I want to introduce a couple of new categories to my blog, Parenting and Old Sayings. These categories will probably become chapters in the book when I put this all together for my kids.

I first became a parent more than 30 years ago.  By the time my youngest graduates from High School I will have had a child under eighteen for more than forty years.  My parenting style is to try to talk to my children as much as they can stand it about life’s hard choices and dangerous pitfalls. Now kids are incredibly impatient with parents trying to parent them and most of them have the ability to turn you off in a matter of minutes. My strategy has always been to keep my little talks short but to be intentionally redundant.  In writing being redundant is a bad thing but I am convinced that being redundant as a parent can make the difference in a child who gets it and one that doesn’t.  I was so redundant with my oldest, Melissa, that when she was a teenager she claimed she had started numbering my old sayings and lectures.  When the situation permits I always try to add a little humor to the lesson and I have found the old saying to be a helpful tool.

For years I have said to one of my three children “there is an old saying…”  The old saying was of course intended to teach a lesson or impart some wisdom. Once they learn the old saying then I look for chances to reinforce it.  When I see one of them or another young person violating one of the old sayings, I would say, “did you forget the old saying” or ask, “that kid didn’t know the old sayings did they?”  Now that I am thinking about it, it has become something of an old saying for me to say, “They didn’t learn the old sayings did they?”

Since old sayings are a big part of my parenting style these two categories will often overlap. Some of the old sayings are not about imparting wisdom they are just fun ways to say the everyday things parents are forced to say. I got most of my sayings from my Parents and Grandparents. Not that they made them up, most have been around for generations. Some came from the Bible. A few I sort of came up with myself. When I say I came up with a saying I usually mean I found a modern way of communicating and old concept. My blog post on the old sayings and parenting stories will usually be shorter than my other post but I hope you find them entertaining.