Parenting Lessons Learned from Dog Training

To some people it may seem ridiculous to compare training dogs to raising children. But, I've actually come to see many similarities between successful dog training and effective parenting. I started thinking about this one day while I was shopping. There was a woman in the store who continually (and mostly unsuccessfully) called to her very young daughter: "Jennifer ... Jenny ...Jennifer ...Jennifer...Jen..." After about 15 minutes of hearing this I wanted to (among other things) tell her, "Please stop calling her. Jenny clearly doesn't respond to hearing her name called. She may not even understand what you want. What you're doing isn't working. Try something else." Of course I decided against saying this. - -But it made me think - and I realized that I had made this same mistake when I was young and inexperienced. It's an easy mistake to make.