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

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.

Positive parenting uses the practice of time

outs to replace the need to spank or punish.

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, punishment maintained control,

but today it has 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.

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.

The attributes of love, compassion,

cooperation, and forgiveness are no longer

lofty concepts for philosophers and spiritual

leaders, they are daily experiences.

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.

Rather than teach what is right or wrong,

teach how to know within yourself what is

right or 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.