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

This book is dedicated with greatest love and affection to my wife, Bonnie Gray. I could not have written this book without her wisdom and insight. Her love, joy, and light have not only graced my life, but our children’s as well.

I thank my wife, Bonnie, and our three daughters, Shannon, Juliet, and Lauren for their continuous love and support.

Without their direct contributions, this book could not have been written.

I thank Diane Reverand at HarperCollins for her brilliant feedback and advice. I also thank Laura Leonard, my dream publicist, and Carl Raymond, Craig Herman, Matthew Guma, Mark Landau, Frank Fonchetta, Andrea Cerini, Kate Stark, Lucy Hood, Anne Gaudinier, and the other incredible staff at HarperCollins.

I thank my agent, Patti Breitman, for believing in my message and recognizing the value of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus nine years ago. I thank my international agent, Linda Michaels, for getting my books published in more than fifty languages.

I thank my staff: Helen Drake, Bart and Merril Berens, Pollyanna Jacobs, Ian and Ellen Coren, Sandra Weinstein, Donna Doiron, Martin and Josie Brown, Bob Beaudry, Michael Najarian, Jim Puzan, and Ronda Coallier for their consistent support and hard work. I also thank Matt Jacobs, Sherri Rifkin, and Kevin Kraynick for their work in making marsvenus.com one of the best places on the Internet.

I thank my many friends and family members for their support and helpful suggestions: my brother, Robert Gray, my sister, Virginia Gray, Clifford McGuire, Jim Kennedy, Alan Garber, Renee Swisco, Robert and Karen Josephson, and Rami El Batrawi.

I thank the hundreds of workshop facilitators who teach Mars-Venus workshops throughout the world and the thousands of individuals and couples who have participated in these workshops during the past fifteen years. I also thank the Mars-Venus counselors who continue to use these principles in their counseling practices.

I thank my dear friend, Kaleshwar, for his continued support and assistance.

I thank my mother and father, Virginia and David Gray, for all their love and support as they gently guided me to be the best parent I could be. And thanks to Lucile Brixey, who was like a second mother to guide me and love me.

I give thanks to God for the incredible energy, clarity, and support I received in bringing forth this book.

— John Gray

June 9, 1999

After my first year of marriage, I was the father of a new baby and had two lovely stepdaughters. Lauren was the baby, Juliet was eight, and Shannon nearly twelve. Though my new wife Bonnie was a seasoned parent, this was my first experience.

Having a baby, a child, and a preteen all at once was quite a challenge. I had taught many workshops with teens and children of all ages. I was very aware of the way children felt about their parents. I had also counseled thousands of adults, helping them resolve issues from their childhood. In areas where their parents’ care was deficient, I taught adults how to heal their wounds by reparenting themselves. From this unique perspective, I began as a new parent.

At every step of the way, I would find myself automatically doing things my parents had done. Some things were good, others were less effective, and some were clearly not good at all. Based on my own experience of what didn’t work for me and the thousands of people with whom I had worked, I was gradually able to find new ways of parenting that were more effective.

To this day, I can remember one of my first changes.

Shannon and her mother, Bonnie, were arguing. I came downstairs to support Bonnie. At a certain point, I took over and yelled louder. Within a few minutes, I began to dominate the argument. Shannon became quiet, holding in her hurt and resentment. Suddenly, I could see how I was wounding my new stepdaughter.

In that moment, I realized that what I had done was a mistake. My behavior was not nurturing. I was behaving as my dad would when he didn’t know what else to do. I was yelling and intimidating to regain control. Although I didn’t know what else to do, I clearly knew that yelling and intimidating was not the answer. From that day on, I never again yelled at my kids. Eventually, my wife and I were able to develop other, more nurturing ways to regain control when our children misbehaved.

I am very thankful to my parents for their love and support, which helped me enormously, but, in many ways, in spite of the love, I was wounded by some of their mistakes. Healing those wounds has made me a better parent. I know they did their best with the limited knowledge they had regarding what children needed. When parents make mistakes in parenting, it is not because they don’t love their children, but because they just don’t know a better way.

The most important part of parenting is love and putting in time and energy to support your children. Although love is the most important requirement, it is not enough. Unless parents understand their children’s unique needs, they are unable to give their children what children today need.

Parents may be giving love, but not in ways that are most helpful to their child’s development.

Without an understanding of their children’s needs, parents cannot effectively support their children.

On the other hand, some parents are “willing” to spend more time with their children, but don’t because they don’t know what to do or their children reject their efforts. So many parents try to talk with their kids, but their kids just close up and say nothing. These parents are willing, but don’t know how to get their kids to talk.

Some parents don’t want to yell at, hit, or punish their children, but they just don’t know another way. Since talking with their children has not worked, punishment or the threat of punishment is the only way they know.

To give up old ways of parenting, new ways must be employed.

Talking will work, but you have to learn first what children need. You have to learn how to listen so that children will want to talk to you. You have to learn how to ask so that children will want to cooperate. You have to learn how to give your children increasing freedom and yet maintain control. When a parent learns these skills, he or she can let go of outdated methods of parenting.

As a counselor to thousands and teacher to hundreds of thousands, I was aware of what parenting behaviors didn’t work, but I didn’t yet know more effective solutions. To be a better parent, it was not enough just to stop doing things like punishing or yelling to control my children. To give up manipulating my children with the threat of punishment to maintain control, I had to find other equally effective methods. In developing the philosophy of Children Are from Heaven and the five skills of positive parenting, I gradually discovered an effective alternative to traditional parenting skills.

To be a better parent, it is not enough to stop doing things that don’t work.

The skills of positive parenting contained in Children Are from Heaven took me more than thirty years to develop. For sixteen years as a counselor of adults with individual and relationship problems, I had a chance to study what didn’t work in my clients’ childhoods. Then, as a parent, during the next fourteen years I began to develop and use new and different parenting skills. These new insights and skills have not only worked in raising my own children, but also in thousands of other families.