stories

I found a wealth of parenting advice from some unlikely sources: Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy and Ralph Moody's Little Britches. The principles aren't written out with headings and subpoints, but they are there.

I noticed that the parents never berate or criticize each other in front of the kids. They talk about their differences in opinion after the kids are in bed and they aren't loud about it. The kids know the parents have been discussing it, but they seem to trust their parents judgment.

Probably the biggest chunk of parenting advice though, was this: the parents aren't afraid to let their kids do hard things and then allow them to mess up in the process.

In one chapter of Farmer Boy, Almanzo's father lets him (at the age of 10) use his new bobsled to help drag timber from the woods back to the farm. When he gets stuck and when he loads too much on his sled, his dad doesn't bail him out. Almanzo figures it out himself. James Wilder isn't absent nor oblivious, he's just a few yards away. He just doesn't meddle with the process of his son learning important life lessons .

Ralph Moody recalls a similar time in his life when his dad lets him try cowboying the neighbors milk cows. When he works their horse too hard, Charlie Moody directs his son(who is also around 10) to a more efficient way of accomplishing the same thing. Another time, when Ralph takes it upon himself to abuse their horse with a job he didn't get permission for, instead of punishing him for such, Charlie Moody directs his son to channel his 10-year-old energy to do the same job, but correctly. Plus it kept Ralph busy for nearly every waking minute he had for the next two weeks.

Yet, the parents are never portrayed as harsh or unreasonable. Oh, they aren't perfect, but they aren't hurried, distracted and rushed, even though their responsibility list in a day would shame any of us moderns.

In their day, raising children WAS a full-time responsibility, not something we pay others to handle for 8 hours daily while we parents are out doing real jobs. No, I will be the first to appreciate modern conveniences such as disposable diapers, chicken already cleaned and packaged and the variety of cleaning conveniences such as automatic washing machines and electric stoves, but I'm not sure progress involves leaving behind principles that have worked for hundreds of years in regards to our protegy.

For some reason, I can read about all kinds of principles and they slip right on through, making it impossible for me to implement them in everyday life. But a story, well, somehow that sticks and I can conjure up the story with the principle when I need some parenting direction.