I've noticed that behind the harsh messages Foster Cline says to the kid, there is a common thread of psychology being modeled: When a kid makes a choice, they are the one who hurts or gains from that choice. He is showing the kid that when they make a choice, they suffer, not us. Now, we all know this is not in fact true. How hard is it to watch your child cry and not be able to fix it. If a kid falls into drugs and loses his or her free agency, do we ache for them? Yes. Do we suffer? Well, yes. But the if the kid is focused on our suffering, what is he or she doing to solve his or her problem? When we show that we are the ones suffering for our child's poor choice, then the kid's problem appears to be our problem.
If we want our kids to be able to solve all the things life can throw at them when we are not around, we need to send this message to them: When you do this, it doesn't make me suffer, it makes YOU suffer.
Any thoughts?
It's a valuable lesson to teach kids that they own the bad choice and have to live the consequence...and just as valuable for us to allow them to do it and not try to make it all batter. We've been doing it with one of ours. The child has made a few wrong choices (nothing too bad at this point), but needs the experience of working it out. Only that way can the child become stronger and learn from it. Only then can that child become master of the shortcoming and truly overcome it. And in the process said child will learn a valuable lesson about the atonement.
ReplyDeleteWell put, Ann!
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