Your Need To Know

I did not intend to write articles on parenting, as I would rather leave that chore to the child psychologists and other experts. But, I was reading an interesting story in last months Reader’s Digest titled Inspire Your Children. This story is about parenting and what you should and should not say to your children.

The story focused on communicating effectively with your children and how it is possible to cause emotional and psychological harm through the words you choose.

The reason I chose to write “Parental Guidance Suggested” was to show the relationship between the subconscious mind and how we are taught and conditioned from birth. It has little to do with demographics or socioeconomics whether a child is a success in life or is not.

It is true, we must be careful of everything we say to our children. Whether we know it or not, we are continually molding their lives. Their futures will reflect all that we do for them or to them while they are small children.

When children are very young, they accept every word of their fathers and mothers as fact.
If a parent continually tells a child “You’re bad!” the child believes it, and of course he proves this statement true.

If a mother consistently says to her son, every time he had done something wrong “You’ll spend your life in prison, or end up in the gas chamber”. Would it be any wonder if this boy became a criminal? He was given a reputation to live up to, and the chances are very good that he will live up to it.

We should never refer to a child as being anything except what we want him or her to be. To call a child bad, stupid, lazy, timid — or any of the things you don’t want your child to be — is actually planting seeds in his or her subconscious mind, which will grow and mature.

There are ways of correcting children without calling them bad. “Good boys don’t do that,” you might say. This compares the child with the good instead of the bad. Being conscious of what we say and choosing the right words does require some effort. But keep in mind, the effort required to keep our children on the right track is nothing compared to the heartaches which can result as our children grow to adulthood.

No instructions are provided to us when our children are born. No license is required. No proficiency tests. So we must do our best in raising our children with care and positive reinforcement.

Having children is God’s greatest blessing, and it’s also our greatest responsibility. When we bring a child into this world, he or she is like a piece of clay placed in our hands to mold as we wish. What our children will be in twenty years depends entirely on what we put into them while they are a child.

Gina