Print Issue: November 28, 2002

Author Rosemond Tells Parents To Take Seasonal Approach To Parenting

By Rebecca Rakoczy, Staff Writer

ATLANTA - For everything there is a season - and that includes toilet training a 2-year-old.

Quoting both Scripture and his own mother's advice, parenting guru and author John Rosemond recently spoke at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church on what he has termed common sense approaches that "grandma understood," but that have been superseded by other philosophies over time.

John Rosemond, center, is pictured with, at left, Lupe McMurray, seminar committee chairperson, and Joni Roberts, president of the IHM Home and School Association. The Home and School Association sponsored Rosemond's talk.

He was invited to speak by the IHM Home and School Association, and spent the day talking to the faculty and the evening with parents.

"Parenting is a seasonal proposition - and people who raised children in pre-modern age understood that," Rosemond told the crowd of more than 300 parents and teachers gathered in IHM Church.

He explained that the seasons in parenting include the first season, which lasts the first two years of a child's life, when the parent is basically the "servant" to the child; the second season, the leadership and authority season, when the child learns that the world does not revolve around him and learns to take direction, (which lasts until the child reaches the teen years); the third, what he calls the mentoring season, when parents cannot give a "because I said so" response to their child anymore, but must help their teen make responsible decisions; and the fourth, which is the season of friendship, when the child has grown into adulthood.

About 40 percent of all the queries Rosemond says he gets on his Web site are about toilet training. He noted that "grandma didn't wait until the terrible twos to toilet train," but rather started helping the child earlier.

He noted that many children's relationships with parents are still stuck in the 2-year-old season well into their teens. He paralleled that with some older children who refuse to obey rules later in life, those children who still have the 2-year-old's philosophy that "the rules don't apply to me," and "no one has the right to stand in my way."

Rosemond admitted he was probably one of the last of a generation that remembers when a friend could not play until he or she was done with chores.

He challenged the parents to give their younger kids confidence in their abilities by putting them to work on simple tasks, rather than worrying about their self-esteem. "A child who has worked for his mother is more confident - and that is critical before school starts," he said.

He gave the gathering the critical "Cs" to helping raise a child - consistency, communication and consequences.