Children Are from Heaven: Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children

HOW PARENTS AFFECT THEIR CHILDREN

To be successful in life, an adult pulls from a variety of inner resources. These resources are love, wisdom, power, confidence, integrity, morality, creativity, intelligence, patience, and respect, to name a few. The sum of all these resources is a person’s unique perspective or consciousness. An adult decision or reaction to a situation is based on the adult’s consciousness.

When children feel an inner connection to their parents, they are able to benefit from their parents’ consciousness. When children feel connected, they are in a sense plugged into their parents, and the light of their parents’ consciousness affects everything the child says and does.

This parental consciousness gives children the security and confidence to be themselves and the ability to self-correct after making a mistake. As long as children feel connected, they automatically self-correct without long lectures or the threat of punishment. With the benefit of their parents’ consciousness, children will automatically self-correct through trial and error.

Just being in the presence of an adult gives children the extra consciousness to behave harmoniously and creatively.

Children always learn most effectively in the presence or under the supervision of a parent or teacher. The more connected children are, the more they are able to benefit from that supervision.

COPING WITH NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

Children can express and then release negative emotions because of the reassuring presence of their parents’ consciousness. Children, before the age of nine, cannot reason, but with the support of an empathetic parent they can benefit from their parent’s ability to reason and then release negative emotions.

Crying in the arms of a loving parent automatically heals the pain of a frightened child.

Crying alone with no one listening or caring reinforces a sense of abandonment, and the fear is not released. Children live in an eternal now. Without the ability to reason, they are constantly misinterpreting reality.

When someone is mean, children assume the person will always be mean. If someone is loved more, then that person will always be loved more. If on the news someone is robbed, then a child concludes that he could easily be next.

He cannot comprehend that he is safer because his house has locks on its doors. That conclusion requires logical thinking.

He can feel safer if mommy or daddy hears his fear and then reassures him.

When looking for a good school for my children, I remember a comment made by another parent, who said, “It doesn’t really matter what kind of teachers or kids there are at school. A kid’s got to learn sometime that it’s a jungle out there. It’s better they learn now what they are going to deal with rather than later.” Although this might sound compassionate and streetwise, it is not.

Children should be protected from the negativity of the world as much as possible until they have the brain capacity to interpret that reality correctly. When the body is developing in the womb, it requires the protection and support of the mother’s body. Likewise, for the next nine years, children need protection from the negativity of the world. You don’t prepare your children for a bad experience by giving them a bad experience.

A child is like a little seed sprouting which needs protection from harsh weather until it has a chance to be stronger.

Children need to be protected from a bad teacher, a rough crowd at school, evening news, etc. Loving parents and family, supportive friends, and teachers provide the ideal womb for a developing child.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITIVE ABILITIES

Cognitive abilities develop much later in children. It takes nine years for their brains to develop the capacity for the logical interpretation of reality. Ideally, children should be protected from the harsh realities and negativity of the world until about nine years old. It is not until age fourteen that a child can consistently think abstractly, understand or propose hypothetical situations, reason logically on their own, and look at issues from another’s point of view. A few years earlier preteens may have the beginnings of these cognitive abilities, but they have not yet fully developed.

Without these cognitive abilities, children experience the world very differently.

As adults, we have forgotten what it is like to view the world without these mental abilities. From children’s perspective, the world is a big place that can be upsetting, confusing, and create a lot of anxiety. The world today is even more negative and invasive than in previous generations.

With technological advances in communication, children are being bombarded with negative information and stimulation all the time.

When a child is kidnapped, raped, or murdered in another state or country, the story is in your face wherever you turn. It is on TV, in the news, in magazines, on the radio and the Internet. When this news is brought into the home, from your children’s perspective it is as if the tragedy happened next door and could easily happen to them. Too much exposure to the abuse and misfortune in the news numbs children’s natural sensitivity and weakens their feeling of connection to parental control.

Children in the past were never forced to face and deal with so many painful and negative realities of the real world.

Even adults have difficulty dealing with too much news about the real world. Adults at least have brain capacity to interpret world events more correctly — children do not.

Whatever parents can do to protect their children from this intrusion will assist their children in feeling safe, confident, secure, and protected.

CHILDREN’S NEED FOR REASSURANCE

Before the development of logical thinking, children need lots of reassurance that everything is okay. Without the ability to reason or apply logic, children form incorrect beliefs and conclusions. Here are some examples:

When children don’t feel loved, they conclude that they will never be loved.

If something is lost, a child believes it may never be found or be replaced.

If children can’t have a cookie now, they think they will never get a cookie.

This insight helps parents understand why children have such strong emotional reactions.

When parents go away, children may conclude that they will never come back. Reasons cannot reassure children, but listening can. An empathetic response to children’s tender feelings communicates a reassuring message, even though they cannot yet reason on their own.

The parents know they will be back and that everything is okay. This knowing is conveyed directly from the consciousness of a parent when she calmly and lovingly listens and reassures the child that everything is okay. By feeling connected, the child gains the benefit of the parent’s life experience and consciousness.

CHILDREN HAVE A DIFFERENT MEMORY

Until about the age of nine, children have a different kind of memory. They can remember words, thoughts, and concrete actions. Since they have not yet developed logical thinking, they live more in the moment. It is unrealistic to ask a child younger than nine to remember to bring his lunch box or to put something away. He can learn to do these behaviors by repeated guidance and repetition, but should not be expected just to remember because it makes sense.

A mother mistakenly explains, “If you forget your lunch, then you will go hungry at school.” A child cannot comprehend this reason or even think reasonably about her future.

The best a parent can do is simply ask, “Would you please get your lunch box?” or “Would you please put that away?”

To expect too much from a child just reinforces a feeling that the parent is out of control and that the child is bad for being resistant or inadequate in some way. Neither of these conclusions is correct. The child is simply not ready to remember things because they make sense or are reasonable.

It is wounding to a child when a parent gets frustrated and says, “How could you forget?” The truth is, the child didn’t forget, because he couldn’t remember in first place. If anyone forgot, it is the parent, not knowing what to expect from children younger than nine years old.

COPING WITH INCREASED WILL

When wanting more, strong-willed children can eventually accept what is possible and what is not, because their parents have already learned to accept. The child benefits from the parents’ experience that you may not always get what you want right away, but, if you don’t give up, you will eventually get what you need. When children experience the pain of loss, delay, or disappointment, but feel understood, they connect with the maturity or expanded consciousness of the parent who is listening.

Strong-willed children will throw tantrums, but they will also gradually become more cooperative. Resistant children come back to their inner willingness to cooperate with their parents, because resistance itself creates the friction necessary to increase their feeling of connection. Children need to resist their parents from time to time in order to feel their connection. When they feel their connection once again, they are suddenly open and receptive to their parents’ leadership and guidance. This new insight changes the way we view children’s negative behaviors or attitudes.

When children are unruly or uncooperative, they are not bad — they are just out of control. They do not need punishment or to feel in order to self-correct or become more disciplined.

Instead, they just need to come back into control. Whose control? Their parents’ control. When parents apply the five skills of positive parenting, their children are once again back in control and happy to accommodate and cooperate.

With positive parenting, children are not just being controlled, they are being given the ability to feel that control.

This is why positive parenting was not discovered before.

Children in previous generations were not yet born sensitive enough to feel their parents’ control. Without the ability to feel, children would not respond to positive parenting.

Today, because a shift has taken place in the collective consciousness, these skills work for all children and teens, even if they were not raised with them. Children and teens of all ages will begin to respond right away.

Other more common, permissive parenting approaches have failed because they were not complete. It is not enough simply to let your children be and do whatever they want.

To give children greater freedom, parents must provide strong leadership. By learning to balance increasing freedom with greater control, the skills of positive parenting are successful.

BALANCING FREEDOM AND CONTROL

By nurturing the feeling connection between parent and child, positive parenting provides a balance of freedom and control. Children experience the freedom to be unique and different, but also feel the strong need to imitate and learn from the parent. The freedom to resist actually strengthens children’s sense of self, while simultaneously connecting them to the parents’ will and consciousness.

The permission to say no helps children to identify their own desires, but, ultimately it strengthens their deepest desire to cooperate and gain the love and support of the parent. Without feeling awareness of their connection to their parents, children quickly forget their primal desire to cooperate. By using the five skills of positive parenting, the connection between parent and child is reestablished and once again the child is cooperative.

The permission to say no and want more creates strong negative emotions when more is not achieved. The expression of these strong emotions not only gives children the opportunity to learn how to manage negative emotions, but also increases children’s ability to look within or feel. By making it okay to express negative emotions, a feeling awareness is generated that is necessary to connect child to parent.

Feeling awareness helps children identify their inner needs. With greater feeling, children are more aware of the need for their parents’ love and guidance. Automatically, their willingness to cooperate and learn from their parents is activated. Rather than being shamed or punished, these children automatically self-correct with the benefit of their parents’ innate consciousness of what is right or wrong, good or bad, smart or stupid. Although children don’t directly know what their parents know, they are able to benefit from their knowledge and other resources to self-correct and to make needed adjustments.

Each of these five messages of freedom is counterbalanced with respect. It is okay to resist, but clearly mom and dad are in charge. The five freedoms cannot work unless parents maintain strong leadership. To give children freedom without authority is a kind of permissive abuse.

Children need their parents to be in control. Using the love-based skills of positive parenting makes this possible.

TWO PROBLEMS OF LOSING CONTROL

When children disconnect from their inner willingness to cooperate with their parents’ control, two very significant problems arise. They either act out or internalize the inner pain and turmoil of being out of their parents’ control.

Although some children will do both or alternate back and forth, generally speaking boys act out and girls internalize.

To the extent that children don’t get the support they need through parental control, they will continue to display some of the symptoms of being out of control.

Boys particularly become unruly and resistant to authority and misbehave. Without the support of family and parents, they become overly dependent on peers for leadership. One bad apple can ruin the whole barrel: A good kid is easily influenced by others who are not so good. When preteens and teens are disconnected from their parents, they are at greater risk of being “ruined” by peers who are even more out of control.

When out of parental control, boys tend to lose their ability to maintain their focus. They become hyperactive, which leads to increasing individual or gang-related aggression, violence, substance abuse, nonrelational sex, meanness, and cruelty. As parental control weakens, grades go down and school and family-related activities diminish. Cut off from parental control, boys are unable to develop their true potential.

Though girls may experience some of these same problems, they tend to internalize the inevitable confusion and pain of being cut off from parental support. Girls particularly lose their confidence and their self-esteem drops. Instead of looking to their parents for support, some turn to boys and inappropriately use their sexuality as a way to get attention and feel special.

While boys become hyperactive and unable to focus or discipline themselves, girls tend to focus too much on their inadequacies and shortcomings. This leads to negative self-talk, over-gossiping, weight issues, petty meanness to other girls, poor self-image, teen pregnancies, suicidal tendencies, involvement in abusive relationships, drug addiction, and depression. Disconnected from the support they need from parents, girls are unable to develop their true potential.

THE NINE-YEAR STAGES OF MATURITY

Children need to move through three nine-year stages of maturity to become healthy and successful adults. For the first nine years, children develop best through growing in trust while being completely dependent. In the second nine years (ages nine to eighteen) preteens and teens develop by learning to trust themselves and by becoming increasingly independent. In the third stage of maturing (ages eighteen to twenty-seven), the young adult develops by becoming autonomous.

During the first stage, parents’ challenge is to be completely responsible for the child. In the second stage, the parents’ challenge is to maintain a sense of control, but to give a preteen and teen increasing freedom and independence. The process of letting go of control is gradual. Children cannot learn to trust themselves unless we give them the opportunity to be more responsible. Preteens and teens need increasing freedom to develop a healthy sense of responsibility. Just as in the earlier stage, parents should not expect perfection; children make mistakes at all ages.

In the third stage (ages eighteen to twenty-seven) parents need to back off and let go of being responsible for their children. Parents still hold the important role of being supportive in any way they can. This support is primarily determined by what the child requests and believes she needs and not what the parent thinks the child needs. For example, it is fine to give advice, lodging, or money if she is wanting or asking for it.

A loving parent needs to stop worrying about their adult child and instead admire his efforts to succeed. To worry about an adult just gives the message that you believe something is wrong with him or you don’t trust him. Well-meaning parents wanting to make up for their past mistakes make matters worse by offering unsolicited help after a child is eighteen.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY

During the first stage, children are completely dependent on the support of parents for direction. Without complete parental control, they are forced to grow up too quickly and miss certain aspects of development. Learning to trust and depend on others is the basis of gradually being able to trust ourselves.

You could never learn to walk a tightrope if you had to practice high in the air without a safety net. In the beginning, you learn to walk close to the ground. Then you raise the rope, but have a safety net below. Without the security of knowing you can fall, it is impossible to learn a new skill.

Knowing that you can depend on others and you deserve their support is a strong foundation for eventually developing independence and autonomy.

In the first stage, unless parents give clear messages that they are in control, children automatically assume too much responsibility. Children do not have the brain development to reason or look at issues from another’s point of view.

When they are loved, they assume it is because they are lovable. They assume responsibility. They believe they make others love them. When children are unloved, they assume they are unlovable and that they make others not love them.

Children are egocentric. The world revolves around them. When good things happen, they assume they make good things happen. When bad things happen, they assume they are responsible for those things as well. Unable to reason or look at issues from another point of view, they mistakenly assume too much responsibility.

For example, when a parent is in a bad mood, a child cannot comprehend that other things may be responsible for that parent’s bad mood. The child immediately assumes that he or she is responsible. This tendency to assume too much responsibility can be corrected if the parent takes responsibility for his bad mood.

Even if the parent is nice to the child, unless she is doing something to nurture her own bad mood, the child will feel responsible. If the parent gets upset with the child, it makes matters even worse. The child feels even more responsible and concludes he is bad and unworthy. When parents lash out at their children, they need eventually to come back and apologize. Otherwise, children develop the belief that they are somehow responsible whenever their parents yell, argue, or fight.

When parents argue, they should always do it in another room; otherwise, their children assume too much guilt.

Ideally, parents should have good communication skills so they don’t have to fight. If they do fight, they should do it quietly and in another room or location. When children even witness mistreatment of others, they will assume responsibility. Besides needing their parents to control them, children need their parents to be in control of themselves.

UNDERSTANDING THE GENERATION LINE

Parents and children are a generation apart. This gap must always be respected. Parents are above the generation line and children are below. To be above the line means to be responsible and in control. To be below the line means to be dependent on and in the control of the parent above the line.

When parents are calm, cool, collected, loving, peaceful, understanding, respectful, compassionate, and cooperative, they are in control of themselves and above the line. When children are dependent on their parents for control, they are below the line. Below the line children get to be children.

With parents above the line, they have an opportunity to benefit from their parents’ resources and consciousness.

With parents on top, children have an opportunity to develop all the necessary skills of growing up. Children are born with the potential to respect others, cooperate, forgive, self-correct, share, love, persist, and adapt, but they need the guidance and support of someone who has already learned these skills. When parents are above the line and children are below the line, they automatically draw upon their parents’ consciousness as a resource.

When parents behave in irresponsible ways, either to each other, the world, or to their children, then their children cannot draw on their support. When parents are no longer in control and behave like children, they move below the line. When parents move below the line, then children move up above the line and become more responsible.

This is why yelling and screaming at your kids can make them jump back into control. When parents yell and scream, spank, hit, or punish, it is often when the parent has lost control and is now behaving like a child out of control.

When the parent moves below the generation line by behaving like a child, the child goes up above the line and temporarily behaves more like a responsible adult. Although the child stops what he was doing, he is now on his own without the support of a parent in control.

If mom or dad is going out of control, then a child is left on her own and suddenly goes into survival mode. The problem with this survival mode is that she is forced to grow up too soon. Without a parent, she has to become her own parent. In this process of growing up too quickly, children suppress aspects of who they are and of their development.

When parents go out of control, children quickly go back into control, but not in a healthy manner. Instead of learning to manage negative emotions and demanding desires, they cope by suppressing them.

This is similar to what happens when children are neglected or abandoned. For example, when a teen leaves home at age twelve, certain parts of who he is never get a chance to develop. He may be able to function like an adult, but certain skills like healthy emotional management or the ability to be dependent on others and ask for help are not developed. He may be very loving, but has greater difficulty being intimate or making a lasting commitment. This doesn’t mean he can’t function in life — it just means that something will be missing.

To give our children a chance to develop fully, they need eighteen years to be below the generation line. They need to feel that their parents are in control. They need to feel that they can depend on us to be there for them and that they don’t have to be there for us.

DIVORCE AND THE GENERATION LINE

When parents get divorced, it also affects the generation line. In the absence of one parent, a child will often rise up above the generation line to comfort and nurture the wounded parent. It takes two parents above the line to raise a family of children below the line. When one parent is absent because of separation, divorce, or simply neglect, then children below the line will tend to rise up and replace the missing parent.

In addition, when a parent mistakenly looks to a child for emotional support and nurturing, the child rises above the generation line. When a parent needs emotional support, she should instead look to another adult who is above the generation line. It is unhealthy to try to get from your children the support you should be getting from another adult.

For this reason, single parents are encouraged to get a life after divorce. It is not healthy to look to your children to fill up your life. Looking primarily to your children may feel good, but your children don’t get a chance to grow up. They will grow up too quickly. They will tend to assume too much responsibility in life and then suffer from the various symptoms of guilt and unworthiness.

These are some of the symptoms of assuming too much responsibility:

Sensitive children tend to feel like victims in life and powerless to get what they want.

Responsive children often become people pleasers who deny their own wishes to accommodate others.

Receptive children become submissive, passive, and uncreative in life.

Active children become high achievers but are often disrespectful, too controlling, or abusive to others.

When parents behave responsibly and stay above the generation line, children have an opportunity to develop in a healthy manner. They still make mistakes and throw tantrums, but they develop the necessary coping skills for eventually becoming adults. Adults need to get what they need from other adults if they are to nurture their children below the generation line.

This insight frees single parents from the guilt that will often keep them from dating or pursuing a romantic love life. Although your children may resist your going out, it is still very important to go out. Your children need clear messages that you have a life separate from them and that you need others to make you feel good and nurture your needs for companionship, friendship, communication, romance, and fun. Unless you are taking action to get what you need elsewhere, your children will feel overly responsible.

CONTROLLING YOUR PRETEENS AND TEENS

Some parents will attempt to control a teen’s activities too much while others will give teens too much freedom. There is no set list of correct rules or limits for each age. It takes common sense and trial and error to determine how much freedom your child can handle and when. Setting limits about behavior is a matter strictly between the parent and child; whether it’s watching TV, time on the phone, outside school activities, language, food and diet, time for homework, curfew, dating, friends, sexual behavior, chores, finances, appearance, and manners.

Giving children increasing freedom is an organic process based on lots of communication between parents and children and with other parents and teachers regarding what they consider to be appropriate. Although preteens and teens are given much more freedom to decide what they are going to do, each of the five skills of positive parenting is still necessary to maintain control.

If a sixteen year old is out of control and fights you in a disrespectful manner, then a time out is still required. When teens talk back, they need a clear message that their behavior is unacceptable and that you want them to be more respectful. As children become more articulate, parents need to remember that they still should not back up their requests with the threat of punishment or explanations.

If your teen resists your requests, then shifting to rewarding or commanding still works best. Just give your message and give it time to sink in. Until your children leave home, they still need you to be the boss, but they don’t need punishment. With each year of maturity, they do need greater and greater freedom.

Teens, just like children, need supervision. Even if you are not physically present, just their knowing that you know where they are and what they are doing goes a long way to assisting the child in feeling connected to your control. This control is often lost when children become more independent in school. Children come home and parents ask how the day went, but children have little to say. Sometimes, before they can talk about their day, they often just need some time to forget what happened or talk with a friend on the phone about what happened. To get your teens to talk, it is essential to maintain a presence in that part of their lives.

Parents are often so busy that participating in school activities and staying connected can be very difficult. For most parents, their primary link to the school is their children, and their children are not talking. Children need their parents to be connected to school activities, and then children will more easily talk about it. Fortunately, there are new technological advances that make this connection easier.

USING THE INTERNET TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION

To maintain a better connection with their children’s school life and activities, parents can now use the Internet. More and more schools are using new free software to connect schools with parents at home. On the Internet parents can now access their children’s current grades, daily academic focus, events, projects, homework, and progress reports, as well as e-mail teachers and even connect with other parents. A convenient personal calendar of your child’s school and after-school activities, and a family calendar, including the activities of all your children is also included. If your school is not already using it, then ask your school administrators to begin. This new system is free and available now to parents and schools.

Within a few minutes of logging on to the Internet, parents can become instantly informed with what their child is doing at school. With the click of a mouse, parents can send an e-mail message or ask a question to every other parent.

To find out more about this software, provided free by Achieve Communications, just go online to their Internet site at www.achieve.com.

This increased awareness facilitates much better communication between parent and child. When parents simply say, “How was your day?” they can’t really expect much of a response. But when they ask an informed, directed question, a door opens for better communication. Instead of general questions, parents can be more specific. Here are some examples:

How much progress did you make on your science fair project?

How did baseball practice go today?

How did Jessica treat you today?

How did your teacher respond to your oral report today?

I am really proud of the A you got on your math pop quiz.

Children can and will talk about their school life if parents have a greater awareness of what is going on at school.

The more parents participate in school activities and are aware of what their kids are currently studying and who they are spending time with, the more their children will open up and talk to them. An ongoing dialogue about what is going on in our children’s lives and at school is essential for staying in control and having influence over them. As parents become less influential, children become more vulnerable to the influence of other children.

Using www.achieve.com helps you connect with other parents and get an accurate reading on what they are doing with their kids. In raising my own children, it was almost impossible to get parents to meet regularly to talk about what their kids were doing and what they allowed their kids to do.

GETTING SUPPORT FROM OTHER PARENTS

As long as parents are not talking to each other, kids will have too much power. For example, they will come home saying they are the only kid who has to be home by 11 P.M., and you feel pressured to change the curfew. The reality is usually that only one parent allows a curfew of eleven while all the other parents have set the curfew at ten. Parents don’t know this unless they are in communication with one another. Talking with other parents helps you figure out appropriate limits for your children and helps parents maintain control.

Start a monthly support group, read from Children Are from Heaven, and discuss the current issues you are having with your children. Talking about your issues and hearing what others are going through as well not only brings greater clarity, but also makes parenting easier. It becomes unnecessarily difficult when you feel alone. Parents need support, just as kids do. When you get the support of other parents, your children will get the support they need.

When you feel the support of other parents, it becomes much easier to maintain strong control and leadership while also giving your children permission to resist. With the support of others who share your commitment and insight, you will most effectively put the five positive messages into practice.