Mum and Dad, Please Listen to Me
A Little Book Filled with Big Thoughts for Parents
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People say that parenting is the hardest job in the world. I agree; it can be. But I believe that with the right approach, we can make parenting easier and more effective. When my son was born, I asked myself, “How much time should I spend actively raising my child?” To find the answer to this question, I read books about children’s psychological development. I recalled details of how my parents brought me up, and I practised some skills recommended by parenting experts.
Parenting is a job, just as our chosen career is, and it must be taken just as seriously. As an English teacher, I needed to prepare lesson plans, and I spent hours in doing so. Before the school year began, I needed to have very clear expectations about what I wanted my students to accomplish throughout the whole term, as well as in each forty-five-minute class. When I was with my students, I communicated effectively, choosing the right language to make the class interactive and fun. I thought laterally, instilling character and values through the texts, stories, and films I chose, not just through my own words to the class.
True teaching is not lecturing. It is an interactive exchange that inspires students’ minds and souls and influences them to want to become decent citizens. The same applies to parenting.
To raise children, parents should have a vision. I do not remember everything my mother said to me, but some sentences I will never forget. One of them was this: “I am raising you for society.” I firmly believe we live and work not only for self-survival but to help build a better society. If all parents raised their children to become good adult citizens, our society would have far fewer troubles and problems. Children raised this way find it much easier to fit in and contribute to society. The world is changing; we are changing. Through our own lives and the way we shape those of our children, we should make sure this is a change for the better.
“Blueprint of Love” is a picture I drew years ago. It is a simple visual expression of my approach to parenting: that our job as parents is to help lay the foundations that our children need to possess. Once these foundations are in place, they have far less chance of going wrong in life, no matter how rapidly the world changes or how much its pace increases.
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About the Book
Adults sometimes think children are too young to understand much of the world. Yet research tells us that a child’s brain and cognitive development is far beyond that which most parents imagine. If parents really listen to their children, they can come to understand them better and in turn would have an easier and more enjoyable parenting experience.
Children expect parents to love them in the right way and give them ‘sunshine’. But how does that work in practice? In Mum and Dad, Please Listen to Me, teacher and parent Jenny McFall translates the combination of the essential elements of child psychological and social development and character education into a simple manual for every day use. Jenny covers the 50 most common challenges that parents are likely to encounter and the way to achieve positive outcomes and hands-on daily tasks to develop children’s sense of responsibility and independence.
Mum and Dad, Please Listen to Me shows you how to give your children the keys to put them on the path to a happy and more successful adulthood.
About the Author
Jenny McFall earned a BA in English literature. She taught English in China for ten years, where she implemented values education in her class. She is also the author of My First Parenting Book, published by Joint Publishing in Chinese in 2013. She and her husband, David, live in Australia with their children.