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

EVERY CHILD HAS HIS OR HER OWN UNIQUE PROBLEMS

Besides being born innocent and good, every child comes into this world with his or her own unique problems. As parents, our role is to help children face their unique challenges. I grew up in a family of seven children and, although we had the same parents and the same opportunities, all seven children turned out completely different. I now have three daughters ages twenty-five, twenty-two, and thirteen.

Each one is, and has always been, completely different, with a different set of strengths and weaknesses.

As parents, we can help our children, but we cannot take away their unique problems and challenges. With this insight, we can worry less, instead of focusing on changing them or solving their problems. Trusting more helps the parent as well as the child. We can let our children be themselves and focus more on helping them grow in reaction to life’s challenges.

When parents respond to their children from a more relaxed and trusting place, children have a greater opportunity to trust in themselves, their parents, and the unknown future.

Each child has his or her own personal destiny. Accepting this reality reassures parents and helps them to relax and not take responsibility for every problem a child has. Too much time and energy is wasted trying to figure out what we could have done wrong or what our children should have done instead of accepting that all children have issues, problems, and challenges. Our job as parents is to help our children face and cope with them successfully. Always remember that our children have their own set of challenges and gifts, and there is nothing we can do to alter who they are. Yet we can make sure that we give them the opportunities to become the best they can be.

At difficult times, when we begin to think something is wrong with our children, we must come back to remembering that they are from heaven. They are perfect the way they are and have their own unique challenges in life. They not only need our compassion and help, but they also need their challenges. Their unique obstacles to overcome are actually necessary for them to become all that they can become. The problems they face will assist them in finding the support they need and in developing their special character.

For every child, the healthy process of growing up means there will be challenging times. By learning to accept and embrace the limitations imposed by their parents and the world, children can learn such essential life skills as forgiveness, delayed gratification, acceptance, cooperation, creativity, compassion, courage, persistence, self-correction, self-esteem, self-sufficiency, and self-direction. For example:

• Children cannot learn to be forgiving unless there is someone to forgive.

• Children cannot develop patience or learn to delay gratification if everything comes their way when they want it.

• Children cannot learn to accept their own imperfections if everyone around them is perfect.

• Children cannot learn to cooperate if everything always goes their way.

• Children cannot learn to be creative if everything is done for them.

• Children cannot learn compassion and respect unless they also feel pain and loss.

• Children cannot learn courage and optimism unless they are faced with adversity.

• Children cannot develop persistence and strength if everything is easy.

• Children cannot learn to self-correct unless they experience difficulty, failure, or mistakes.

• Children cannot feel self-esteem or healthy pride unless they overcome obstacles to achieve something.

• Children cannot develop self-sufficiency unless they experience exclusion or rejection.

• Children cannot be self-directed unless they have opportunities to resist authority and/or not get what they want.

In a variety of ways, challenge and growing pains are not only inevitable, but also necessary. As parents, our job is not to protect our children from life’s challenges but to help them successfully overcome them and grow. Throughout Children Are from Heaven you will learn new positive parenting skills to assist your children in responding to life’s challenges and setbacks. If you are always solving their problems, they do not find within themselves their innate abilities and skills.

Life’s obstacles can occur to strengthen your children in unique ways and draw out the best in them. When a butterfly emerges from its cocoon, there is a great struggle. If you were to cut open the cocoon in order to spare the new butterfly this struggle, it would soon die. The struggle to get out is needed to build the wing muscles. Without the struggle, the butterfly will never fly, but will die instead. In a similar way, for our children to grow strong and fly free in this world, they need particular kinds of struggle and a particular kind of support.

To overcome their unique challenges, every child needs a particular kind of love and support. Without this support, their problems will become magnified and distorted, sometimes to the point of mental disease and criminal behavior.

Our job as parents is to support our children in special ways so that our children become stronger and healthier. If we interfere and make it too easy, we weaken children, but, if we make it too tough and don’t help enough, then we deprive them of what they need to grow. Children cannot do it alone. A child cannot grow up and develop all the skills for successful living without the help of their parents.

THE FIVE MESSAGES OF POSITIVE PARENTING

There are five important positive messages to help your children find within themselves the power to meet life’s challenges and develop their full inner potential. Throughout Children Are from Heaven, we will explore a variety of new parenting skills based on communicating each of these five messages. The five messages are:

1. It’s okay to be different.

2. It’s okay to make mistakes.

3. It’s okay to express negative emotions.

4. It’s okay to want more.

5. It’s okay to say no, but remember mom and dad are the bosses.

Let’s explore each of these messages in greater detail.

1. It’s okay to be different. All children are unique. They have their own special gifts, challenges, and needs. As parents, our job is to be able to recognize what their special needs are and to nurture them. Boys in general will have special needs that are not as important for girls. Likewise, girls will have needs that may not be that important for boys. In addition, every child regardless of gender has special needs associated with his or her particular challenges and gifts.

Children are also different in the way they learn. It is essential for parents to understand this difference, otherwise they may begin comparing children and become unnecessarily frustrated. When it comes to learning a task, there are three kinds of children: runners, walkers, and jumpers. Runners learn very quickly. Walkers learn in a steady manner and give clear feedback that they are making progress. Finally, there are the jumpers. Jumpers tend to be more difficult to raise. They don’t seem to be learning anything or making any progress, and then one day they make one jump and have it. Jumpers are like late bloomers. Learning takes more time for them.

Parents learn the importance of expressing love in gender-specific ways. For example, girls often need more caring, but too much caring can make a boy feel as if you don’t trust him.

Boys need more trust, though too much trust for a girl may be interpreted as not caring enough. Fathers mistakenly tend to give their daughters what boys need, while mothers mistakenly tend to give boys the support girls would need. Understanding how boys and girls have different needs helps parents be more successful in nurturing their children. In addition, mothers and fathers argue less about each other’s parenting style. Daddies Are from Mars and Mommies Are from Venus.

2. It’s okay to make mistakes. All children make mistakes. It is perfectly normal and to be expected. Making a mistake does not mean something is wrong with you, unless your parents react as if you should not have made a mistake.

Mistakes are natural, normal, and to be expected. The way children learn this is primarily by example. Parents can most effectively teach this principle by making sure they acknowledge their own mistakes in dealing with and supporting their children and each other.

When children see their parents apologizing on a regular basis, they gradually learn to be accountable for their own mistakes. Instead of teaching children to apologize, parents demonstrate. Children learn from role models not by lectures. Not only do children learn to be more responsible, but, by repeatedly forgiving their parents for their mistakes, children gradually learn the important skill of forgiveness.

Children come into this world with the ability to love their parents, but they cannot love or forgive themselves. They learn to love themselves by the way they are treated by their parents and how their parents react when they make mistakes. When children are not shamed or punished for their mistakes, they have a better chance to learn the most important skill: the ability to love themselves and accept their imperfections.

This skill is learned by repeatedly experiencing that their parents make mistakes and are still lovable. Shaming or punishing prevents children from developing self-love or the ability to forgive themselves. Throughout Children Are from Heaven, parents learn effective alternatives to spanking, shaming, and punishing that involve new ways of asking instead of ordering, giving rewards instead of punishments, giving time outs instead of spanking. These new positive parenting skills are described in greater detail through chapters 3 through 8. A time out, if given correctly and persistently, is just as powerful a deterrent as spanking and punishment.

3. It’s okay to have negative emotions. Such negative emotions as anger, sadness, fear, sorrow, frustration, disappointment, worry, embarrassment, jealousy, hurt, insecurity, and shame are not only natural and normal, but an important part of growing up. Negative emotions are always okay and they need to be communicated.

Parents must learn to create appropriate opportunities for children to feel and express their negative emotions. Although negative emotions are always okay, how, when, and where our children express them is not always appropriate. Tantrums are an important part of a children’s development, but they need to learn the time and place. On the other hand, you must make sure that you are not placating a child to avoid a tantrum, otherwise tantrums will come out when you don’t have an opportunity to give your child a time out and deal with the problem at hand more effectively.

New communication skills must be learned and practiced to increase children’s awareness of what they are feeling, otherwise they will go out of control, resist your authority, and act out on pent-up feelings. In this book, parents will learn to deal effectively with their own upset feelings. What parents suppress, their children will express in addition to their own upset feelings. This principle explains why children lose control at the most inconvenient times, particularly at stressful and overwhelming times when we are trying to keep a lid on our own feelings.

Positive parenting involves not making children responsible for how parents feel. When children get the message that their feelings and the needs for understanding and affection underlying those feelings are an inconvenience, they will begin to suppress their feelings and disconnect from their true self and all the gifts that come from being authentic.

“Enlightened” parents, who recognize the importance of feelings, often make the mistake of teaching their children to feel by sharing their own emotions too much. The best way to teach awareness of feelings is to listen and help identify feelings with empathy. Parents can best share their own negative feelings by telling stories of how they felt growing up in reaction to some of their challenges in life. The downside of sharing your own negative feelings with your children is that it makes children overly responsible. These children assume too much blame and disconnect from their own inner feelings. They eventually pull away and stop talking to you.

For example, telling a child, “When you climb that tree, I am afraid you will fall” has the gradual effect of making the child feel manipulated and controlled by negative feelings. Instead, an adult should say, “Climbing trees is not completely safe. I only want you to climb when I am around.” This is not only more effective, but it also teaches children not to make decisions based on negative emotions.

The child cooperates not to protect the parent from the discomfort of feeling afraid, but because the parent has asked them to do something.

Parents can help their children develop an increased awareness of feelings by empathizing, acknowledging, and listening, not by sharing their own feelings. Sometimes, even directly asking children how they feel or what they want may give them too much power. New listening skills must be used to draw out feelings and to understand a young child’s want and needs. “Permissive” parents will learn how not to be ruled by or manipulated by children’s wants and feelings. “Demanding” parents will learn the many ways they unknowingly shame their children for having negative feelings.

By learning to feel and communicate negative emotions, children most effectively learn to individuate from their parents, developing a strong sense of self, and gradually discover within themselves a wealth of inner creativity, intuition, love, direction, confidence, joy, compassion, conscience, and the ability to self-correct after making a mistake. All these advanced life skills, which make a person shine out in this world and achieve great success and fulfillment, come from staying in touch with feelings and being able to let go of negative feelings. Successful people feel their losses, but they bounce back because they have the ability to let go of negative feelings. Most people who do not achieve personal success are either numb to their inner feelings, make decisions based on negative feelings, or just remain stuck in negative feelings and attitudes. In each case, they are held back from making their dreams come true.

4. It’s okay to want more. Too often children get the message that they are wrong, selfish, or spoiled for wanting more or for getting upset when they don’t get what they want. Parents are too quick to teach the virtues of gratitude instead of giving their children permission to want more. “Be grateful for what you have” is too quick a reply to a child’s desire for more.

Children don’t know how much is acceptable to ask for and should never be expected to know. Even as adults, we still have difficulty determining how much we can ask for without offending or appearing too demanding or ungrateful. If adults have difficulty, then clearly we should not expect our children not to.

Positive parenting skills teach children how to ask for what they want in ways that are respectful to others. At the same time, parents will learn how to say no without getting upset. Children will feel free to ask for what they want, knowing that they will not be shamed. They will also recognize that just because they ask doesn’t mean they will get what they want.

Unless they are free to ask for what they want, children never clearly learn what they can get and what they can’t. In addition, by asking for what they want, they quickly develop incredible negotiating skills. Most adults are very poor negotiators. They don’t ask unless they expect a yes. If they get a no, they usually just accept it and walk away either submissive, secretly resentful, or outwardly angry.

When given the freedom to ask for what they want, children’s inner power to get what they want has a chance to blossom. As adults they will not take no for an answer. As children, they learn to negotiate and will often motivate you to give them what they want. There is big difference between being manipulated by a whiny child and being motivated by a brilliant negotiator. Positive parents do maintain control throughout every negotiation and clearly set limits on how long it can go on.

By giving your child permission to ask for more, you give that child the gift of direction purpose, and power in life. Too many women today feel powerless, because they were never given permission to ask for more. They were taught to care more about what others needed and shamed for getting upset when they didn’t get what they wanted or needed.

One the most important skills a father or mother can teach a girl is how to ask for more. Most women did not learn this lesson as children. Instead of asking for more, they indirectly ask for more by giving more and hoping someone will give back to them without their having to ask. This inability to ask directly prevents them from getting what they want in life and in their relationships.

While girls need permission to want more, boys need a particular kind of support when they don’t get more. Quite often a boy will set his goals really high, and parents will try to talk him out of his goals, because they want to protect him from being disappointed. They do not realize that more important than achieving goals is being able to cope with disappointment so that he can rise again to move toward his goals. Just as girls need a lot of support in asking for what they want, boys need extra support to identify their feelings and move through them. For boys, this is best accomplished by asking for details of what happened while being extremely careful not to offer any advice or “help.” Even too much empathy can turn him off to talking about what happened.

Mothers often make the mistake of asking too many questions. When pushed to talk, many boys stop. When given suggestions on how to cope, boys particularly will back off. At a time when he already feels beaten, he doesn’t need someone to make him feel worse by telling him how to solve the problem or what he did to contribute to the problem.

For example, he feels disappointed that he didn’t score well on a test and his mother says, in a caring way, “I think that if you would have watched less TV and taken more time to study then you would have done better. You are really smart, you are just not giving yourself a chance.” Clearly she thinks she is being loving, but in this context it is clear why he would stop revealing to her what is bothering him. She has offered unsolicited advice, and he feels both criticized and not trusted to solve his problem.

5. It’s okay to say no, but remember mom and dad are the bosses. Children need permission to say no, but, just as important, they need to know that their parents are in charge. Besides giving children permission to want more and to negotiate, the permission to say no really gives them power. Most parents are afraid of giving children that much power because they may easily become spoiled. One of the biggest problems today with children is that they have been given too much freedom. Parents have sensed that their children deserve more power, but they have not learned how to remain the boss. Unless they employ other positive parenting techniques like consistent time outs to maintain cooperation, their children become too demanding, selfish, and irritable. When parents remain in control, it is then effective to give their children more power.

Letting children say no opens the door for them to express feelings and to discover what they want and then negotiate. It does not mean you will always do what the child wants. Even though children can say no, it doesn’t mean they will get their way. What children feel and want will be heard and this in itself often makes them much more cooperative. More importantly, it allows children to be cooperative without having to suppress their true self.

There is a big difference between adjusting your wants and denying your wants. Adjusting your wants means shifting what you want to what your parents want. Denying means suppressing your wants and feelings and submitting to your parents wants. Submission results in a breaking of the child’s will. After a horse is broken, it becomes submissive and thus cooperative, but it also loses a big part of its free spirit.

Analysis of parenting practices in pre-Nazi Germany revealed that children were severely shamed and punished for resisting authority. They had no permission to resist or say no. In retrospect, we can see clearly on a much bigger scale how breaking the will of your children can make them mindless and heartless followers of strong but maniacal authoritarian leaders. When a person does not have a strong sense of self, he is easy prey for others to manipulate and abuse. Without a strong sense of self, a person will even be attracted to abusive relationships and situations, because of feelings of unworthiness and fear of asserting his own will.

Adjusting one’s will and wish is called cooperation, submitting one’s will and wish is obedience. Positive parenting practices seek to create cooperative children not obedient children. It is not healthy for children to follow their parents’ will mindlessly or heartlessly. Giving children permission to feel and verbalize their resistance when it occurs not only helps children develop a sense of self, but also makes children more cooperative. Obedient children just follow orders; they do not think, feel, or contribute to the process.

Cooperative children bring their full self to every interaction and thus are able to thrive.

Cooperative children may still want what they want, but what they want most is to please their parents. Giving children permission to say no does not mean giving them more control; it actually gives the parent more control. Each time children resist and the parents maintain control, the children are able to experience that mom and dad are the bosses.

This is the main reason that giving children a time out is so valuable.

When children are misbehaving or not cooperating, they are simply out of control. They are out of your control.

They are not in cooperation with your will and wish. To restore cooperation, a parent needs to regain control of them through picking them up and moving them into a time out. God makes children little so that we can pick them up and move them.

In a time out children have the freedom to resist and express all their feelings, but they are still restricted to a time out for a set time. Generally speaking, all that a child needs is one minute for every year of his or her life. A four year old only needs four minutes. The containment of a time out is all that is required for children to feel once again the security of being under your control and connected to you as the boss.

Automatically, the negative feelings lift off, and the child reconnects to the healthy desire to please and cooperate.

Parents who are too permissive or don’t give their children enough time outs unknowingly make their children more insecure. The child begins to feel they have the power to control and, because they are not ready to be in charge (although they like the power), they feel insecure. Imagine being given the responsibility to hire two hundred workers to build a building in six months. Or, imagine that you were handed a bleeding person recently shot with a gun and asked to operate on him and to remove the bullet. If you were not trained for either of these jobs, you would suddenly feel very insecure. When children begin to feel the thrill of being the boss, they also begin to feel very insecure and demanding.

A demanding or “spoiled” child generally needs more time outs. A spoiled teenager may need more than time out in his or her room. In some cases, time spent with supervision in a developing country, or in the woods with a guide, or staying with a favorite aunt, uncle, or grandparent will help teenagers regain their true self and their need for someone else to be boss. By feeling out of control and depending on someone else, a teenager is humbled. They can come back to feeling their need for parents and the desire to please them.

Children are basically programmed to one prime directive. Deep inside they only want to please their parents.

Positive parenting communication skills strengthen this prime directive so that children are more willing to follow a parent’s will and wish. To balance this yielding tendency, children need permission to resist and say no. This resistance allows them to develop a healthy sense of self.

Children who don’t get this opportunity go through unnecessary rebellion around puberty. Although a teenager still needs guidance in life, they feel huge urges just to do the opposite of whatever is your will and wish, if they have not developed a sense of self.

Many parents take it for granted that their children need to pull away from them at this time and rebellion is perfectly normal. Rebellion is only a normal reaction for children who did not get the support needed at an earlier stage.

When children experience the permission to say no, but then cooperate with their parents, they have a healthy sense of self and don’t need to rebel at puberty. They still pull away, but they don’t rebel and they keep coming back for love and support.

Positive parenting also explores ways of improving communication with teenagers, who were not raised with these five positive parenting messages. It is never too late to be a great parent and inspire cooperation from your children. No matter when you start, by applying the five messages of positive parenting, you will hold the power to improve communication, create cooperation, and draw from your children the best they can be.

A VISION OF POSSIBILITIES

Even with a greater understanding of the five messages of positive parenting, being a good parent is not easy. It is a learn-as-you-go process. Parenting pushes you beyond your limits of how much you thought you could give. Yet, no matter how good you get, you always find yourself once again in uncharted territory wondering: “What do I do now?” A clear vision of possibilities is needed. Fortunately, you can return to this guide again and again. When something doesn’t seem to be working, or you don’t know what to do, review the different messages of positive parenting.

You will discover what is missing and be better equipped to do the right thing.

As parents, we don’t get a lot of practice to prepare ourselves or to perfect our parenting abilities. Suddenly we are faced with the awesome responsibility of caring for a vulnerable child, and we are not always certain what is best for them. Even though we remind ourselves that children are from heaven and that they have their own unique potential destiny, their future is literally in our hands. How we hold and care for them greatly influences their ability to succeed in manifesting their full potential.

Parenting requires a tremendous commitment on our part but our children are certainly worth it. Parents only “back off” or withdraw from parenting when they don’t know what to do or when what they do seems to make matters worse. Studying the easy-to-understand (but not always easy-to-remember) principles of positive parenting will always remind you that you are needed and that by making a few adjustments you can succeed in giving your children what they need.

Always remember that no one can do it better than you can. Although your children come from heaven, they also come from you and they need you. Learning how to parent is the most worthwhile study a person can make if planning to have a family. Without the understanding of positive parenting, most parents have no idea how important they are to their children and their children’s future. Not only do their children miss out, but they do as well.

Parenting is a difficult job, but it is also the most rewarding. To be a parent is an awesome responsibility and a great honor. Now, with an awareness of what our children really need from us, parents can fully understand how much their help is needed. This clear insight into our responsibility allows us to feel the true dignity of being a parent and to take pride in doing what is required in caring for our family.

By fully committing yourself to the new principles of positive parenting, you are a courageous pioneer exploring new territory, a brave hero creating a new world and, most important, you are giving your children the opportunities for greatness that you never had.

Even with this guide by your side, you will still make mistakes, but then you will be able to use your mistakes to teach your children the important skill of forgiveness. We can’t always give our children what they need or want, but we can help them respond to their disappointments in healthy ways that make them stronger and more confident.

You will still be unable to always be there when they need you, but you will know how to react to their feelings and unmet needs in a way that heals their emotional wounds and makes them feel loved and supported once again. Using the five messages of positive parenting and remembering that children are from heaven, will help you give your children the best preparation they could have to make all their dreams come true, which is what all parents want for their children.