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Family
Matters - Appreciation
In
this issue, I will continue to share with you some basic principles of
parenting that come from McDowell and Day's "How to be a Hero to your
Kids". Last month's principle was acceptance. This month, you'll learn
about appreciation. In each of the next four issues, you will get details on
one of the other ingredients of effective parenting.
Affection
Availability
Accountability
Authority
Appreciation is the key to feeling important. It's a feeling that what we do
makes a difference to someone else.
The easiest way to develop the appreciation habit is to constantly look for
times when you can catch your kids doing something right. Catch your kids
doing something right and when you do, quickly show them appreciation and
encouragement for their efforts.
A few years ago Dr. James Dobson had four women as guests to his "Focus
on the Family" broadcast. All four had become sexually involved in their
teen-age years and were suffering the consequences of their actions. Three out
of the four made specific statements to the effect, "the fastest way to
get my dad's attention was to do something wrong."
Make it a daily goal to catch your kids doing something right at least twice a
day. Reprogram yourself to speak up and tell your kids what you see - give
them honest appreciation for their effort.
By doing this, you will be making them feel the same way you feel when your
boss praises you for doing your job.
Eventually, praise will become a motivator for proper behavior and you may
have to discipline them less.
Caution: Unless your children are absolutely sure you unconditionally accept
them, praise and appreciation can become manipulative. A child will start to
live on a performance basis, thinking, "If I do a good job...THEN my
parents will appreciate me." Living life on a performance basis is what
produces guilt feelings.
Have you ever failed at a task and felt guilty? As long as you gave it all you
had, failing should not produce guilt or shame. Because success of failure
have nothing to do with morality.
Living on a performance basis produces guilt and shame feelings when you fail
at a task.
That's why I bend over backwards to make my daughter feel accepted first, and
then appreciated. She needs to know in her heart that I love her no matter
what her results are.
Do you want your kids to learn it's better to play it safe in life, or do you
want them to develop the self confidence that will allow them to take risks?
Start with acceptance, then move to appreciation. Make your children feel so
secure, so loved, and so full of self worth that they know they have the
freedom to fail. Then they are much more likely to achieve their full
potential.
My parents did this for my brother and I. We always felt loved no matter what
our results were. Consequently, Marcelo and I have never been afraid to take
risks. What percentage of the people who start training for the Olympics
actually make it? Very small. Less than 1%. With those odds against you, you
will not even go for it if you fear failure. Neither Marcelo or I were great
athletes. That fact made the odds even worse. But we figured the possibility
of making it was worth the full effort. In 2002 we both made our Olympic dream
come true. I believe neither of us would have even made the attempt if we had
been raised to live on a performance basis.
Here's a rule of thumb:
I appreciate my child's effort more than my child's accomplishment, and I
appreciate my child's worth as a human being even more than my child's effort.
Does this stuff work in the real "dog-eat-dog" world or is it more
touchy-feely feel good stuff with no practical application?
Well, legendary coach John Wooden, considered to be the best college
basketball coach of all time (he led NCAA to ten National Championships
between 1964 and 1975), used the above philosophy with his players.
Coach Wooden says - "You never fail if you know in your heart that you
did the best of which you are capable."
Wooden definition of success is all about total effort - not results. Wooden
prepared his players for total risk and total effort by loving them
unconditionally and by catching them doing something right.
His old players; Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, attest that fact.
So remember, to make your kids "National Champions" in self
confidence, make them feel unconditionally loved and then catch them doing
something right!
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