Parenting Value: Respect vs Ego

Value of Unselfishness & Sensitivity

Richard and Linda Eyre

Parenting Value: Respect, not Ego

More respect for others, less egocentric. Becoming more extra-centered and less self-centered. Learning to feel with and for others. Empathy, tolerance, brotherhood. Sensitivity to needs in people and situations.

Methods for Teaching Children Respect vs being egocentric


Introduction

Some children have a natural and seemingly inherent sense of caring and sensitivity. Such cases are rather rare, however, and the self-centered "surrounded by mirrors" perspective of life is typical of most children, particularly adolescents. In fact most of the problems teenagers face (whether taking the form of rebellion or of extreme shyness and withdrawal) stem from their rather intense preoccupation with self. 

Nevertheless, children can begin to learn sensitivity and unselfishness at a very young age, and they should learn it as a skill and a capacity as well as a value. 

Children have difficulty empathizing and applying their own feelings to others. A child can feel crushed one day because Jimmy didn't invite him to his birthday party and the next day forget to include someone who looks lonely in the basketball game at recess. Adolescents love to borrow clothes, but many hate to lend them and often forget to return them or to "repair the damage." It takes real effort on the part of parents and sometimes a very long time for most children to realize that the world does not revolve around them, that others' feelings are crucial and that there is a great deal to be learned from giving up something they really want for the sake of someone else. 

General Guidelines
Give responsibility. Try to bring out your children's appreciation and empathy for the difficulties and challenges of others. A recent Harvard study pointed up an interesting connection between how much responsibility children were given and their tendencies to be altruistic and extra-centered. Apparently children who are given everything but responsibility not only become spoiled but actually tend to begin to lose their sense of caring and concern. 

During this month reemphasize and redefine the responsibilities you give your children and the dependability you expect of them. Discuss, whenever you get the chance, the responsibilities that others have and how we must be sensitive to the burdens other people have. 

Teach by example and active listening. Show children the attitude of empathy and the kinds of sensitivity that you want them to mirror. Try to make your own listening and caring more obvious. One way to do this is "active listening." Instead of the normal parental tendencies of directing, managing, and interrogating children, try to really hear what children say. Paraphrase back to them what they have said in a way that reassures them that you heard what they said, have understood it, and are concerned about it. This technique is sometimes also called Rogerian technique after Carl Rogers, the pioneering psychologist who found that people of any age will tell you more if you listen rather than ask. 

The practice of active listening will, in addition to encouraging your children to say more to you, set a profound example of the kind of sensitivity you hope they themselves will develop.
Say, "I'm sorry." Show your children your sensitivity and help them feel sensitive toward you. Whenever you have made a mistake or misjudgment or even been a little insensitive to a child's needs (through your own busy-ness, preoccupation, etc.), go to the child and say you're sorry for not being more in tune and sensitive to what they were worried about or needed. 

Make an effort to tell your children how the things they do make you feel. This will help children be more aware of your feelings and be more sensitive toward them. If a teenager tells you that you are weird, tell him that that hurts your feelings. Sometimes children think of parents as people on whom they can vent their feelings without making a dent. Tell them not only the hurtful things but the positive things. For example, "It makes me feel so happy when I see you cleaning things up without being asked or helping your little brother with his homework." 

Remember that unselfishness does not come naturally. Try to maintain your patience as you implement this "month." Everyone, although in varying degrees, is born with a certain amount of selfishness. There is no quick fix for learning to be unselfish. It is a process that takes thinking and practicing and a certain amount of maturity to develop. 

Praise. Reinforce -- and cause repetition of -- unselfish behavior. Heap praise on signs or symptoms or even brief glimpses of unselfishness in children of any age! Let's face it, an act of simple sharing in children -- particularly small ones -- is cause for genuine celebration. And it also calls for praise and recognition. When a child shares, or gives, or sees and responds to needs in another, praise him, pick him up and hug him, and point out what he's just done to anyone else who is around.
  "Parenting-by-Objective"
Review the activities and stories that go along with this months value. Make sure everyone in your family understands the value so they can see how they can apply it in their own lives and situations.

Talk about the Monthly Value every morning and remind your family to look for opportunities to use the value throughout the day. They may also observe how others don't understand the value. Get your children to share their experience with the value each day at the dinner table or before you go to bed. Be sure to share your experience each day as well. It will help your children know that you are thinking about the value too.

Parenting Value: Kindness

The value of Kindness
& Friendliness

Becoming more extra-centered and less self-centered. Learning to feel with and for others. Empathy, tolerance, brotherhood. Sensitivity to needs in people and situations.
Richard and Linda Eyre

Introduction
Simple kindness and friendliness is a great human value. It involves parts of other values, such as the empathy of sensitivity and the boldness of courage, but it is a very separate and different value from these. This value is also partially an extension of the value of peaceability. In peaceability we try to teach children not to hurt and to avoid conflicts. Here we teach the positive side of being a friend, acting friendly and kindly, and becoming more polite and courteous.

Friendliness and gentleness also apply to self. Children who learn to be gentle and tolerant with themselves grow up to be less stressed and more relaxed and self-secure. 

Simple friendliness (based on our earlier-established criteria and definition of a value of something that helps others and diminishes hurt in others) is a profound value. Often a simple act of kindness or a word or two of extended friendship can change another person's attitude and mood for the rest of the day -- and longer.

In trying to teach kindness and friendliness to our children we once again realize that they are not lumps of clay to be molded as we choose, but seedlings -- already who they are -- ready to blossom if watered and fertilized and exposed to a lot of sunlight.

Wherever your children fit on the scale of natural kindness and friendliness to others, there is always room for improvement on this important value of life.

_____________________

A friend of ours told me a story that I thought illustrated how parents can be kind and friendly to their own children and thus improve the rapport and feeling between them.

He came home from work one day, went into his "private" bathroom, and found little five-year-old Lulu, who loves trying to clean things, holding an empty cleanser can and standing over a bathtub that was overflowing with soap suds onto the carpet. He nearly reacted the way most parents would have: "Lulu! You used way too much soap! You're ruining the carpet! You should never try to do things like this without help!"

But he had some especially tender feelings in his heart that day for Lulu, and he said, "Oh, Lu, you were trying to clean Dad's tub, weren't you?"

Little Lulu looked down and said, "But Daddy, I used way too much soap!" It was a tender, warm moment that ended in a big hug.

If the father had said, "You used way too much soap," Lulu would have said, probably with some bitterness or some hurt, "But Daddy, I was just trying to clean your tub!" It would have been an unpleasant, separating moment. -- Richard

_____________________

Sometimes we don't need to tell our children what they did wrong. They already know. If we are kind and gentle with them and come to their defense, they will say what we would have said, and the moment will be warm and the feeling will be right.

General Guidelines
Have a "gentleness and politeness" pact." This can create a mood of particular kindness and warmth in your home during this "month." Get together as a family as you start this month and discuss how pleasant a place the world is when people are kind and gentle. Ask the children to join you in a "pact of gentleness and politeness" for the month. Explain that this will mean a commitment of two "do's" and two "don't's."

Do's:

·  Be polite -- say, "please," "thank you," and "excuse me," and look for chances to extend acts of courtesy.

·  Smile and ask, "How are you?" Expect a real answer to the question and listen to it.

Don'ts:

·  Don't yell or raise your voice or be critical of another.

·  Don't say anything critical -- neither of someone else nor of yourself. (No "I'm so stupid" or "I can't do anything right.")

Talk frequently about how things are going, how people feel, how hard it is to remember, and so on.
Decide where your child stands in his natural abilities to be kind and friendly. Know what your challenge is with each child. There is nothing quite like the joy one feels as a result of kindnesses to those who really need and appreciate it, whether it be a good deed for one little old man across the street or kindness on a more grander scale. However, kindness and friendliness are never as easy as they sound. Some children show their insecurities by pretending to be popular but putting other children down in ways that are outright cruel, while other shrinking violets and painfully shy children spend all their time wondering why no one likes them. Others are genuinely well adjusted and naturally look for ways to be kind and friendly to those around them. Try to determine where your child fits in his natural abilities to be kind and friendly so that you know where to begin.

Teach by example. Give your children clear and specific models for friendliness, kindness, and politeness. This value is one that cannot be overdone. During the month be extra friendly and polite to everyone, including your children. Use "please," "thank you," and "excuse me" profusely. Say nice things. Practice Emily Post etiquette in everything from opening doors and holding chairs for women to setting the table in a proper and special way. Even help children with their own jobs. Smile a lot.
Watch children respond. Once they get over the suspicion that you're putting them on or rehearsing for a part in some play, they will begin to mirror what they see in you.

Teach your child the value of relationships, not only with friends but with family. This will increase their appreciation of close "blood" relationships. During an evening meal every few months take the time to reinforce the importance of having friends and being a friend. Foster and nourish the idea that even though outside friends are very important, the best friends they will ever have should be their brother or sister (as well as his or her parents). Childhood friends will come and go, but family members will last throughout life. Those friendships should be nurtured and treated with care. You could even try a private game among family members. When one child is persecuting another or arguing or calling names in a way that he would not think of doing with a friend, have the persecuted child say the word friend, which is a code word to the other child to lay off and begin treating him a little more like a friend. Although it may not work at the moment, it will help to raise the awareness of what they're doing. (The same game works for parents who talk to their children in less than glowing terms, or vice versa.) You could even suggest that when a child is angry or being rude to another family member, an onlooking child has a responsibility to walk up to the child being attacked, put his arm around him, and say, "Don't talk that way to one of my best friends."

"Parenting-by-Objective"
Review the activities and stories that go along with this months value. Make sure everyone in your family understands the value so they can see how they can apply it in their own lives and situations.
Talk about the Monthly Value every morning and remind your family to look for opportunities to use the value throughout the day. They may also observe how others don't understand the value. Get your children to share their experience with the value each day at the dinner table or before you go to bed. Be sure to share your experience each day as well. It will help your children know that you are thinking about the value too.

Parenting Value: Unselfishness

Dinner Topics for Tuesday

Value of Unselfishness & Sensitivity

Richard and Linda Eyre
Becoming more extra-centered and less self-centered. Learning to feel with and for others. Empathy, tolerance, brotherhood. Sensitivity to needs in people and situations.

Introduction
Some children have a natural and seemingly inherent sense of caring and sensitivity. Such cases are rather rare, however, and the self-centered "surrounded by mirrors" perspective of life is typical of most children, particularly adolescents. In fact most of the problems teenagers face (whether taking the form of rebellion or of extreme shyness and withdrawal) stem from their rather intense preoccupation with self.
Nevertheless, children can begin to learn sensitivity and unselfishness at a very young age, and they should learn it as a skill and a capacity as well as a value.
Children have difficulty empathizing and applying their own feelings to others. A child can feel crushed one day because Jimmy didn't invite him to his birthday party and the next day forget to include someone who looks lonely in the basketball game at recess. Adolescents love to borrow clothes, but many hate to lend them and often forget to return them or to "repair the damage." It takes real effort on the part of parents and sometimes a very long time for most children to realize that the world does not revolve around them, that others' feelings are crucial and that there is a great deal to be learned from giving up something they really want for the sake of someone else. 

General Guidelines
Give responsibility. Try to bring out your children's appreciation and empathy for the difficulties and challenges of others. A recent Harvard study pointed up an interesting connection between how much responsibility children were given and their tendencies to be altruistic and extra-centered. Apparently children who are given everything but responsibility not only become spoiled but actually tend to begin to lose their sense of caring and concern.
During this month reemphasize and redefine the responsibilities you give your children and the dependability you expect of them. Discuss, whenever you get the chance, the responsibilities that others have and how we must be sensitive to the burdens other people have.
Teach by example and active listening. Show children the attitude of empathy and the kinds of sensitivity that you want them to mirror. Try to make your own listening and caring more obvious. One way to do this is "active listening." Instead of the normal parental tendencies of directing, managing, and interrogating children, try to really hear what children say. Paraphrase back to them what they have said in a way that reassures them that you heard what they said, have understood it, and are concerned about it. This technique is sometimes also called Rogerian technique after Carl Rogers, the pioneering psychologist who found that people of any age will tell you more if you listen rather than ask. 

The practice of active listening will, in addition to encouraging your children to say more to you, set a profound example of the kind of sensitivity you hope they themselves will develop.
Say, "I'm sorry." Show your children your sensitivity and help them feel sensitive toward you. Whenever you have made a mistake or misjudgment or even been a little insensitive to a child's needs (through your own busy-ness, preoccupation, etc.), go to the child and say you're sorry for not being more in tune and sensitive to what they were worried about or needed.
Make an effort to tell your children how the things they do make you feel. This will help children be more aware of your feelings and be more sensitive toward them. If a teenager tells you that you are weird, tell him that that hurts your feelings. Sometimes children think of parents as people on whom they can vent their feelings without making a dent. Tell them not only the hurtful things but the positive things. For example, "It makes me feel so happy when I see you cleaning things up without being asked or helping your little brother with his homework."
Remember that unselfishness does not come naturally. Try to maintain your patience as you implement this "month." Everyone, although in varying degrees, is born with a certain amount of selfishness. There is no quick fix for learning to be unselfish. It is a process that takes thinking and practicing and a certain amount of maturity to develop. 

Praise. Reinforce -- and cause repetition of -- unselfish behavior. Heap praise on signs or symptoms or even brief glimpses of unselfishness in children of any age! Let's face it, an act of simple sharing in children -- particularly small ones -- is cause for genuine celebration. And it also calls for praise and recognition. When a child shares, or gives, or sees and responds to needs in another, praise him, pick him up and hug him, and point out what he's just done to anyone else who is around.
  "Parenting-by-Objective"
 
Review the activities and stories that go along with this months value. Make sure everyone in your family understands the value so they can see how they can apply it in their own lives and situations.

Talk about the Monthly Value every morning and remind your family to look for opportunities to use the value throughout the day. They may also observe how others don't understand the value. Get your children to share their experience with the value each day at the dinner table or before you go to bed. Be sure to share your experience each day as well. It will help your children know that you are thinking about the value too.

Parenting Value: Charity

Dinner Topics for Tuesday

Parenting Value: Charity

Richard and Linda Eyre

Individual and personal caring that goes both beneath and beyond loyalty and respect. Love for friends, neighbors, even adversaries. And a prioritized, lifelong commitment of love for family.

Introduction
Our youngest child is named Charity. We like the sound of the word as well as its definition of "pure love." A few weeks before her first birthday we were trying to generate a discussion of love with our older children around the dinner table. What is love? What causes us to feel it for others? And why are some people so much easier to feel it for than others?

Hard questions, especially for children. No -- maybe especially hard for adults and easier for children. The discussion went beyond what we had hoped. We found ourselves learning instead of teaching. We talked about love meaning caring and about how we love those who love us and do things for us. Then our eleven-year-old daughter brought up the illustration of baby Charity. "She doesn't do things for us, we do everything for her, and just think how much we all love Charity!" 

"Well, she does love us," said the seven year old, "you can tell that by how she looks at you."
"And she never tells you to be different," said our nine-year-old son, "she just seems to like you no matter what." 

What are the messages? 

First we learn to love by being loved unconditionally. 

The principle: We may not always love those who serve us. Their love, depending on how it is given, can spoil us, or intimidate us, or even antagonize us. But unconditional, understanding, fully accepting love warms us without reservation and brings about our reciprocal love. And while we may not necessarily love those who serve us, we will love those whom we serve.
Thus, all of the methods for teaching this value boil down to giving children unconditional love and giving them opportunities to serve. 

General Guidelines
Develop a Service Orientation. You and your children can learn collectively to love through serving. Any kind of service project is a "petri dish" for growing love. Look for charitable services that can be rendered as a family and that can involve your children. These can range from "Sub-for-Santa" charity programs at Christmas time to clean-up, fix-up projects in summer to helping needy people at any time of the year. 

Provide and Allow for Apology and "Repentance." This helps show children that you place love and improvement over punishment and penalty. Too often, well-meaning parents adopt an almost Gestapo-like mentality of "justice" and retribution. "Break a law, get a punishment."
Love is better taught in settings where "repentance" or restitution is an alternative to punishment. 

Teach children that when they make a mistake, or lose their temper, or break a family law, they can often avoid a punishment if they apologize, make restitution, and promise not to "do it again." For smaller children use the "repenting bench" mentioned earlier. When two children fight or argue, sit them on the bench and tell them that the only way to get off the bench is to say what they (not the other guy) did wrong, to apologize (including a hug), and to promise not to do it again. Help them to see that whenever there is a fight or argument, both parties have done something ("it takes two to tangle"). 

Praise them and show pride for any "repenting" they do. The whole process can add to the love that is expressed and felt in your home. 

Clearly Separate Dissatisfaction with Behavior from Love of Child. Assure and reassure your children of your unconditional love for them. At every instance of discipline or corrections reiterate that it is what the child did that you do not like and that your love for the child cannot be altered by anything. Mention this frequently to children of all ages and back it up with a hug and physical affection. Say, "James, I was really upset when you were two hours late getting home from school and didn't call me, and you deserve the penalty you're getting, but I want to remind you that it's what you did that I'm not so wild about. I still love you as much as ever. I always do and always will!"
  "Parenting-by-Objective"
Review the activities and stories that go along with this months value. Make sure everyone in your family understands the value so they can see how they can apply it in their own lives and situations.

Talk about the Monthly Value every morning and remind your family to look for opportunities to use the value throughout the day. They may also observe how others don't understand the value. Get your children to share their experience with the value each day at the dinner table or before you go to bed. Be sure to share your experience each day as well. It will help your children know that you are thinking about the value too.