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

THE PRESSURE OF PARENTING

Because of the invention of Western psychology, we are now much more aware of the profound influence childhood has on our success later in life. Both our ability to create outer success and our ability to be happy and fulfilled are heavily influenced by early childhood circumstances and conditions.

Although we now accept this insight as common knowledge, fifty years ago it was not common.

Before this new insight, how we parented was not a priority. Our success in life was attributed mainly to genes, family status, hard work, opportunity, character, religious affiliation, or luck. In Eastern cultures, which commonly believe in past and future lives, past karma was also seen to be the major contributing factor. If you were good in a past life, then good things will happen for you in this life.

Certainly, parents have always loved their children, but how they demonstrated that love with parenting skills was not recognized to be that important.

Now, after fifty years of counseling psychology, we have discovered the way parents demonstrate their love makes an enormous difference to their children. With this increased knowledge of the importance of childhood, parents today feel much greater pressure and responsibility to find the best way to parent their children. Often this pressure to be perfect parents leads them in the wrong direction.

Parents commonly make the mistake of focusing too much on providing more. And what they are providing more of is often counterproductive: more money, more toys, more things, more entertainment, more education, more after-school activities, more training, more help, more praise, more time, more responsibility, more freedom, more discipline, more supervision, more punishment, more permission, more communication, etc. More of these things are not necessarily what children today need most. As in other areas of life, more is not always better. Instead of more, what children need is “different.” As parents, we don’t have to give more, instead we need an approach different from our parents’.

REINVENTING PARENTING

Today we are faced with the challenge of reinventing parenting. Instead of assuming responsibility to mold our children into responsible and successful adults, it is becoming increasingly apparent that our role as parents is only to nurture what is already there. Within every child are the seeds of greatness. Our role is to provide a safe and nurturing environment to give that child a chance to develop and express his or her potential.

Traditional parenting skills and approaches that were appropriate in the past will not work for children today.

Children today are different. They are more in touch with their feelings and thus more self-aware. With this shift in awareness, their needs have changed as well. Every generation moves ahead to solve the problems of the past, but new challenges emerge in making that step.

In any field of endeavor, we must make adjustments to continue being successful. The needs of our children today are different from previous generations’. As parents, we are now facing a change that has been in the making for the last 2000 years. It is the shift from fear-based to love-based parenting.

Positive parenting focuses on new approaches and strategies to motivate children with love and not through the fear of punishment, humiliation, or the loss of love. Though this sounds reasonable when compared to traditional approaches to parenting, it is an extremely radical notion. Love-based parenting is in conflict with our deepest instinctive reactions when we feel that we are out of control or when we feel afraid of losing control.

This love-based approach focuses on motivating children to cooperate without using the fear of punishment. Every parent knows the automatic reaction of, “If you don’t stop, I will . . .” And then comes the threat. Or the old fashioned phrase, “If you don’t listen to me, I’ll tell your father when he gets home.” Managing our children with fear, no matter how much we don’t want to do it, is an automatic reaction. In many schools today, teachers attempt to motivate their children to do better by means of fear of college entrance exams. All this fear just makes our children more anxious or depressed. Some children are already preparing for college in first grade.

Giving up spanking, threatening, and punishing may sound like a loving thing to do, but when your child is throwing a tantrum in the checkout line, and you just don’t know what else to do, threatening or spanking seems to be the only solution. When your child refuses to get dressed in the morning for school or resists brushing his teeth at night, automatically you resort to threats and punishment. Even if you don’t want to use threats and punishment, when nothing else works it is all you have. And it is all you have, because we haven’t yet learned the skills of positive parenting.

It becomes possible to change our parenting approach and to do it differently from the way we were raised only when we find a new way that works. You can successfully give up outdated fear-based parenting skills when you have learned the new and necessary skills to awaken and draw from your children the part of them that wants to cooperate and is already motivated to behave in harmony with your will and wish.

A SHORT HISTORY OF PARENTING

Thousands of years ago, children were treated worse than we would treat animals today. If children disobeyed a parent, they were severely beaten or punished, and sometimes even killed. Burial sites in Rome from two thousand years ago have revealed the bodies of hundreds of thousands of young boys who were beaten and killed by their fathers for being disobedient. Over the years, we have moved away from such extreme abusive and violent treatment.

Today most parents spank or hit their children only as a last resort, when nothing else seems to work or when the parent goes out of control. Still the legacy of the past holds on. Even in a relatively peaceful home, children can be heard saying, “If you do that you’ll be killed” or “They’ll kill you for that.” Although, if questioned, these children don’t literally mean “killed,” but it is a clear indication of the influence of fear to create orderly or good behavior. Although we have come a long way in the last two thousand years, the use of fear remains entrenched.

Some parents still think their children need to be spanked. I remember one dramatic example. Ten years ago, I had a conversation with a taxi driver from Yugoslavia. He mentioned that the problem in America is that parents are too soft. They don’t beat their children. I asked him if he was beaten. He was proud to say that is why he turned out so well and so had his children. Neither he nor his children had ever spent the night in jail. He went on to say that not a day passed when he was growing up that he was not beaten.

As an adult, he was grateful for the beatings he had received.

He assured me that this was a common practice in his country and it had saved him from becoming a criminal.

This is an amazing psychological reaction. Quite often, children who are severely beaten or abused will bond even more with the abuser. Over time, they begin to justify the abuse and feel they deserved it. Instead of recognizing what they experienced as abuse, they defend their parents’ behavior.

When they have children, naturally they feel their children deserve the same abuse. This is why it can be so difficult for some parents to adjust to positive parenting. They hold on to fear-based parenting, because they were punished and feel that their children deserve it as well. They believe their rearing helped them to be better citizens and so it will help their children. It is common to hear an abused child say, “I was so bad that they had to beat me.”

Certainly, many more parents who were beaten now recognize this to be an outdated practice, but really don’t know what else to do. Though they don’t like spanking or punishment, they don’t have an alternative. Other parents have given up spanking, and as a result lose control of their children, or their children develop self-esteem issues. If we are to give up spanking and punishing, we must replace them with something that works effectively to manage children and create cooperation.

VIOLENCE IN, VIOLENCE OUT

When children are receptive, feeling, and open, as children are today, once violence goes in, it comes right out. There is no doubt that when children are managed by using the threat of violence, punishment, or guilt, they will resort to violence, punishment, or guilt when they feel out of control as a way to regain control. All the rampant dysfunctional behavior and domestic violence in our society today is the result of not knowing another way to deal with the strong feelings that people feel.

When feelings were not so awakened, violence and punishment worked. But today the world is different. Parents are more conscious and more feeling and so are their kids.

Without a new way of managing and controlling children, they will become increasingly violent and continue to behave in dysfunctional ways. Either they will act out in rebellious and aggressive ways, or they will turn that violence inward and abuse themselves with low self-esteem. Either they hate others or they hate themselves, and often they feel both.

I can only laugh when some experts say there are no scientific studies to prove that spanking makes children violent.

That is what they said when I began teaching Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus more than fifteen years ago.

They asked, “Where are the studies to prove that men and women are different?” It was just common sense.

Scientific studies are very useful to expand our awareness and insight, but when we become so dependent on scientific studies and ignore common sense we have gone too far. Scientific inquiry then becomes as dangerous as the superstition it helped society to escape. Fortunately, not all scientists and researchers are so narrow-minded that they easily dismiss common sense.

Although “violence in, violence out” is common sense, it has also been shown through studies that exposure to violence makes children more violent. After the riots in Los Angeles in 1989, different groups of children were shown videotapes of the violence for three minutes. Afterward, they played in another room where there were violent toys and nonviolent toys.

When told that the violence on TV was just actors pretending to be violent, the children didn’t play with the violent toys but played with more neutral or nurturing toys.

When told that the violence on TV was real, almost all the children played with violent toys. Aggression dramatically increased. Watching real violence on TV clearly triggered increased aggression in these children.

It is not until age fourteen that children or preteens have the cognitive development fully to understand a hypothetical situation. Even if a child or preteen is reminded that the players on TV are only pretending, he or she cannot remember for long. And if they reminded, after five or ten minutes, they will still emotionally respond as if it was real. Without the required cognitive development, what a child feels is real becomes real.

When children witness violence or mean behavior on TV, they lose, to some degree, the opportunity to develop a healthy sense of innocence, serenity, and sensitivity.

If a parent decides a movie is okay for their preteen, but still has some doubts, then it is better to have their preteen watch it when it comes out on video. Video, in the home with the lights on, has much less of an impact than a dark movie theater with a bigger-than-life screen. A theater increases an adult’s ability to suspend his or her disbelief and to experience the emotional ups and downs of the movie. Movie theaters are designed for adults to forget what is real, so they can temporarily feel as if the movie is real. For children, we want them to remember that that what they are watching is not real.

Too many movies or too much TV, even without violence and mean acts, can be over stimulating to children.

One of the most common reasons children act out or can’t control themselves. Children learn primarily by imitation.

What they see is what they do. Too much sensory input overwhelms their nervous system, and they become irritable, demanding, moody, hyper, whinny, too sensitive, and uncooperative. Too much stimulation is not a healthy influence.

Yet, many of the very people that complain loudest about violence on TV will turn around and threaten their children with violence and punishment. Yet they are right.

Violence on TV and in the movies does influence our children and teenagers, but this conclusion about TV is misleading, because the influence of the parent and their philosophy and practice of parenting is much greater.

When children are raised to believe they are bad and they deserve punishment, violence on TV and in the movies has a much greater negative impact. When children are raised without spanking, punishment, or guilt, they are still influenced by violent programming, but at least they are less attracted to it. Parents should be diligent in protecting their children from the influence of too much sex and violence in the movies and on TV.

The power to raise healthy children is within the parents’ reach. We cannot fully blame the problem of increasing youth violence on Hollywood. Hollywood only provides what we want to see. As long as children are raised with fear and guilt, they will continue to want the violence Hollywood offers.

WHY CHILDREN BECOME UNRULY AND DISRUPTIVE

There are clear reasons why children in schools today are more unruly, disrespectful, aggressive, and violent. It is not a big mystery. When children are overstimulated by aggression or the threat of punishment at home, it creates hyperactivity in boys — or what is now diagnosed as Attention Deficit Disorder.

In girls, aggressive tendencies are acted out against themselves with feelings of low self-esteem and eating disorders.

Go into any prison, and you will find that all violent offenders, without exception, have been severely punished or beaten as children. The abuse they have suffered is heartbreaking just as the abuse they inflicted on their victims is heartbreaking. Yet even outside the prisons and in the counseling office, many millions of people suffer from depression, anxiety, apathy, and other emotional disorders as a result of fear-based parenting.

On the other hand, there are many children today who are disruptive and impaired from the affects of “soft” parenting. Traditional parents are correct in being skeptical about modern soft-parenting approaches. Although the intent to be love-based is present, the skills to make it effective are not being practiced. The freedom and power given by the five messages must be balanced by equally powerful skills to maintain control over children and create cooperation. If you want to drive a fast car, you must make sure you have great brakes. You can’t give children more freedom unless you have the skills to restrain them so that they behave in an orderly manner.

Many parents who were mistreated as children resolved never to hit, spank, degrade, or punish their children. They knew what didn’t work and, to be better parents, stopped doing it. The problem is they didn’t know how to replace the old fear-based practices with love-based skills. Refusing to discipline their children in many cases spoiled their children.

This kind of soft parenting is just as ineffective as traditional fear-based approaches.

Giving up past fear-based techniques only works when you replace them with something else that is more effective.

Although children today have new needs, they still need a parent who is in control. Otherwise, no matter how much you love your child, the child goes out of control.

Positive parenting uses the practice of making the child take a time out in a variety of ways which are age appropriate to replace the need to spank or punish. Even then, time outs are used as a last measure. Long before resorting to a time out, there are many other skills to be applied so that a time out works. Otherwise, it just becomes another fear-based punishment and loses its effectiveness.

In light of an alternative way of parenting our children without fear or guilt, we really need to stop and consider why anyone deserves to be beaten or feel pain because they have made a mistake. No one ever deserves punishment. Everyone deserves to be loved and supported. Even in the past, no one ever deserved punishment, but it was the only way to regain and maintain control. Punishment and spanking helped parents keep the upper hand and control their children. Today, punishment and spanking have the opposite effect.

In the past, children did not have the capacity within themselves to know what was right or wrong. The fear of punishment was necessary to deter them from misbehaving. The more resistant children were, the more punishment they received. Punishment was needed to break their will. It is precisely this kind of strategy that would allow people to tolerate and even support the abuses of tyrants and dictators throughout history. Weak-willed people will allow abuse. Fortunately, times have changed and Western society will not tolerate and support abusive tyrants. Just as society has changed, so have our children. Our children will not be broken, but will continue to rebel in response to spanking and punishment.

If you are still against giving up spanking and punishing, ask yourself this question: If there was another way to have the same or even better effect that didn’t involve fear, punishment, or guilt, would you consider it? Of course you would. We cling to fear, punishment, and guilt only because we don’t know another way. As you read on to learn these new non-fear-based techniques, they will not only make sense, but will also work. That is the whole point. We are not exploring the philosophical pros and cons of parenting approaches. We are talking about an alternative approach that will start working right away.

Thousands of people in my seminars and workshops on parenting have already started to use this approach with success. It not only works, but it feels right in your heart. Let your heart and common sense give you the confidence and courage to move ahead in giving up outdated parenting tactics and begin using these new skills of positive parenting.

A GLOBAL SHIFT IN CONSCIOUSNESS

During the twentieth century, Western psychology developed in response to the new needs of the collective consciousness.

Prior to the last hundred years, an introspective exploration of our inner feelings, desires, and needs was not that important. People were more concerned with their survival and security and not worried about how they felt. Most people were not even aware of their feelings. To a great degree, most people were not even aware of their psychological and emotional needs.

Just as the world has changed, our children have as well.

Many times, my children are more articulate and aware of their inner feelings than I am of mine. We have all been born at a time of tremendous change in global consciousness. As the collective consciousness of society has shifted, our inner world has become more important. The attributes of love, compassion, cooperation, and forgiveness are no longer lofty concepts for philosophers and spiritual leaders, they are daily experiences. The behaviors and practices of people in power that were once acceptable are now seen to be abusive.

History is filled with atrocities of human conscience.

Throughout the Dark Ages, different religious and political institutions were responsible for brutally murdering and torturing millions of innocent men, women, and children simply because they had different beliefs about God or chose natural herbs to heal their bodies. These atrocities have continued even into the twentieth century. Yet today, most people oppose them. Since human consciousness has evolved, justifying these kind of atrocities has become almost unthinkable.

You don’t really need to be taught anymore that killing, stealing, raping, and pillaging is wrong. Your conscience tells you these are not right. No one really needs to convince you. In a similar way, it is unlikely that you would allow a political leader to start a war, dominate a country, and steal all of its precious cultural and art objects. Yet today we have museums around the world that are filled with stolen objects or the “spoils of war.” This kind of psychopathic egocentric behavior was acceptable just fifty years ago.

As the collective consciousness of society changes, conscience evolves, as well as intelligence. When people are not capable of knowing what is right or wrong, they need lots of rules which then must be enforced with punishment. If one is capable of developing a conscience, then the need for punishment is outdated. Rather than focus on teaching children what is right and wrong, positive parenting is more focused on awakening and developing children’s innate ability to know within themselves what is right and what is wrong.

Having a conscience is the ability to know within ourselves what is right or wrong. It is like having an inner compass that always points us in the right direction. We don’t always have all the answers, but our inner compass will always point ourselves in the right direction. In the past, some people have described conscience as listening to a quiet inner voice. That was the only way they could describe something that most everyone now experiences. We now just say, “I had a feeling.”

Feelings are the doorway through which our inner soul or spirit communicates to us. When people are “stuck in their heads,” all they can do is follow the rules and punish those who don’t. People with open hearts are able just to know what is right for them. This same inner knowing, when applied to interpreting the world, is called intuition. When applied to problem solving, it is called creativity. When applied to relationships, it is the capacity to love (or recognize a person’s goodness) without conditions and forgive. Developing the mind is certainly important, but developing a conscience is the most precious gift parents can give to their children.

All parents want their children to know what is right and then on that basis, to act wisely. Until this global shift in consciousness occurred, that was not possible. Parents employed punishment and other fear and guilt-based strategies to deter children from being bad and motivate them to be good. Today children are born with a new potential to develop this inner knowing. Their sensitivity gives them this ability, but it can cause them to self-destruct when outdated fear-based strategies are employed. Whatever treatment goes in either comes right back out or becomes self-directed.

Every child born today has the innate ability to know what is right and wrong. They have the potential to develop a conscience, but that ability must be nurtured if it is to come out.

Positive-parenting practices awaken that inner potential in our children. The result of being connected to an inner conscience is that our children are well behaved but not mindlessly obedient. They respect others, not out of fear, but because it feels good. They are willing to and capable of negotiating. They can think for themselves. They are willing to challenge authority figures. They are creative, cooperative, competent, compassionate, confident, and loving. By learning and applying positive-parenting skills, not only does parenting get easier and easier for us, but the rewards for our children are so much greater. There is no greater reward in life than seeing your children succeed in making their dreams come true and feeling good about themselves.