15 – Parenting Challenge - Language
A society is a giant, complex organization that, if properly arranged, will satisfy the physical and psychological needs of a large percentage of the citizens. Mark’s videos and his identification of a need for better parenting, indicates some of our people are seriously lacking in these capabilities.
Better parenting successes will improve our overall well-being. Some of this has already been discussed in Messages Eight and Ten.
This message discusses childhood intellectual and physical development relating to language. Common parenting challenges in these areas can be easily observed in everyday life.
After birth, development of word understandings and talking is usually a two-year, frustrating effort for babies. Most babies spend about nine months in a warm, comfortable environment. While experiencing physical and psychological trauma, the baby is ejected out into a cold, unknown, mysterious, bright-light environment with several big humans making strange noises. “WTF!? I cannot understand the noises; I do not know how they are making them! I cannot get back into the warm, comfortable place I liked so much! And then some idiot turns me upside down and whacks my bottom! TMTH!!!”
A baby’s first emotions at birth are great fear and frustration. These negative feelings must be overcome with warmth and love. Unconditional love is the first order of successful parenting, childhood development, and civilization.
The second and third order of successful parenting is understanding and patience. Babies and children slowly develop different capabilities at different times. They are not small, intellectually and physically grown adults.
Parents must view their babies and children as small researchers, striving to understand and develop capabilities to take part in the adult world. They experience fear and frustration every step of the way. A major part of their efforts involves studying and copying adult behaviors. Love, understanding, guidance, and positive support provide the lubrication for their progress.
It is possible babies start to understand language meanings before they have the physical capabilities to say words. Watch what happens when a baby is held on a parent’s lap. Using hands, the baby will physically explore the adult’s face, attempting to understand how the bones and muscles move to form the words. A child’s “babblings” are exploratory research attempts at practical application of concepts learned. A child’s “babblings” are also exercises for physical development. A child’s physical capabilities to talk develop slowly. Rudimentary physical attempts to communicate, thoughts and desires formed in the mind, creates great frustration and unhappiness that can result in tears and crying.
Parents must be understanding and patient in viewing the child’s learning efforts. Punishing a child doing normal things hampers future learning. It is not helpful to label a child as “bad” when the little researcher is studying and experimenting. Too much of this will result in a child that is unwilling to do anything different, a child whose growth and development is stunted by rejection and withdrawal of love by parents. 8/3/2025

You are a very profound person and thinker. It’s sad to think how many babies are born to people who don’t seem to know what to do with them or how to raise them. I’ve been an educator for 25 years so I’ve been around a lot of students who range in age but I mostly taught young teens, most of my students were from other countries learning English but I also taught Spanish. My International students were very different usually quite respectful, patient with the learning process and well behaved. The difference is that most of my international students (primarily Guatemalan) lived in households or towns with their extended families close by. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and lots of cousins plus their siblings so lots of people around to give guidance on how to care for a child. Additionally, small communities and churches were one of the places where families socialized beyond the all important markets for food, clothing, etc. This attention on children made them quite self aware and they knew they needed to help support the family and understood the expectations that were placed on them to be responsible and not overly ego driven. Of course the Central American culture is more about the collective instead of the rugged self reliance and independence of the US culture. Ultimately the breakdown of the family has a number of variables related to parents who have little to no support from extended family often due to needing to relocate for work purposes. Usually both parents need to work and aren’t around or available due to the financial strains and stressors put upon them so they don’t really raise their kids but hope that schools and after school programs or extracurricular activities will fill the void, often sports or maybe work as they get older. The one area that bothers me the most is when I see and hear children being mistreated at grocery stores cause I always think how much worse it must be at home. The parents can see how tired the child is but react so inappropriately to their being tired and are surprised when they behave badly out of needing a nap. This is another example of the parent not having support so they have to drag children on errand runs and run them ragged.