Once a child’s behavior becomes a habit, the child feels entitled to always live that lifestyle.
Who is in charge of a child’s diet creating lifestyle habits?
The answer should be “parents” but in the US, it is normal for the child to make these decisions leading to children eating unhealthy food, watching TV, playing video games or social networking on Facebook for about 10 hours a day.
Unfortunately, statistics show the average American parent is doing a lousy job. One exception may be the Asian-American community, which includes Chinese and Japanese.
The definition for average says, a statistic describing the location of a distribution; “it set the norm for American homes”, which means this is the largest segment of parents in the country.
This is what parenting is measured against and if you don’t parent like this, you are not considered normal by American standards—a form of peer pressure.
That normal American parent also protects the child from experiencing failure since failure hurts self-esteem.
Life Span reports, “The Japanese still live longer than anyone else…. The Japanese said their long lives was due to moderation in eating and drinking. Other advice was early to bed and early to rise, religious faith and hard work.”
However, in the US, the “average”, normal American parent is obsessed with the child’s self-esteem and is more concerned with the child having fun and telling the child to follow his or her dreams.
Did you know that about 40,000 young Americans migrate to Hollywood, California every year dreaming of becoming the next super star but less than one percent will actually land an acting role with no guarantee of fame, fortune or winning an Oscar?
President Barack Obama is the 44th president of the US since 1789 when George Washington was sworn in as the first American President. What are the odds that any child will become a president?
Individuals that achieve his or her dreams are in the minority — a very small minority.
When children dream such dreams, it is up to the parent to teach the child reality.
To be continued on April 16, 2011 in Part 3 or start with Part 1
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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