The Olde World: Raising Children in the Modern World

With Reg Bartley

Reginald J. Bartley� is a world famous public speaker and has been making sandwiches for community television crews for three weeks. His middle name is Controversy (and/or Steve)

I, like many of my fellow writers and words-people, have touched many young children over the years with our books. But no matter what we as authors can offer to children, nothing can surpass the knowledge passed on by a mother, father or third uncle (if you hail from Texas).

It's a strenuous and/or time-consuming job raising kids. Not everyone is capable of doing it. Sometimes the strain of a loveless marriage can put looking after the kids in the low priority sector of ones life. An inability to discipline, troubles with your own up-bringing or the fact that you have been arrested on several occasions for bar fights and your name is Steve...but I digress.

In the last self-help book I published prior to my last pilgrimage to India, which I don't suggest anyone do unless you enjoy various types of bowel infections eating away at your insides, I wrote of the troubles of raising children in the modern world titled REG BARTLEY: TOUCHING KIDS IN THE MODERN AGE. Having written it in 1912, I feel that perhaps it was time to release a new addition, due in part to the new techniques available to the world and also due to the decreasing use of the word pumpernickel. 

Step One - Trust, Give, Receive

Your children will never respect you if they can not trust you. You cannot receive their love unless you are willing to give them the love and attention they seek in their earlier years. I would like to quote popular musician Benny Goodman, however as he was a clarinetist quoting him would be nothing more than a series of musical notes and irrelevant to this particular article.

Step Five - Show Them You Are Vulnerable

While most children look to their parents for strength, it is often a good idea to reveal slight and/or subtle amounts of vulnerability to your children. That way, when they grow older, they will be more open to venting their fears and anger as opposed to a constant repression of anxieties and memories. My father often cried and wore dresses, and I turned out just fine.

Step Green - Understand Their Fears

Most children are incredibly perceptive, they just lack the vocabulary and confidence to express themselves, and sometimes they find it hard discussing their fears. The biggest fear among kids in today's modern world is that they will one day grow old and become their parents - jaded, cynical, empty husks whose work destroys the Earth and with no thought given to their surroundings, and how they may indeed be causing their faces to grimace. Clowns kind of freak them out too.

Step Two - When In Doubt, Use Gifts!

If you have followed the previous nine steps and are still a less than adequate and/or abysmal parent, do what countless generations of mothers and fathers have done in times gone by, and swap love for money - spend up big! If you can't fill a child's emotional void, at least have the decency to buy them an i-pod.

So there you go fellow bushwhackers. By following my guide to touching kids in the new millennium and not the old one, which I have previously written about in my book REG BARTELY: GUIDE TO TOUCHING KIDS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM NOT THE OLD ONE WHICH WAS PREVIOUSLY WRITTEN ABOUT, which was a best-seller in Belarus during the 1950s, you too could be on your way to a nomination for Mother of the Year or at the very least, receiving one of those flimsy badges that say "World's Best Dad".

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Reg Bartley now has his own ARCHIVE! Revisit all of his adventures within THE OLDE WORLD.