 
To end, I would just like to mention, that parents’ behaviour is a sign for the baby how much it is accepted. Often criticised children think they are not valuable which results in unsuccessful actions.

To sum up, we cannot forget to praise our children as often as possible in an indirect manner (It is so good to come back to clean home after such a long day). Observing these communication rules requires from us to imagine ourselves in that particular situation, analyze the cause of failure and skilfully react. The work is hard, but worthwhile. The reward will be pleasant atmosphere encouraging a baby to copy and follow values taught by the parents.

Bringing up a child requires optimism and faith in family and ourselves, as we will not achieve a single thing without taking a risk.