Bare Bones Baby Shower

On Saturday, about 200 families participated in the third annual World’s Greatest Baby Shower at Lincoln Middle School.

Unlike typical baby showers, there were no games and no cake. Just 12 experts giving 30-minute sessions about child development and parenting in hopes of helping families to become as prepared as they can be to raise happy, healthy, well-educated children.

Though I’m sure the program is developed with the greatest of intent, I can’t help but think that educational classes designed in this manner are going to be as influential as the classes I took in school. They weren’t.

Everyone knows it’s nearly impossible to teach teens anything! Let alone try to influence them in a direction on parenting or adulthood in a way they will comprehend.

Teens always feel as though “their generation is so different” and “times have changed” in such a way that former rules and lessons don’t apply to them in the more modern world they live in.

Have any of you found a way to teach teens lessons without them having to learn them the hard way? In a way that will truly take hold and stick? Or are all your efforts purely in vein?

Tags: parenting, teens, baby shower, parenting classes