Raising Your Children when You Have Had No Positive Role Models

Raising children these days is more difficult than it has ever been. Even with the best friends and family members possible to help you along the way and to give great advice, raising children is extremely difficult.

To give you an idea of my upbringing, my mother abandoned the family when I was three and my dad was a raging alcoholic, so they were obviously no help in terms of advice or any other positive reinforcements for child rearing. The rest of my family was so busy being angry at everyone else that they didn't have time to be helpful or friendly.

When I had my daughter at the age of eighteen and my son at the age of nineteen, I was pretty much winging it. While I was pregnant, I read a lot of books and talked to a few pediatricians about kids and parenting. I watched a lot of television shows that covered topics about parenting, but there was really no way to cover everything that could possibly come up with kids.

My husband's family was pretty normal and they helped out a lot but they couldn't always be available to help me properly discipline my child's behavior or to convince them to eat their green beans when they knew there was a gallon of ice cream in the freezer that they wanted more.

Like I said, I read a lot of books and watched television shows about parenting to help me with some situations. A lot of the information was helpful, especially learning that kids will imitate their parents. I always thought of this when my first instinct was to yell or spank my kids for dumping potato chips on the floor and stepping on them to get them as small as possible. I could just picture them yelling and hitting each other whenever they had a disagreement.

Not having the greatest parents in the world also made me realize that giving hugs, kisses, and telling your kids how much they mean to you everyday is very important. My parents never did these things and so, as a result, I grew up feeling unwanted and uncared for. I did not ever want my kids to feel that way.