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

These “black sheep” children are unable to get the nurturing and empathy they need, and the problems become worse.

They will express the very feelings their parents are resisting and rejecting within themselves. Instead of feeling loved, understood, and embraced, they are resisted, resented, and rejected. They cannot get the love and support they need in order to process the strong emotions that they feel.

“Black sheep” children are unable to get the

nurturing they need and feel something is

wrong with them.

Often they don’t know why they feel so upset and eventually conclude that something is wrong with them. The reality is that nothing is innately wrong with them. They behave inappropriately and get stuck in negative attitudes and feelings, because they are not getting the nurturing they need. These children can often get the support they need outside the family with others who are more understanding.

If one of your children tends to be the black sheep of the family, take extra time to listen to that child’s feelings.

Remember that every child is different and make sure that you don’t ever compare children. This child needs lots of support from activities outside the family where he or she will not feel the pressure to take on and act out the unresolved problems and feelings of others.

Making negative emotions okay is a completely different way of parenting. Never have adults and children had so many feelings. Never have we been so sensitive. The challenge of making feelings okay is great. It is not as if we have been raised by parents who knew how to handle and nurture the free expression of emotions. Yet with these new insights and skills of positive parenting, you will succeed.

As a result, your children will not be limited by life, but instead will be creative and capable of creating the life they want to lead. With a greater awareness of feelings, they will eventually know the truth of who they are and what they are here for in this world. They will still face challenges, sometimes even greater ones than their parents have, but they will have new and powerful resources for achieving their goals and making their dreams come true.

When children don’t know what they want, they become vulnerable to the wants and wishes of others. They lose the opportunity to discover and develop who they are and, instead, become what others want them to be. In the absence of knowing what they want, they assume the wants of others and disconnect from their own power, passion, and direction. Without a clear awareness of their wants and needs, they are unable to recognize what is most important in life.

In the absence of knowing what they want,

children assume the wants of others.

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. In the past, children were to be happy with crumbs, and that is what they got in life.

They were to be seen but not heard and then, later in life, they were ignored and overlooked. They were not allowed to ask for more or even to want more.

The suppression of desire was an important parenting skill because parents didn’t know how to deal with the negative feelings that would come up when a desire could not be fulfilled. The permission to want more gives children a power that parents in the past could not manage.

Today, with positive parenting skills for managing negative emotions, it is okay for children to want more. By wanting more, they can develop a stronger sense of who they are and what they are here to do in this world.

It is often thought that giving children permission to want more will make them too demanding or difficult to manage.

It is certainly much easier to parent a child who accommodates your every wish and desire, but this child doesn’t get the opportunity to explore and develop his or her own sense of self, unique style, and direction in life. When children get the love and support they need to manage their feelings, giving them permission to want more does not make them demanding or difficult to manage. By wanting more and not getting, children learn the important skill of delayed gratification and self-discipline.

Some parents worry that it may make their child too selfish. This is true if parents always cave in to their children’s wants and wishes. What spoils children is not getting what they want, but the power to manipulate others by wanting more and throwing tantrums to get it. Children become spoiled and selfish when parents deny their own wants in order to please their children.

Children become spoiled, not from wanting

more, but when parents stop wanting more

for themselves.

When parents seek to placate children by fulfilling their every desire as a way to avoid tantrums, then the children will become spoiled. To give children permission to want more, parents must be strong at those times when a child throws a tantrum and then give appropriate time outs.

Given the opportunity to adjust their desires for more and accept the limits of life, children become even more appreciative of what they do have in the moment.

With regular time outs and good communication skills to assist their children in dealing with occasional strong feelings that come up, parents who give their children permission to think big and want more will raise confident, cooperative, and compassionate children.

By focusing on creating cooperation rather than blind obedience, positive parenting nurtures children’s inner will and wish but, at the same time, maintains that the parents are in control. To create cooperation, it is not necessary to break children’s will. Even if they want to stay up, children will go to bed according to their parents’ will and wish. By applying the five skills of positive parenting, parents allow children to have their own wants and wishes, but reserves the final say in the end.

The problem with giving children permission to want more is that it does slow things down at times. Children are not always immediately compliant. They may want to do something else and will let you know. By taking this time to listen to and consider the merits of a child’s will and wish, a parent nourishes a child’s soul. When a child feels heard most of the time, then, at those times when a parent doesn’t have the time, the child will be very accommodating.

Our soul can express itself through the will. When a child’s will is not broken or ignored, it has a chance to breathe and grow. We are motivated in life by our will. Taking the time to nurture a child’s will increases his or her bond with the parent and creates an overall willingness to cooperate.

All children are born with tremendous enthusiasm. This is the force of their will. When wanting more is accepted, this will is nurtured and can grow in harmony with their parents and others. But when it is not allowed to grow, children gradually lose that special spark we see in young children. The child loses that enthusiasm for life, loving, learning, and growing.

Nurturing a child’s will sustains his

enthusiasm for life, loving, learning, and

growing.

By learning to feel their wants and to honor the wants of their parents, children develop the important skills of respect, sharing, cooperation, compromise, and negotiation.

Without permission to want more and ask for it, children learn to sacrifice themselves for others. When children have permission to want more, they don’t need to rebel as teenagers to find themselves.