Honoring the Self in Children

It seems to me that people who have the strongest need to discipline children are the same people who were, by their own admission, mistreated as children. It's sort of like, someone beat, belittled, screamed at me, so no other child should be free to be themselves.

I am very intentional in my parenting, while it may not always come across that way.

The values that I hope to most inspire in my children are self-esteem, creativity, honesty, and kindness.

It seems that we breed most children to be robots. I am not interested in having a robot-child. I would like to see both of my children fulfill their destiny as individuals.

There are a lot of rules that we impose our children that are more about not looking bad ourselves as parents than the actual best thing for the child.

I could spank or berate my children to get them to wear the clothes I want them to wear, to never allow them to speak their minds, to always have them be submissive puppets - but that is not raising children. That forcing them to conform into my image of what I want them to be.

I recently went back to a book I enjoyed several years ago and devoured it's content. Honoring the Self: Self-Esteem and Personal Transformation. By Nathaniel Branden. There are so many good quotes within it, but here are a few that stuck out.

"...imitativeness and conformity to authority are more the norm than the exception among most adults." 128

"We are taught very early to respect external signs above internal signals, to respect the voice of others above the voice of self. A "good" child is one who "minds" his or her elders, who "behaves". We are taught to identify virtue with compliance with the wants and needs of others. We are taught conformity as the ultimate civic good. We are taught obedience as the price of love and acceptance." (130)

"Generally schools are places where children learn not to think, but to follow the rules...school was not a place to learn to learn independent thinking, to have one's self assertiveness encouraged, to have one's autonomy nourished; it was a place to learn how to fit into some nameless system created by some nameless others and called "the world" or "society" or "the way life is" and was not to be questioned." (131) (This quote explains the #1 reason why I chose my son's school.)

"To varying degrees, then, the child learns to play dead in order to survive. In order to protect self-esteem, the child learns to surrender more and more of the self. The average child becomes an expert at self-sacrifice at the most profound psychological level: the level of mind and spirit, the level of the life-force itself." (145)

"Independent thinking often brings a person into conflict with the opinions and judgements of others, thus provoking disapproval or animosity." (134)

"When the price of harmony with others becomes the surrender of our mind, an autonomous individual chooses not to pay it." (135)

Taurus Bull

We spent a lot of the day yesterday with my husband. One thing about a separation, is you're supposed to be separate!

It was only supposed to be a movie and lunch. The kids have been wanting to see Up. But my daughter decided she didn't want to watch it as soon as we got into the theatre, so I took her home.

The boys came back with a nice bouquet of flowers for me.

My husband did some things that have been needing to be done in the garage. All in all, it went well, but by dinner time I was really ready for him to leave.

My daughter started acting up and he tried to discipline her but she wouldn't listen to him. Then he got angry and demanded that I do something with her. I really didn't think she had done anything wrong, so we were back in the irritation phase that both of us get into with each other around the kids.

Well, let me back peddle. She was running with some dull scissors. Not ideal, but all that needed to be done was to ask her to give them back or gently remove them from her hands. Instead, my husband started yelling and getting all upset that she was going to "hurt" herself with them. Possibly so, but knowing my daughter, that's the wrong approach. She's a very feisty girl. And most of the time, if you don't make a big deal of something, she will just back right down. But when my husband comes on so strong with her, she becomes adamant and will NOT do anything.

So he got mad that she told him no, and I didn't agree with him yelling at her because it seemed like it was a lot more about his need for control than her actually starting out doing something wrong. So she ended up on my lap crying and he was mad she wasn't standing in the corner.

He stomped up the stairs and I stayed with my daughter, who didn't really care about the scissors. She's 3. I don't know how those two will survive each other. They are both Taurus signs, and their birthdays are a day apart. From the start, they have rubbed each other the wrong way.

I know addicts have arrested development, which would put him somewhere in his teen years in terms of where he is emotionally, but he is still the adult. And I am often irritated that he doesn't act more like one.

I started making dinner early because I was tired and wanted to get to bed as soon as possible. He came in when it was almost done and asked if he was joining us for dinner.

I said, looks like you're here, doesn't it?

He got upset with my tone and told me I wasn't very gracious to him. I don't know how much more gracious I could be.

In any case, he finally left around 6 and we went to bed very early.

It was nice to have him take the garbage cans out for trash day, wash the dishes, and do some other things around the house. Sometimes doing IT ALL every day becomes completely exhausting.

He mentioned wanting to come home numerous times during the day. I told him I didn't see that happening. He says he misses us,but he still has that very negative energy, even when he's trying to be nice. I just don't want to live that way. I also told him I didn't want to wonder when and if he was coming home.