Chapter 4
The Power of Words: Beyond Praise and Criticism
In psychotherapy, children are never told "You are a good little boy" or "You are great." Such evaluative praise creates anxiety, invites dependency, and evokes defensiveness. Children need freedom from judgmental praise so others don't become their primary source of approval. Instead, they need encouragement that builds self-reliance and inner motivation.
Sometimes praise backfires unexpectedly. When Ivan's mother praised him for being "such a good boy" after a quiet car ride, he immediately dumped an ashtray's contents all over his parents. Later, Ivan revealed he had been fantasizing about getting rid of his baby brother-making his mother's praise feel undeserved and triggering his guilt. The praise made him desperate to show he didn't deserve it.
Children who harbor occasional destructive wishes about family members may reject praise like "You are such a good boy" because it contradicts their self-image. The more they're praised for being "good," the more they misbehave to show their "true self." Research shows children praised for being "smart" become less likely to take on challenges, while those praised for effort become more persistent with difficult tasks.
Effective praise consists of two parts: what we say to children and what they say to themselves afterward. Our words should clearly state what we appreciate about their efforts or accomplishments, framed so children naturally draw positive, realistic conclusions about themselves. When Kenny helped move heavy furniture, his father commented on the task's difficulty rather than calling Kenny "strong," allowing Kenny to reach that conclusion himself.
Similarly, criticism should address behavior rather than character. When eight-year-old Mary spilled juice, her mother simply said, "I see the juice spilled. Let's get another glass and a sponge," without adding cutting comments or useless admonitions. When things go wrong, it's best to deal with the event, not the person.
Unlike objects that remain unchanged by negative descriptions, children are deeply affected by abusive adjectives. When called "clumsy" or "stupid," children internalize these labels, begin to believe them, and adjust their behavior accordingly. A child labeled "clumsy" may avoid physical activities; one called "stupid" may stop trying academically, adopting the motto: "If I don't try, I can't fail."
Chapter 5
Handling Anger Constructively
Many of us were taught that anger is bad, making us feel guilty for experiencing and expressing it. We try to be patient until we inevitably explode. Resolutions about not becoming angry are worse than futile-they add fuel to the fire. Emotionally healthy parents are aware of their anger and respect it, using it as a source of information.
When Jane couldn't find her baseball shirt, her mother expressed anger without insults: "I'm angry. I've bought you six baseball shirts and they're either mislaid or lost. Your shirts belong in your dresser." Anger should be expressed in a way that brings relief to the parent, insight to the child, and no harmful side effects to either.
The first step in handling turbulent feelings is to identify them clearly by name, starting with "I": "I feel annoyed" or "I feel irritated." The second step is expressing anger with increasing intensity: "I feel angry" to "I feel furious." The third step is stating the reason for our anger and our inner reactions: "When I see shoes spread all over the floor, I get furious. I feel like throwing the whole mess into the street."
This approach allows parents to vent anger safely while teaching children that anger can be expressed without destroying anyone. It demonstrates acceptable channels of emotional expression that children can learn from.
When children are upset, they respond to emotional understanding, not reasoning. By mirroring a child's feelings rather than questioning or judging them, parents can defuse anger and avoid becoming judge and enforcer. When Billy complained that his sister knocked over his fort, his mother simply said, "Oh-h-h-h, that must have made you very angry," allowing him to feel understood and move on.
Chapter 6
Self-defeating Patterns in Parenting
Certain patterns of relating to children almost always fail to achieve our long-term goals and often create immediate havoc at home. These self-defeating approaches include threats, bribes, promises, sarcasm, verbal overkill, sermons on lying and stealing, and rude teaching of politeness.
To children, threats function as invitations to repeat forbidden acts. When told "If you do it once more," a child hears only "do it once more." Such warnings serve as challenges to the child's autonomy, virtually ensuring the behavior will be repeated. When five-year-old Oliver kept throwing a ball at the window despite warnings, his father's threat "If the ball hits the window once more, I'll beat the living daylights out of you" led directly to broken glass.
Similarly self-defeating is the approach that explicitly tells a child that if he will (or will not) do something, then he will get a reward. This "if-then" approach may occasionally spur immediate action but rarely inspires continual efforts. Our words convey doubt in the child's ability to change. Some children purposely misbehave to get parents to pay them for better behavior, leading to bargaining and blackmail.
Promises should neither be made to, nor demanded of, children. Relations with our children should be built on trust. When parents must make promises to emphasize sincerity, they're admitting their regular word isn't trustworthy. Promises build unrealistic expectations in children who don't understand that circumstances may prevent fulfillment.
A parent with a gift for sarcasm creates a serious mental health hazard. Comments like "Are you deaf? Why don't you listen?" or "Were you brought up in a jungle?" are attacks that invite counterattacks and block communication by stirring revenge fantasies. Bitter sarcasm and cutting cliches have no place in child upbringing.
Parents have a reputation for repeating themselves and overstating the obvious, causing children to tune out with a silent "Enough already!" Economical responses prevent minor mishaps from becoming major catastrophes. When eight-year-old Al complained about his brother Ted's teasing, his mother simply said, "Ted, you choose. You can get the usual lecture or take care of the complaint yourself." Ted laughed and answered, "Okay, Mom, I'll bug off."
Chapter 7
Building Responsibility Through Respect
Parents often believe daily chores will teach responsibility, but forceful insistence on tasks may result in mere obedience rather than true character development. Responsibility cannot be imposed-it must grow from within, nourished by values absorbed at home. Children need responsibility anchored in positive values like reverence for life and concern for human welfare: compassion, commitment, and caring.
While we often focus on concrete manifestations of responsibility-clean rooms, punctuality, completed homework-true responsibility springs from ultimate values like reverence for life and concern for human welfare. Children who always follow orders without making choices may still make irresponsible decisions as adults. Values cannot be taught directly but are absorbed through identification with people children love and respect.
Parents cannot win the war over chores and responsibilities-children have more time and energy to resist than parents have to coerce. Instead, build relationships by understanding their perspective and listening sensitively to their feelings. When parents insist on participation without considering children's feelings, they create resentment. Like Mr. Garret's cook who stopped spitting in his soup only when treated with respect, children have many ways to make parents' lives miserable when forced to comply.
Children accept the image their parents mirror to them, much like someone looking into the only available mirror. Negative labels like "stupid," "lazy," or "clumsy" distort a child's self-image and burden them for life rather than motivate change. As Pablo Casals said, children need to hear "You are a marvel! You are a miracle!" Parents who recognize and reflect their children's positive qualities help them discover their special strengths and develop healthy self-awareness.
Responsibility isn't innate or automatically acquired at a certain age-it develops slowly through daily practice in exercising judgment. Parents should distinguish between matters where children have a voice (input but not final decision) versus a choice (full decision-making power). This distinction helps clarify the boundaries of responsibility between parent and child.
Even young children can make choices about food-a two-year-old deciding between half or full glass of milk, a four-year-old choosing between half or whole apple. Rather than asking "What do you want for breakfast?" parents should offer specific options: "Do you want eggs scrambled or fried?" This conveys that children have responsibility for their affairs and aren't just recipients of orders.
Chapter 8
Discipline Without Punishment
Parents need a guiding principle similar to the physician's motto "Primum non nocere" (Above all, do no damage) to ensure they don't harm their children's emotional well-being while disciplining them. The essence of discipline is finding effective alternatives to punishment. When parents punish children, they generate rage that prevents learning and fosters revenge fantasies.
Modern parents act with hesitation while earlier generations disciplined with authority. Our uncertainty stems from warnings about the costly consequences of unhappy childhoods, creating doubt even when we're right. This contrasts with our ancestors who acted confidently even when wrong.
Parents who desperately need to be loved by their children are at a disadvantage. When parents fear losing their children's love, they become unable to deny anything, including control of the home. Children sense this weakness and exploit it through emotional blackmail ("I won't love you if..."). The tragedy isn't in the child's threat but in parents feeling threatened, leading to overpermissiveness that damages both parties.
Permissiveness means accepting the childishness of children-that clean shirts won't stay clean, that running is their normal locomotion. It recognizes children's constitutional right to have all kinds of feelings and wishes. Fish swim, birds fly, and people feel. Children aren't responsible for their feelings but for their behavior. Over-permissiveness, by contrast, allows undesirable acts. Permissiveness brings confidence; over-permissiveness brings anxiety and escalating demands.
The cornerstone of effective discipline is distinguishing between wishes, feelings, and acts. We set limits on acts but don't restrict feelings or wishes. Most discipline problems involve both angry feelings and angry acts, each requiring different handling. Sometimes identifying feelings clears the air; other times, limits must be firmly set while still respecting the child's curiosity or impulses.
Children need clear boundaries for security. Behavior falls into three areas: first, wanted and sanctioned behavior where "yes" is given freely; second, behavior not sanctioned but tolerated for specific reasons like learning or during hard times; third, conduct that cannot be tolerated and must be stopped-behavior endangering family welfare or violating laws and ethics. Being prohibitive in the third area is as important as being permissive in the first.
Chapter 9
A Day in the Life: Practical Applications
Civilization forces parents to become naysayers who must restrict many childhood pleasures. While some restrictions are necessary for socialization, parents shouldn't overplay their policing role to avoid creating resentment and resistance. Instead, they should find ways to maintain boundaries while preserving the parent-child relationship through understanding, empathy and respect.
Parents should let alarm clocks, not themselves, wake school-age children. Children resent parents who disturb their sleep and dreams. When Emily struggled with morning wake-ups, her mother gave her an alarm clock with a note saying "To Emily, who does not like other people to wake her too early." This simple shift in responsibility dramatically improved their mornings.
When children are hurried, they instinctively slow down. What appears as inefficiency is actually their resistance against timetables not of their choosing. Rather than constantly telling children to rush, parents should provide realistic time limits and leave them with the challenge to be ready: "The school bus will be here in ten minutes" or "Dinner will be served at seven o'clock."
Breakfast isn't the time for teaching moral principles or manners. When children complain about food options, parents should acknowledge feelings rather than counter-attack. When Debbie complained "There's never anything to eat in this house," a simple acknowledgment like "You don't seem to find anything you like this morning" would have preserved a pleasant morning.
Parents should respond to children's complaints by acknowledging feelings rather than becoming defensive or counter-complaining. When a child says "You never buy me anything," responding with "There's something you would like me to buy you" works better than "How can you say that after all I bought you last week?"
Parents shouldn't tie the teaching of responsibility to the tying of shoelaces. Arguments can be avoided by buying slip-on shoes or tying laces without comment. Children will eventually learn to keep their shoes tied unless their peers do otherwise.
When children forget items for school, parents should simply hand them the missing item without adding lectures about forgetfulness. "Here are your glasses" helps more than "I want to live to see the day when you remember to wear your glasses."
Chapter 10
Managing Sibling Jealousy
Sibling jealousy has ancient roots, as biblical stories of Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers demonstrate. These accounts reveal that parental favoritism often sparks jealousy between siblings. Though jealousy has troubled families since ancient times, we now understand how to minimize these destructive feelings in our children.
Children inevitably experience jealousy when a new baby arrives, regardless of preparation. Announcing a new sibling with false expectations-"You'll love the baby" or "It will be your baby too"-rings hollow. Children logically conclude, "If they really loved me, they wouldn't look for another child."
A new baby should be announced simply: "We are going to have a new baby in our family." Parents must recognize that a new baby threatens a child's security and uniqueness, especially for firstborns. Rather than encouraging unrealistic expectations, parents should acknowledge the difficulties: "Sometimes he will be fun, but sometimes he will be trouble... You may feel left out... You may feel jealous."
When children can express jealousy verbally, they're less likely to develop symptoms or problematic behaviors. A mother helped her three-year-old son express his feelings about a new baby by acknowledging his fears and reassuring him of his special place. When the baby arrived and Jordan acted aggressively, she redirected his feelings: "The baby is not for hurting but you can draw a picture of him and then cut the picture into pieces."
Parents must assume jealousy exists in their children even when not immediately visible. Jealousy manifests in many ways: constant competitiveness or contest avoidance, pushy popularity or wallflower meekness, reckless generosity or ruthless greed. Unresolved childhood rivalries appear in adulthood as irrational competitiveness, inability to lose gracefully, or conversely, in perpetual self-defeat and inability to stand up for legitimate rights.
Parents who strive for absolute fairness often end up furious with all their children. Nothing is as self-defeating as measured fairness. Children don't need equal shares of love; they need to be loved uniquely, not uniformly. We don't love all our children the same way, and pretending otherwise makes children hypervigilant for inequality. When a child cries "No fair," resist explaining or defending. Instead, convey the uniqueness of each relationship.
Chapter 11
Nurturing Healthy Sexuality
Sex education begins with parents' attitudes toward their own bodies. Whether they appreciate their sensuality or feel shame about their bodies will be conveyed to children regardless of what words they use. Parents' unspoken feelings about their bodies, their comfort with nakedness, and their attitudes toward sexual pleasure all communicate powerful messages.
Infants experience bodily pleasure from birth, forming sexual attitudes through early experiences. They naturally explore their bodies, enjoying being touched and cuddled-essential experiences that teach them to receive love. Despite outdated warnings against "spoiling" babies with too much physical affection, we now understand that tender touching creates crucial bonds between parents and infants.
Sex education involves both information and values-schools can provide information, but values are best learned at home through observing parents' loving interactions. When answering children's questions, parents should be honest but brief, avoiding overwhelming them with too much detail. The right time to provide information is when children ask, using proper anatomical terms rather than euphemisms.
Childhood masturbation brings pleasure and comfort to children but often causes anxiety for parents. Despite intellectual understanding that masturbation is harmless and developmentally normal, many parents still feel uncomfortable when discovering their children engaging in it. Parents should recognize masturbation as natural sexual experimentation while teaching appropriate boundaries with simple, shame-free guidance: "That kind of touching feels nice, but it is a private act for your room."
Children naturally explore their bodies and those of their peers through games like "playing doctor" or "house." These explorations stem from genuine curiosity about anatomical differences. Even sexually informed parents often struggle with how to respond appropriately-neither shaming children nor allowing unlimited exploration.
When teenagers share their sexual experiences, parents should affirm values of honesty and responsibility. Many teens feel their parents don't want to know what's really happening in their lives. Parents need to encourage teenagers to be honest with their feelings about sex: not to say "yes" when they want to say "no," to listen to their needs, and not to confuse sexual relationships with loving ones.
Some teenagers justify sexual behavior by claiming to be "in love." But love isn't just feeling and passion. Love is a system of attitudes and actions that enhance life for both people. While romantic love is often blind to weaknesses, mature love accepts strengths without rejecting weaknesses. In mature love, neither person tries to exploit or possess the other. Each belongs to themselves. Such love gives freedom to unfold and become one's best self.
Chapter 12
The Path to Compassionate Parenting
The goal of parenting is to raise a decent human being with compassion, commitment, and caring. Children can only be humanized through humane methods, recognizing that the process is the method. Children learn what they experience-they're like wet cement where every word makes an impact.
This parenting approach is strict with misbehavior but permissive with feelings. All feelings, wishes, desires, and fantasies are permissible, whether positive, negative, or ambivalent. Children cannot help how they feel, but they are responsible for how and when they express emotions. Unacceptable behavior is not tolerated, but forcing children into changing behavior is ineffective.
Effective parenting begins with empathic listening-hearing the feelings behind children's words and understanding their perspective. Parents need open minds and hearts to listen to all truths, pleasant or unpleasant. A climate of trust encourages children to share their true feelings rather than just what parents want to hear.
Instead of dismissing, denying, criticizing, humiliating or getting angry, parents should acknowledge children's perceptions without necessarily agreeing. Never deny children's perceptions, dispute their feelings, disown their wishes, deride their tastes, denigrate their opinions, or derogate their character. Replace criticism with guidance by stating problems and solutions without negative personal comments.
The solutions in this book must be applied with awareness of each child's unique temperament. Some children easily accept changes in routines and relationships, others accept change only after protest and prodding, while some actively resist any "new deal." Wise application of these approaches respects the child's basic temperament and personality.
Children flourish when child-rearing methods embody respect and sympathy, creating deeper sensitivity to feelings and greater responsiveness to needs. Like travelers who know where they are and where they want to go but need clear directions, parents need guidance to reach their parenting goals. But they also need both luck and skill-skill to ensure they don't spoil their luck.
