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We, everyone at Parent Wonder, would like to pay tribute to all the mothers.

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The sound of "eh eh eh" and pointing finger have become a very handy communication tool for my one year old son lately.

The tool is used whenever he wants YOU to:

1) carry him to go somewhere when he’s lazy to walk himself

2) pick up something (a toy, a spoon, etc) for him

3) feed him water

4) feed him by pointing to the food (I can’t pinpoint what food he hates, he eats almost everything)

5) wear shoes for him when he sees someone heads for the door

6) get a book for him to "read"

Plus many many things more…

See I told you, it’s a very useful tool. If you refuse to listen to his "instructions", you’ll soon be served with a higher volume of "eh eh eh" followed by "ahh ahhhh ahhhhhh."

My wife and I just wonder how soon he will be able to say single syllable words and render this tool obsolete.
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I admit I make the same mistake as Paris Hilton’s mother did.

One day, when my daughter came home from her kindergarten, she told me she was hit by her classmate. You can’t blame me, as a natural respond, I was angry and I asked all the questions I could ever think of to find out more about the incident.

Who the culprit was? What’s his name? Was it serious? Did it cause bodily injuries?

And the mother load: Why on earth would someone do something like that to cause pain to my lovely daughter?

Guess what, my drilling drew nothing but silence from my daughter. And something dawned on me as an afterthought. I’ll tell you in a moment.

But before that, can you see what happened here? You can’t see. Let me tell you.

What I did was I only pointed the finger at the person who hit my daughter. I already made the judgment that my daughter is innocent.

I am not saying my daughter is at fault but we as parents always assume that our child is the victim before getting to the bottom of an incident.

In a similar account, this was what happened to Paris Hilton’s mother when a judge sentenced Paris Hilton to 45 days in county jail last Friday for violating her probation.

This was the respond from her mother, Kathy Hilton, when a reporter asked what she thought of the judge’s decision:

"What do you think? This is pathetic and disgusting, a waste of taxpayer money with all this nonsense. This is a joke."

Kathy said this because it’s only natural for a mother to do everything that she could to protect her daughter – even though we know Paris has violated the law.

It was an “expected” answer. In all fairness, which mother would say that her child is wrong?

But what I realize now is that that is not always the right thing to do. Overly protecting a child would bring more harm than good to him (I know it’s not easy to do even for me).

Instead, what we should do, in our quest to protect our children from outside harm, is we must leave some space for them to grow – through personal experience.

As we all know personal experience is the best teacher. Let our children grow by allowing them have the chance to go through what they need to go through. Don’t rob of the opportunity for them to wise up by trying to protect them… or worse still you go through for them.

By encouraging our children to face a problem themselves, they would be able to tell convincingly what is good and what is bad. It’s better than a thousand times of lecture from a parent. The experience itself (including bad) is priceless and it helps them move forward in life more confidently.

And taking responsibility of one’s own action is the key to succeed in life.

You may ask aren’t parents supposed to do something when our kids run into trouble? How can we just stand there and do nothing?

It’s a fair question. We parents only step in when our child raises a red flag and needs our help. Yes, we only interfere when requested. Of course, you have to educate them to approach you for help when things really get out of hand.

With that said, I am very positive that Paris Hilton will be able to survive in jail and come out as a wiser person if she’s the one who goes to jail, not her mom.
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Most people talk about how to be a good mom. It’s kinda biased, isn’t it? But what about dads? Being a dad is not a stroll in the park either. We have an important role to play in the family as well.

Fret not, dads, if you want to be a great dad, here are 12 tips on how to be one. I want you to pay special attention to #1: quit smoking.

I just don’t understand this. If some parents know the danger of smoking by smoking outside the house, why can’t they just quit smoking altogether? Do they think by smoking away (merely out of the house) will do justice to their kids who are passive smokers?

I might sound too harsh but get real smoking parents. Your kids run higher risks of getting smoke-related disease than you if you smoke near them. Which I think you don’t want that to happen to your kids.
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It’s a good idea to remember that when your kids misbehave, they do it for a reason: Not enough attention, tired, overwhelmed, etc. When you punish them, you usually increase the chances of misbehavior again, and create a child who’s “sneakier” about getting caught.

Instead, try natural consequences: If your kids don’t pick up their room in a timely fashion at night, then there isn’t time for their story that’s read to them before bed. If your teenager doesn’t get the car home on time, then they don’t drive for a while.

The point is to connect the misbehavior with the consequence — the closer the better. If your son keeps forgetting his glove to go to baseball practice but you keep retrieving it for him, he’ll keep forgetting it!

If as a natural consequence you let him deal with it on his own, he’ll probably learn pretty fast to remember it. You’ll create kids who learn from their own misbehavior and who take more responsibility for themselves. Isn’t that what we really want for them?

(I know I’ll hear from the “punishment is good” group on this one, but you may want to save your emails — I’m not buying it!)

Ed. Note: Visit Mark’s website at www.markbrandenburg.com and his ebooks and courses.
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