John Gray - Children Are from Heaven - Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children

Children who are severely beaten or abused

will bond with the abuser and defend the

abusive behavior.

Certainly, many more parents who were beaten now recognize this to be an outdated practice, but really don’t know what else to do.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.

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.

Children exposed to violence either hate

others or hate themselves.

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.

When we are dependent on scientific

studies and ignore common sense,

we have gone too far.

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.

When children are not over stimulated by

violence or meanness on TV, they are clearly

more secure, relaxed, and peaceful.

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.

Parents have a much greater influence on

their children than does TV.

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.

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.