Great Kids

By Carol Surya

Tired, confused and often overwhelmed by our children's complexity, this book offers a new way of understanding, approaching and appreciating them. Parents, all over the world, are becoming aware that their children are truly amazing! Yet today's parents are being challenged as never before. Somehow, the discipline strategies from our past seem to have changed completely. The old ways of parenting no longer seem to work. Living in a completely different, technologically advanced world, today's kids are different. They often don't respond easily to punitive discipline methods. They can be highly sensitive and perceptive, yet equally strong-willed and emotionally intense. Baffling us with their restlessness, range of challenging behaviour and other intolerances, nowadays children ironically seem be more 'switched on' than we were, with virtually unlimited energy. It is about recognizing, acknowledging and learning to boost your child's natural potential. Learning to help our kids redirect their excess energy, express and manage their emotions appropriately, changes everything. This begins with an understanding of their world - the world of feeling. From here, it explores the issue of respect and the importance of choice and responsibility for today's generation. Scattered with practical examples, we learn simple, highly effective tools for respectful disciplining, establishing security and building our child's self esteem. The book also offers a step-by-step guide of 30 practical tips and imaginative games, giving one plenty of tried and tested ways to implement this new approach and watch your children's natural potential blossom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raider Publishing International
• Release date: Aug 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465939012

Book preview

Great Kids

By Carol Suyra

Published by Raider Publishing International a Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Carol Suyra

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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In honour of all children, everywhere...

Introduction

From the moment of their first breath, every child is filled with an amazing, unique, natural potential. It allows them to thrive. To shine brilliantly. The eyes of a baby sparkle with radiance and perfection: the ‘inner magic’ of potential. No matter when, where or how a child is born, despite all kinds of favourable or adverse circumstances, every child remains special and unique. This is true, irrespective of what they will face, how they will develop and who they will become in the future. Within each child, there is the capacity and blueprint to be magnificent. There is not a child alive today, who does not have this wonderful natural potential. It is our birthright as human beings.

This book is about strengthening that inner greatness so that our kids may shine and achieve their full potential.

Nowadays, kids have the opportunity to become all they can possibly dream of being: of seeing and being aware of their own inner beauty, and allowing this to shine. It is up to us, as parents, to recognize their specialness, to marvel at their awesome creativity, and to enhance their unique strengths and talents. In this way, we enable our children to grow in self confidence and self esteem. Parents, all over the world, are becoming aware that their children are truly amazing! Many parents are searching for new ways of parenting, wishing to help their children fully develop their brilliant potential. If you are one of these parents, this book has been written specially for you!

Today's parents are challenged as never before. Our awareness of our children’s potential gives us an added responsibility. We have more knowledge and resources at our disposal than in previous times, and with the insights gained from these must come a greater accountability for the outcome of our childrearing practices. We yearn to enhance our children’s potential, yet we often fail to understand their behaviour, and are perplexed as to how to manage it. Somehow, the rules from our past and our own upbringing seem to have changed completely. The old ways of rearing children no longer work. We are left wondering how to respond, and discipline effectively and helpfully, rather than destructively. If you have ever felt this way, rest assured that you are not alone.

Today's kids are different. They are living in a completely different world to the one in which we grew up. Nowadays, children can connect with others all over the world via the internet, through mobile phones, wireless connections and web-cameras. It is not uncommon for a toddler to receive her first computerised toy by age two! Today's children know how today's technology works. They can use DVD players, operate mobile phones, manoevre remote control toys and play computer games – sometimes simultaneously! Their technological understanding is more advanced, their perception more expansive and their ability to grasp today's rapidly changing world, astounding.

Linked to these changes, however, is another set of seemingly new characteristics. For instance, our children do not respond well to shouts, threats, physical punishment, authoritative demands, or in fact, any traditional methods of discipline. They do not accept being told what to do without a reasonable explanation. Nowadays, they want adults to treat them with respect, and react adversely to manipulation and emotional blackmail. Another aspect of today's generation, is that they appear to be far more sensitive and perceptive than we were. For some, this sensitivity may be experienced on several levels (i.e. sight, sound, smell, touch, taste and intuition). With radical changes in agricultural practices over the last few decades, together with the advent of additives, preservatives, processed and denatured foods, high levels of sugar and imbalanced nutrition, children are growing up with alien chemical substances in their bodies. These residual chemicals can result in the development of a range of food intolerances, allergies, and health imbalances as well as behavioral concerns and anomalies.

In response, some of us may call our kids ‘fussy eaters’, or complain when they seem to know exactly what their body wants and does not want to digest. Some children are very clear in expressing their preference for eating simple unprocessed foods, for example, brown rice, fruit and vegetables. Others astonish us with their unusual 'adult-like' requests, such as olives and asparagus. In fact, many children are so sensitive that they are diagnosed as 'touch-sensitive', their skin being allergic to chemicals in regular washing detergents, and certain fabrics.

It doesn’t end there. Somehow, today’s children challenge us further, because they have boundless energy. They never seem to tire. Sometimes, as adults, we feel exhausted just watching them.

Unfortunately, many children are incorrectly diagnosed and/or quickly labelled with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), autism, and other learning disabilities. As parents, without knowing how to make sense of these labels, we still feel certain that our children are special and perhaps misunderstood. We endlessly try to make sense of it all. Meanwhile, deep down, we know that our children are far more aware and tuned-in than we were at their age. They even seem to be aware of the emotions of other people: easily assessing others with uncanny intuition.

And then there is the complication of the intensity with which these children experience their emotions. Extremely joyful in one moment, they may switch to exceptional anger or emotional upset in the next. Demanding a high degree of emotional honesty from those around them, the children of today know when adults are lying to them, or attempting to hide their true feelings. We may realise that our extrovert child is sensitive to criticism, and tends to take things very personally when scolded. Many children are also deeply concerned with justice and fair play. At the same time, these very ‘angels of justice’ may easily manipulate us with their exceptionally strong will power and ‘off the wall’ behaviour. Does this ring a bell?

Yet, just when we think that things cannot become more complicated, our children stun us by making profound statements, asking deeply meaningful questions and displaying signs of high intelligence. Repetitively labeled as 'learning disabled', we may notice our child easily solving complex problems without being shown how. Frequently restless and overactive, how is it that our five year old often comes up with extremely creative and perceptive ideas? Suddenly we realize that they are able to focus, as long as they are allowed to implement their own unique solutions to projects of interest to them. The same so-called 'restless' child actually continues with one activity that interests him without tiring, losing interest, or showing any signs of hyperactivity. Similarly, our demanding and defiant eight year old, might surprise us with her compassion and unconditional empathy with those in need. On the one hand, seemingly selfish, on the other, we recognise a deep level of caring towards humanity and a strong bond with animals. In fact, as a parent, thinking back, we may recall that our child was highly aware even as an infant, and often seemed wise beyond his years. These are just a few of the challenges and complexities that face contemporary parents.

As parents, it is natural to feel exhausted, confused, overwhelmed and even hopeless by all of this. However, learning to help our children redirect their energy and express their emotions appropriately changes everything. There are simple and practical ways to draw out our children's natural potential. We will look at daily opportunities for you to help them explore their creativity, practice their independence, uncover their abilities and express themselves freely. This begins with an understanding of our child's world – the world of feeling.

In the first section this is explored in depth, through the use of everyday practical examples. With this understanding, we are then able to delve deeper into the next section, which explores the issue of respect – the sensitive approach intrinsic to today’s discipline. By practicing certain core values necessary for progressive parenting, and learning about the relevance of choice and responsibility, we are soon able to implement effective disciplinary tools. Using these powerful, simple and respectful ways to discipline your children allows their natural essence to magically blossom. Instead of them becoming increasingly difficult, defiant or withdrawn when disciplined, through the consistent use of these progressive disciplinary tools, your children hear your words in a way that actually enhances their self worth, fosters their independence and reflects positively in their behaviour. After all, the word discipline derives from the Latin ‘disco’, ‘I lead’, and so we may be empowered to become leader parents rather than the tyrannical parent we sometimes, to our dismay, perceive ourselves to be.

Understanding the importance of establishing our child’s security via routines and boundaries, the third section enables us to acquire simple, practical and progressive ways to strengthen security, offer encouragement and build our child's self esteem. In this way our child's inborn potential is able to surface naturally. With this knowledge and awareness, it becomes easy to understand and naturally implement the practical tools and imaginative games which are offered in the final section of this book. Recognising and acknowledging your child's radiant potential and innate capabilities, then becomes an increasingly exciting and immensely satisfying journey. Each new day, instead of being a parenting challenge or nightmare to endure, now becomes another wonderful opportunity to enhance everything that is unique, special, and awesome about your child, in simple, yet profoundly effective ways.

Contents

Introduction

Feelings

Understanding Emotion

Understanding Your Child’s Behaviour

Acknowledging Your Child’s Feelings

Managing Feelings

Respect: The ‘new’ way to discipline

The Parenting Dilemma

Values

Choice and Responsibility

Tools for Effective Discipline

Security

Routine and Boundaries

Actively Enhancing Security

Rituals

Building Self Esteem

Practical Tools

Let’s Get Practical

Bibliography

Section 1

Feelings

1

Understanding Emotion

Imagine for a moment that everything that you see, hear, touch, taste and feel could be magnified. The words on this page, the feel of the paper in your hands, the shades of light as they reflect off the page or your computer monitor screen, the distant sounds of traffic, voices or music. Imagine yourself being much shorter and smaller than you are. Now imagine seeing the table, the bed, the television and the kitchen counter, all from the level of the eyes of a five year old. How might the world seem to you from this angle? How would you feel if you could step into your child’s shoes and experience his world for a day? How different would everything in your world seem?

How might this experience change the way in which you relate to your child?

The world of a child is a world of being completely present, totally in touch with what is here now. It is a world of constantly shifting sensations and emotions. One of imagination, wonder and delight. Young children live from their hearts, not their heads. They have not yet learned how to analyse, interpret, judge, doubt and rationalise everything. Experiencing each moment unattached to the next, young children live with a certain unbridled purity, innocence and enthusiasm, to which we as adults, often yearn to return. For children, each experience is brand new. Each moment is unlike the next, and each emotion while experienced is full of intensity until it subsides and is spontaneously replaced by the next emotion. Experiencing life as a roller-coaster of feeling is quite natural and effortless for children.

However, children live in a 'big peoples' world, without a verbal language of feeling with which to express themselves effectively. Nor do they know of acceptable and appropriate ways in which to identify and then express their intense emotions. Instead, their feelings tend to bubble to the surface, boiling over into 'difficult' or 'unacceptable' behavior such as restless overactivity, excess energy, acts of defiance, temper tantrums and other negative attention seeking behaviours. Frequently labelled ‘difficult’ or ‘challenged’ in some way, over time many children learn to ignore their body signals and intuitive gut reactions. Instead they stifle their emotions, and learn to adapt to the rational world of logic, reason and expectation. Emotional expression is seldom rewarded. So little by little the sense of wonder and delight, the thrill of adventure, the intensity of anger, and the present moment awareness which adults find so remarkable in a child, begin to wane.

The irony is that when we allow and encourage our children (and ourselves) to experience all emotions fully as they arise in the moment, the emotion will subside. This leaves one able to experience fully whatever other emotion arises in the next moment, and so on. In contrast, when we frown upon and discourage our children from the full expression of so-called negative emotions such as anger, sadness and hate, these are stored in the internal fabric of their beings and inevitably seek expression via all sorts of inappropriate behaviors. It is these unacceptable behaviors that cause parents such anxiety and concern. Naturally, parents want to protect their children from society’s disapproval and even rejection. Yet, when we actively help our children to acknowledge and express their emotions fully in appropriate and effective ways, we give them a real opportunity to be in touch with themselves and the expressions of their own bodies. By experiencing and coming to know their own internal selves in this way, they achieve insights which usually result in self initiated changes in behaviour. A three year old who is encouraged to really feel the intense anger coursing through his body, identify it, and express it appropriately, say by punching a pillow, soon learns how powerful this emotion is. Once it can be named, it can be understood, acknowledged and released appropriately. He can begin then to gain a sense of control over his actions.

Given this encouragement, children grow emotionally and are able to achieve a measure of healthy self control. This integrated way of being, of knowing one's own internal world and experiencing life by processing our emotions as they arise, is what sages and enlightened masters through the centuries have dedicated several years striving to attain. Yet it is very simple. If we observe children we can allow them to remind us how to be fully alive, expressive and present to each moment and the world around us. As adults most of us have learned through a series of painful experiences and ongoing societal and cultural conditioning to suppress our emotions (the feelings in our bodies) thoroughly and consistently. We have learned to survive in a critical world. We escape our feelings by retreating into the controllable realm of our heads: thinking ourselves into rationality. To understand our children, we must return to our heart. We must learn about the child’s world of feelings. We must become as little children, standing in their shoes. This is empathy.

The word ‘emotion’ derives from the Latin ‘emovere’ ‘to move out’. Emotion is literally energy in motion. Explained biochemically, emotion is a sudden change in the chemicals coursing through the bloodstream in response to an external event or stimulus. Our feeling response triggers a physiological change which then translates into the action of expressed emotion. Emotions are not permanent. They come and go. They are transitory, just like our thoughts. In this sense, we may even acknowledge that emotions are somewhat 'unreal'. This in no way diminishes their power or relevance in the moment of experience. In fact, part of the human condition is that we do feel things intensely. We are not robots. We are not computers, merely processing information according to a set of predetermined criteria. Emotions, even though fleeting or illusionary, give our lives flavour, texture and meaning. Some may even argue that it is our very ability to experience emotion that sets us apart from other living creatures.

Yet somehow, when it comes to children, our tendency as adults has been to try and prevent them from feeling or expressing intense emotions (specially the so-called 'negative' ones like anger, jealousy or hatred). An old adage from a few generations ago emphasised this with the saying ‘children are to be seen and not heard’. Many of us grew up under the influence of that philosophy, with our parents preferring us to remain quiet, unobtrusive and obedient. Today's society and today's children however are nothing like this. Theirs is a world full of feeling. If we want our children to experience joy, we must also be willing to allow them to experience pain. If we want them to be happy, we must acknowledge that they must inevitably experience its opposite – sadness – as well. The truth is that we cannot really protect our children from experiencing a full range of both positive and negative experiences, despite living in a culture that often frowns upon expressions of anger, sadness or pain. The process of life after all offers a full range of experiences and emotions. To experience an emotion we also have to experience its opposite.

Emotions are like waves

Fortunately very young children have not yet learnt to distinguish which emotions are more acceptable than others in their environment. They feel their emotions fully no matter what these are. Children go about the business of living from one moment to the next; rather like riding a roller-coaster, or sailing the ocean. For children, emotions - energy in motion - are like waves. Like a wave, emotions rise and fall. Any emotion will continue to rise - or build up internally - until it peaks fully. Then it is spontaneously ‘spent’ and disappears instantly, like a wave that has crashed to shore. Once it is over, there is no longer any trace of it. So it is also with young children.

When children feel an emotion, anger for example, it automatically shows in their body language and behaviour. The face reddens, the jaw clenches, and they might shout, lash out or hit. Our job as adults is to help our children verbalise and manage the emotion, assisting them in expressing and directing the energy appropriately.

Think of a youngster who has not yet developed language skills, such as a toddler who is only just beginning to talk. The only effective way in which he can express himself is through bodily gestures: facial expressions, pointing, pulling, shaking or nodding the head, making sounds. Despite the limited range of communication, his parents instantly understand that he is saying 'no' when he shakes his head. In fact most parents become experts at interpreting what their toddler is communicating simply by looking at the facial expression. We soon learn the body language specific to our own children.

The challenge in interpreting our toddler's communication gestures often causes us endless frustration. Naturally there are many times when we lose our patience, guess at what is being communicated, and react spontaneously. When we ignore,