Confident Children: Help children feel good about themselves. Gael Lindenfield

Скачать книгу

4 Scepticism

       persistently dampening their children’s enthusiasm by overemphasizing pitfalls and possible negative outcomes

       being generally suspicious of people and reluctant to trust them

       advising their children to view the world and their future with a cynical and pessimistic eye (perhaps suggesting too often that their plans and hopes are ‘unrealistic’ or ‘immature’)

       5 Sorrow

       being too full of their own unresolved hurt or grief to be able to share in and nurture their children’s natural joie de vivre

       talking too longingly about the ‘good old days’

       talking too frequently about the ‘if onlys’ of their lives

       playing for sympathy so that their children feel obliged to care for them too much at the expense of their own welfare

       clinging to their own pain and sadness to such an extent that their children feel inhibited about celebrating their own achievements

       making children feel ‘obliged’ to make up for their own weaknesses and personality problems by encouraging them to be extra-assertive, prosperous or famous

       6 Servility

       being generally at everyone’s beck and call, and then suddenly ‘nose-diving’ into periods of burnout and bitterness

       doing too much for their children and making them overdependent and insensitive to other’s needs

       allowing their children to treat them with disrespect

       choosing to ‘suffer in silence’ when their children would be both willing and able to give help and support

       always giving the children better food, clothes, holidays and material goods than they would ever give themselves

       7 Stagnation

       being resistant to change and new ideas

       encouraging children to ‘play too safe’ and go for easy, familiar options

       leading a life which is overcontrolled by routine and regular rituals and has little opportunity for spontaneity

       not making an effort to make new friends

       being unwilling to travel to new places for holidays

       getting stuck in a rut with their social life (e.g. always going to the same pub or watching the same TV programme)

       being reluctant to update or experiment with their own image (e.g. clinging onto the same hairstyle, favourite style of shoes and ‘the only’ colour which suits them)

       making fun of their children’s natural curiosity and inclination to experiment

      Of course most of us are (and will always be) a mixture of both sinner and saint, and on some occasions we will look more predominantly like one than the other. That’s fine, as long as the mixture is a ‘good-enough’ blend. However, if your children are continually receiving an overdose of the sinner part of you or experiencing a confusing curdle of messages from both, you will almost certainly be damaging their confidence to some degree or other. But, before you start reaching for

       Most of us are both sinner and saint. That’s fineas long as the mixture is a ‘good-enough’ blend!

      the telephone numbers of psychiatrists or adoption agencies, why not try some simple self-improvement strategies? If you take some action in any of the following five areas it can only have a positively helpful effect. So for a while take the focus of your attention off your children, turn your critical (and caring) eye inwards and work through each of these following steps:

      Step 1: Become acquainted

      with your ‘auto-parent’

      ‘We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.’

      Anais Nin

      I know that most of my own ‘sins’ against my children’s confidence and well-being have been committed in spite of my good intentions. I used to hear myself saying:

       ‘How could I have done that?’

       ‘I didn’t mean to say that.’

       ‘I didn’t realize that I was doing that.’

      I was doing and saying things I would never have done or said in other relationships. Quite often I was behaving in ways that I knew had hurt and restricted me as a child and that I had sworn no one would ever see me doing to my children. Why should this have been so?

      The reason was that when my children were very young I was often acting in ‘auto-parent’ mode. Like many stressed and anxious mothers, I did not have the energy to think through and make conscious choices about what words and actions I would like to use, I just reacted and acted spontaneously. The difficulty was that my ‘spontaneity’ was (as is everybody’s) more the product of my own experiences as a child and my cultural conditioning than of any pure and virtuous maternal

Скачать книгу