Parenting is one of the most important and often unappreciated jobs we have. Many parents struggle to maintain relationships with their children as they grow older and push us away in order to find their own independence and self worth. This is often a difficult time for both youth and parents.

Your child needs your praise, patience and good example throughout life.  You play a major role in helping your child decipher the world and develop a love for learning and life.

~ Encourage your child's academic achievement

~ Help your child develop social skills

~ Build strong family ties

~ Raise children of good character


Components of a peaceful parent/child relationship:

Patience:  Patience is a process that comes from a deep sense of calmness and well-being.  It is an absolute necessity in a parent's daily interaction with a child.  As a parent, when you are stressed, the task of being patient will be infinitely more difficult than when you are calm.  In order to remain patient, you must first take into consideration your own stress that may be unconsciously driving your state of functioning.  Next, you must make a concerted effort to be aware of your child's needs at all times and consider what she/he may be feeling at any given moment.  And remember, you cannot be patient all of the time.  When you do fail in the area of patience, you can always apologize for raising your voice or lashing out, and promise to do better the next time.

Acceptance:  Acceptance is the unconditional love that lies beneath the essential lifelong commitment a parent makes to his/her child.  It is vital to the child's healthy survival in the world.  This level of commitment communicates to your child, "No matter what may happen in life, you are okay with me, and for this reason I accept you as you are."  When a child receives this core message, she/he will carry this as a stepping stone into all areas throughout the rest of his/her life.  We all have a need to be accepted, to belong, to feel a part of, to be invited into a group with values and beliefs that coincide with those that resonate deep within our being.  Whether it is a group of friends, the human race, a community, or a family; being accepted is a means of defining ourselves.  Many children, unfortunately, do not have this deep sense of acceptance to fall back on during the struggles of life.  These children live with a deep believe that they are inadequate, not accepted, and are unable to be valued and loved.  The result is a life of constant self-doubt and low self-worth.  Such children grow up and become adults who try to find their self-worth in others, always looking to others or their work or their money for approval.  Acceptance between a parent and child is the unspoken agreement that within their relationship that all is okay for now and forever.  When difficult times come, as surely as they will, this child knows that she/he can always return to her parent for security and acceptance.

Compassion:  Compassion is the act of feeling deeply for the life position of another individual.  Life position is defined as the stage of internal growth one has attained through experience.  For children, their life position is vastly compromised and so completely dependent upon the responses of the environment.  For example, when I took my child to Disney World for a summery vacation, in the process of my own internal frenzy to ensure that she had the greatest time possible, I stopped for a moment to reflect upon what I was feeling and what she might be feeling.  In an instant, relief flooded my body as I realized how lost she was in the excitement of the experience, and to simply be in the experience from her life position would be an abundant experience.  I didn't have to rush all around Disney like a mad man; I could simply allow my child to experience life from her 7-year-old position.  I was able to experience deeply a sense of compassion for her youth that I had seldom felt.  To this day I continue to reflect on the essence of that moment to allow me to connect to my child on a deep and compassionate level.

Encouragement:  Encouragement is an aspect of our relationship with our children that we simply cannot do enough of.  Have you ever had the experience as an adult of wanting to do something new?  Maybe you were considering a new job or a major purchase, but were feeling unsure.  What did you need?  What did you eventually receive?  Ultimately, when life presents us with a challenge, the sheer magnitude of the fear we create can lead us to fall back and not make an effort.  For children, this experience happens daily.  Simply the effort to work on a homework assignment alone can present an enormous degree of fear for a child.  Imagine the significance of a simple, "You can do it, I have faith in you," for a child when facing a life obstacle.  As we encourage our children in daily life experiences we are endowing them with a deep sense of their ability to trust themselves in the endeavors they pursue.  As a child growing up, I can recall with the greatest sensation of love, never an ill word spoken towards my endeavors.  From 7 years of age when I wanted to start a lemonade stand on the corner block, to an adult when I desired to build a fortress for family healing, nothing but loving support.  Encouragement is one of the purest blessings we can ever bestow upon our children. 

Forgiveness:  Forgiveness of self forms the foundation of love and forgiveness of others.  In my work with families I encounter all of the time parents who have experienced deep pain during childhood at the hands of their own parents, and the first thing they generally say is, "Oh, I have forgiven my parents."  Without a doubt, when I hear this I sense deeply within myself an individual who has not fully embraced the understanding of forgiveness.  Forgiveness is a process of self-awareness and self-acceptance, which allows us to see our actions both positive and negative and take responsibility fo them as opposed to feeling blamed, which leads to guilt.  In other words, it is the human condition to blame ourselves for all things negative.  Regrettably this takes place in the form of shaming, and denial of ones feelings, and a building up of a sense of ones lack of worth.  The abused child comes to believe that they are the reason for the abuse.  If only they could behave better.  The abused child as an adult comes to deny the feeling of not being good enough and reinforces this negative self-picture with a misconception of forgiving his/her parents.  In fact, this only fosters his/her sense of shame and denial.  Rather, the adult must come to the deeply emotional awakening that he/she must forgive herself/himself for the years spent devaluing, blaming, and shaming his/her beautiful self.  Until we can forgive ourselves, we cannot forgive others fully.  All else becomes face value, simply surface.  For parents in their interaction with their own children, it is essential to see their own inherent parental shortcomings.  We must strive to do the best that we can but also realize we will make mistakes as our parents also made mistakes.  When the mistakes occur, as surely they will, we must first forgive ourselves for our imperfections and then seek forgiveness from our children.  Forgiveness should also come with the promise and effort to do better next time.  As God forgives us, so should we forgive ourselves and seek forgiveness from others.

Understanding:  Understanding our children means perceiving precisely what they mean rather than assuming an ulterior motive.  It means being sympathetic toward their point of view.  Most parenting theories fail to teach parents the necessity of understanding.  This failure is not in the parents themselves, but in what they have been taught.  This teaching began with the parent's parents and their parents before them.  Along the way, in all of the confusion, some may have been led even further astray by misinformed therapists who themselves had received much the same form of parenting.  This problem runs rampant in our society.  We have been directed to look outside ourselves for solutions, but in doing so we miss the single greatest solution to almost any conflict, which is simply understanding the situation from the other person's perspective.  It is often difficult to understand the behavior of a child because we fail to understand our own reactions first.  Generally, misbehavior, if not interpreted correctly, will lead to a parental feeling of fear, which will give way to guilt or blame, and in some instances, a deeper sense of shame.  When this occurs the parent has already stepped out of range of understanding his/her child.  The primary key to understanding your child is in your perception of his/her behavior.  Parents are often so intent on believing that children are inherently disobedient, that they fail to see the true emotions driving their children's' behavior.  Most often, it is not about disobedience at all.  It is the presence of fear that causes adverse behavior.  If a parent will look beneath the behavior to the underlying fear of the child, he/she will be better able to approach his/her child with an attitude of understanding.

April is Child Abuse Prevention month and to make the greatest effort possible to help combat these terrible occurrences, I've decided to put on a series of exclusive, Child Abuse Education and Prevention Tele-Seminars 
for the POST Institute Network.

http://www.postinstitute.com/chldpreventionseminar.html


These Tele-Seminars which will be held weekly throughout the month of April are FREE for members of the network and to your friends and family that you may wish to forward this e-mail to. 

Growing up in the world we live in, being parented as most of us were, and working hard to make a living for our families, puts all of us as parents at risk of child abuse. 

Stress is the single greatest cause of child abuse. 

Our old models of understanding why adults abuse children is no longer sufficient. We must begin looking 
at both adults and children in a different way.

The goal is education. 

Education is the single greatest combatant to child abuse.

This understanding is not easy. Simple yes, but not easy. Everyday we are required to look deep within ourselves to see our own pain, and from our own center begin to understand better the world around us. We all have a story that can support the healing of our families, our children, and ultimately our world.

Everyday we must practice being mindful and aware.

Do you see?
Are you ready to see?

Join me this month as we dig deeper into our own self-understanding so that we might become an even greater loving force against the pain of fear and child abuse.
We want you to be among the first to know that the Afterschool Alliance is launching a "face book" or story book project to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers initiative.  To be unveiled this fall, the "face book" will feature people whose lives have been improved through afterschool programs over the last decade. 
 
 

With your help, we hope to collect a few profiles from each state -- people with powerful personal stories that speak to the impact of afterschool programs.  We are looking for diversity of every kind in our "faces," so people from big cities and small towns, of every race, age and discipline, and with stories of all kinds.  Examples would be:

-- A graduate student who became inspired to study engineering or international affairs or medicine because of her/his experience in afterschool

-- A student who was in trouble (using illegal substances, etc.) until an afterschool program turned her/him around

-- A student in an afterschool program now who is doing an exciting and unusual service learning or cultural awareness project there

-- An educator who was burned out, but later reinvigorated by her/his experience at an afterschool program

--  A business leader who has made a commitment to mentor students and finds it incredibly rewarding

-- A senior citizen who volunteers at an afterschool program and has made a real difference in students' lives

-- A health professional who reached families with obesity/diabetes problems, or something like that, through intervention from afterschool program leaders

But do not be constrained by those examples, please think broadly about all the people afterschool programs affect.

Every person in our "face book" will be identified by name and photo, so should be willing to have his/her name and image used.  We only want to feature people who are willing to speak publicly and give media interviews about their positive experience with afterschool.

We won't be able to do significant vetting, or check for criminal records, so we will count on you to help us find people who are above reproach.

So, we'd like to ask you to "nominate" candidates from our state for the "face book" by sending to me at bfindley@sppg.com.

Once we have looked at the story, we will pass it along to the national Afterschool Alliance office. They may invite your candidate to post her/his photo and accompanying information online.

Thank you for considering this, and helping us brainstorm candidates!  We think this is a very exciting project that will help us tell the stories of afterschool in new and compelling ways. We appreciate your ideas and support!

http://www.grinnelliowa.gov/splash/

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