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