Articles in Home | Home and Family | Parenting

The Greatest Gift We Can Give Our Children

By: Vincent Harris , Posted On: Monday, April 02, 2007

We often hear parents say, The most important thing I can give my children is my love. While this warms your heart initially, upon further investigation, it may not be as reassuring as we first thought. Things are done to children by parents everyday under the guise of love, which does little to bolster the self-esteem of those young ones, and in many cases, literally undermine the childs sense of self.

The reason Im not going to let you sit in your room and work on these crazy oil paintings, when you should be going out for a high school sport, playing football or something like that, like all of your friendsis because I love you! When a parent tells their teenage son or daughter some far fetched tale like this, its a clear example of their lack of understanding of human nature. Why then as parents, do people continue to say and do things like this? More times than not, our parenting is often the result of the cumulative effect of many generations before us. Were you ever spanked and told Im only doing this because I love you.? Is it any wonder then, that many men grow into big husky adults, who knock their wives around, truly believing that their actions are warranted and sincerely born from feelings of love?

The comeback to this by many is often Yes, but theres a BIG difference between the mind of a child, and that of an adult.adults should know better! Zig Ziglar once said You can tell more about a person by watching them for 30 seconds under stressful conditions, than by a lifetime of observation under relaxed conditions. My experience has been that Zig is right; Ive not yet met a man or woman that when placed under a sufficient amount of stress, dont revert to some very childlike and/or irrational behavior. Surely youve been awestruck when you read about a respected politician or Hollywood star, that shot holes in their wifes car, burned their husbands house down, or some equally radical behavior during a volatile divorce, havent you? When we are operating from deep emotional programs, logic is often quickly lost in the shuffle. Although its a generalization, with clear exceptions, those that had their self-esteem nurtured as children, will function more effectively under stress as adults.

What does all of this have to do with giving a gift to our children? Dr. Steven Reiss, a psychology professor at Ohio State University, discovered that there are 16 basic desires that drive human behavior. Each of us have our own distinct profile; on each of the 16 desires, we will find that it is very strong, extremely weak, or somewhere in between. For example, the desire for social contact is very powerful for some; many attend a different organization or club meeting each night of the week, and love it. On the other hand, someone else may rate that desire very low, craving a great deal of privacy and doing things at home with only family members.

Reiss points out that the strength of our desires is usually formed very early in life, and while they can change as we age, our overall profile will remain much the same. Why is this important? If you have a teenager with a low desire for physical activity, and a high desire for independence, and youre trying to force them into playing football in high school, you risk damaging the relationship with the child, and fueling the fire of resentment, neither of which will do much for their self concept or self esteem.

If youre wondering why parents feel compelled to push children into some things, and steer them away from others, we can answer that by coming right back to the 16 desires; a parent with a powerful desire for status power, and physical activity, might for example, direct their kids into activities and behaviors that will match those desires. When the child in question happens to rate relatively low on those particular desires, you have a time bomb waiting to explode.

This reminds me of the story about the scorpion and the bullfrog. As a bullfrog sat next to the edge of a stream one day, a scorpion approached and said, Hey man, I need to get to the other side. The frog snapped No way, youre a scorpion, youll sting me and Ill die! Hold on spouted the scorpion, I cant swim, that would be stupidId die too!

After considering the logic of the scorpion, the frog said Youre right, that wouldnt make sense, get on my back. With that the scorpion hopped on and the frog began to swim towards the other side.

Just as the frog reached the midway point, the scorpion violently stung the frog! What have you done? gasped the frog, as he struggled to stay afloat. I cant understand it. Why would you do that? Now were both going to die!

Just before they both slipped underwater, plunging to their certain deaths, the scorpion shouted Im a scorpion, and thats what scorpions do, we sting frogs!

Does it seem that your one of your children or perhaps your only child is your polar opposite? They may very well be, at least in terms of major desires. Our children will develop into the strong healthy adults they can become, when we support them in activities that fulfill their strongest 16 desires, not ours.

Only when we understand ourselves in terms of the 16 basic desires, can we then begin to more fully understand, accept, and support others.

You can get a powerful overview of each of the 16 basic desires in my soon to be released audio program: REVEALING HAPPINESS. For a more thorough and complete analysis of this theory however, I urge you to read the book, Who Am I? by Steven Reiss, Ph.D.

Love and acceptance are often worlds apart. Decide today, that youll find out more about yourself and what drives you to do the things you do, and vow that youll make a daily effort to become better at accepting and supporting your children and their unique view of the world.

Article Source: http://www.many-articles.com

 Loading ...

Syndicate Parenting Related Articles Via RSS!  

Boost your websites' ranking in the search engines, and attract more repeat visitors to your websites with automatic and continually updating content via Really Simple Syndication (RSS). To syndicate the above article "The Greatest Gift We Can Give Our Children" and other "Parenting" related articles at your websites and/or blogs, simply click on the XML Icon above to grab the RSS feed -- It's FREE!

Category: Home | Home and Family | Parenting