Scouts View of Atticus Parenting Skills in To Kill a Mockingbird :: essays research papers

Atticus, my father, is a good parent, because he respects children, teaches us about open-mindedness, and maintains closeness and trust with us. This quote briefly tells us about it, 'Jem and I found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.' Atticus treats Jem and me with respect. I remember the time I asked Uncle Jack what a whore-lady was, but he gave me a vague answer about Lord Melbourne, which I didn't really understand him. However, Atticus said, ?Jack! When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness? sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion of quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ?em.? This shows how he respects children?s rights to get a decent answer like how adults answer each other with decent answers in order for each other to understand, and that adults should answer to children by telling them enough information for them to at least understand, not just give them a indistinct answer and let the child just believe it for the rest of their lives until they grow old and finally find out the real answer. Atticus teaches us many kinds of ideas including things like, how racial slurs are bad, how not to be racist, and makes sure that we don?t get influenced by Maycomb?s prejudice. He is the adult character least affected by prejudice in the society. We can tell this through his having no problem with Jem and me attending Calpurnia?s church, or with a black woman raising us, and he demolishes the use of racial slurs. He tells us, ?As you grow older, you?ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don?t you forget it?whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.? He teaches us about the real world, and hinting that we shouldn?t be worthless people who only think from their own side, and hold prejudice against the blacks, or just anything. I trust the advice Atticus gives me. ?As Atticus once advised me to do, I tried to climb into Jem's skin and walk around in it: if I had gone alone to the Radley Place at two in the morning, my funeral would have been held the next afternoon.