On Parenting
- Every human
being, especially a child, needs to be recognized as a unique
individual.
- Parents have a
sacred duty to understand the ‘specialness’ of their
offspring and to do all in their power to help the child to accept
himself or herself and make the most of the special gifts each has been
given.
- The dynamics of
difference within the family can be a source of tumult or cohesion
depending on the ability of the family to celebrate the uniqueness of
each family member.
- Understanding, acceptance and the celebration of uniqueness can be enhanced by a managed system or individual recognition within the family and not left to accident.
Every parent wants what is best for their child, what will allow them
to be happy and successful. Much pressure is placed upon the 21st
century parent to see that their child matches the models of success
that are represented by standardized testing and traditional models of
accomplishment.
Parents often find themselves attempting to squeeze their special,
unique offspring into a box made for another kind of child. This
'squeeze-play' is frustrating and demoralizing to the parent and often
damaging to the child.
In my work in Human Identification Technology™ I have had the
chance to help hundreds of parents employ an intra-family system for
pinpointing and naming the special qualities of all the family members,
parents included. Once the family begins talking in exact ways about
what is unique about each member, the celebration of the difference
begins.
It works like this: rather than each member having a subconscious
awareness that Billy is 'the quiet one', games are played in which
everyone comes to an agreement about just how that particular
characteristic of Billy's will be talked about. The games themselves
allow Billy to accept his nature and other members of the family to
express exactly how that quality of Billy's reads to them. Of course,
Billy has other major traits that make up his unique humanness and
words and phrases are chosen for the gamut of Billy's character. The
same applies to the rest of the family and soon everyone can talk about
the characters of the others, they have names for what they love in one
another.
SAM CHRISTENSEN