Ideal Parenting: Empowering Children

Speaker:

Louise Anita Williams

Love Humanity International

Dr. Kartikeyan

 The monthly series of lectures at the Life Positive Foundation and the Foundation for Peace, Harmony and Good Governance take up different subjects of relevance to a large number of people. It is a common desire to bring up children into good human beings, with good health, self control, flexibility, good communication skills, self-esteem, self-worth, sense of humour, easy temperament, sense of purpose and social competence. The parents must also share the blame for improper behaviour of the youth, not because they did not love their children, but because they did not know certain trades and techniques of bringing them up.  It is believed that mata, pita, guru, daivam – parents and the teachers shape the child’s destiny and future. The basics of healthy parenting are admiration, affirmation, affection, blameless love, connectedness, discipline, attention, boundaries, expectations and family traditions. Parents expect responsible behaviour from their children, when these expectations are clearly and lovingly communicated, children invariably respond.

Rules for teenagers, however, must be clear, reasonable, developmentally appropriate, fair, just, mutually agreed upon and flexible, emphasising what to do rather than just what not to do. As King Solomon wrote, discipline your children while you still have the chance, indulging them destroys them. Wise discipline imparts wisdom. Parents and children who share a high degree of connectedness enjoy spending time together, communicate freely, and openly support and respect one another, share similar values, and have a sense of optimism about their future. Undoubtedly, the child’s temperament, learning style and personality must be understood in order to connect with them. Apart from blameless love, there is no more powerful connecter than the gift of time. Wise parents demonstrate unconditional love as often as possible. Children who know that their parents love each other and also love them are more likely to become highly healthy. Unconditional love from an adult, usually one or both parents, is the single-most important childhood root of adult happiness. The parents must be the child’s best cheerleader.

The child must own his or her pain rather than blaming it on the adult. According to Psychology, a teenager’s spiritual foundation serves as a buffer from the cultural and social poisons of modern life. Religious belief among teenagers portends many healthy outcomes including reduced suicide, less depression, better response to trauma, reduced non-marital sex and pregnancy. In addition, religious faith can give them a sense of hope and a higher purpose in life. The family atmosphere is very important, school has a secondary role. A good school experience can only marginally compensate for a home environment replete with risk. The teacher is the most frequently encountered positive role model outside the family, where trades like compassion, understanding, respect, trustworthiness, sincere interest etc. are communicated. Of course the community and the school programmes are equally important.

Louis Anita Williams is an expert on these subjects. She is the founder and managing trustee of Love Humanity International. Born in Portland, Oregon in USA, and raised in southern California, she now lives in Nargol, Gujarat, because of her passion to teach ideal parenting to as many as possible. She is a certified trainer in commonsense parenting from Girls and Boys Town, Omaha. She has suitably modified the course to Indian culture and has developed the responsible childcare course in India. Before entering the life of service, she had a successful business career in sales, marketing, and advertising, with a long list of achievements. Throughout her career she has always been active within the community.  Ms. Williams was a volunteer in the Child Help, USA, and has served on several Boards. She has at the Commission for the Status of Women in Orange County, California, and by appointment from President Ronald Reagan she has served on his presidential task force. As an adjunct professor she taught public relations at Vanguard University, California. In India, she is a lecturer at KC College of Management Studies and is on its advisory board. In January, 2006 she addressed 1800 delegates at the International Conference on the Prevention of Child Abuse held in San Diego, USA. She willingly gave up the comforts of living in America to serve the children in India, to raise them in a loving manner with proper education, which would empower them to grow into self sufficient adults with the potential to give back to the society.

Louis Williams

 Love Humanity has the morals of empathy, transparency, honesty, integrity, commitment and sincerity. Taking the first of each of these letters, it spells ETHICS, which is most important when dealing with children. The way India cared for her children was shocking and research revealed that the problems were greater than imagined. Physical abuse is very high in India. A recent research study by the Women and Child Development, Government of India, reveals that 66 per cent of children experience some form of physical abuse. Out of that 66 per cent, over 50 per cent of abuse is by parents. However, most parents deny abusing their children. Parents abuse their children because they are not aware of any other alternative. They were themselves beaten and since it worked for them, they assume that it would work for their children as well.

Sexual abuse is another shocking fact.  53 per cent of all children, both girls and boys, are sexually abused by someone they know, or by someone in authority. Parents need to teach their children regarding boundaries and that they do not have to comply to everything that they are told. But to teach, the parents also need to learn. A research study in New Delhi showed that 60 per cent of girls are sexually abused by the age of 12 years. In Gujarat, 1500 children are missing. In less than every 35 minutes a child is abused in India. 50 per cent of children in India face emotional abuse like being called stupid, slow, slob and 83 per cent of the emotional abusers are the parents. This is because they do not know the right skills and do not realise that they are doing something wrong. The mission of Love Humanity is to empower children to grow into self sufficient citizens, who may one day affect positive change in their community, country and the world.

Love Humanity works with both adults and children. Love Humanity provides community awareness in educational programmes on alternative ways of raising and treating children using love and encouragement as the basic foundation. The Responsible Child Care Course has three components: commonsense parenting, preventive healthcare and reproductive health. Most parents in India depend too much upon the teachers in school. The first teachers for children, however, are parents, who must begin teaching from the moment the baby is born. Therefore, the target audiences of the course are the parents, teachers and child care providers, who share the responsibility of teaching the children. Dr James Prescott, a psychologist, who has contributed many years of research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the United States, feels that the single-most important cause of violent behaviour is developmental depression and precedes violent behaviour. Drug and alcohol is used later to treat the emotional pain that underlines the rage of the uncontrolled violence and stems from the lack of affectional bonding by the parents in infancy and all the way to adolescence. Hence, parents must spend maximum time with the infant till adolescence.

Parent is someone who gives birth or begets, brings up, nurtures and nourishes. This definition of parent includes the natural parents, the teachers, the grand parents, and the child care providers. Working women should wait till their children go to school. Children should not be sent to crèches; mothers must be the main care giver. Though mothers do not get paid to raise their children, but it is the most important job because they are raising the future leaders of tomorrow and must take it seriously. Learned parenting is also important. A child does not come with an operating manual and patents treat the child the way they were treated. If the parents were abused, it is more likely that they will abuse their child because that is all that they know. However, alternative ways must be learnt.

Children are born into this world without any judgement. They have no preconceived ideas about hate, violence or for that matter, love. All these ideas come from their parents and the adult care givers. If children are raised in an environment of peace and harmony, with models of love to be influenced by, and are taught the appropriate behaviour in love and with love, the children will grow into well-balanced individuals. On the other hand, if love is missing, most likely children will grow into opposite type of individuals. But love cannot be taught. However, parents are taught the skills to teach their children with love.

Commonsense Parenting is a course started in 1917 by Father Flannigan, a catholic priest, who believed that there is no such thing as a bad child.  He borrowed money, rented a home in Nebraska in Middle America, and asked for delinquent boys to turn their lives around. Though he had never been a parent, he brought in the boys and taught them because most juvenile delinquents are beaten, abused, battered and torn, but are never taught what to do. The experiment became so successful that it has expanded nationally and globally. Commonsense parenting was first taught in India in 1997. Following the initial format, Father Flannigan started Boys Town; his organisation is now known as Girls and Boys Town and is a city. There are individual homes with six children, all teenagers, getting their lives turned around and with a success rate of about 90 per cent.

Following its success, the parents were taught because it was found that the parents did not know how to teach their children. First a book, Commonsense Parenting, was developed and a year later people wanted a course on it. So a course was developed and training was started in military basis because a controlled audience was needed to measure the results. It was found that 90 per cent out of home placements and runaways was because of pain, shame and guilt; the street gave sense freedom away from the pain. 40 per cent decrease in child behavioural problems, within the age of 3-16 years, was registered after only six weeks of the course. 19 per cent decrease of physical abuse by parent and childcare providers was noted. When taught by parents, children responded positively.

Discipline means to be organised; appropriate behaviour at appropriate times and freedom within a set of parameters. However, most people typically associate discipline with punishment or something negative. Discipline is defined in the dictionary as training, education, and instruction. Therefore the goal of parenting or caring for children is to teach, among other things, self discipline that will give them boundaries to know right or wrong. In disciplining a child, parents must learn to describe behaviour. The course teachs the parents what to clearly focus on by specifically describing their children’s behaviours. Behaviour is anything that can be seen, heard or measured. The tools of commonsense parenting are: effective praise, corrective teaching, and teaching self control. Before learning these steps parents need to know how to change the behaviour. The course teaches how to develop consequences. Every action has a reaction, for a positive action there is a positive reward, for an inappropriate action there is a chore, which is called the negative consequence for the negative behaviour. Sometimes parents cannot think of what kind of consequence to give but the course teaches them to develop a consequence plan. The parents are also taught how to develop and involve their children. The first thing they teach their children is that their behaviours will have a consequence. The parents would have the children to develop a joy jar and a chore jar. If there are three children, six jars would be required because each age has different consequences. Parents then have their children write down the rewards that they expect when they do something good and the chores that they expect when they do something inappropriate. Then they are folded and put in the joy jar and the chore jar. The parents are taught how to do it and to teach their children do the same.

When effective praise is taught, parents must praise small steps in the right direction.  In Indian culture it is the duty of the children to do certain things. There is no ‘please’ and no ‘thank you’. If children do something good they must be told and parents have to describe the behaviour that was done. In effective praise parents praise children by describing the behaviour and can give a simple optional reward, like thanking them for cleaning up the dishes and wiping up the counter. Parents can play a game with them for doing something good because children want to spend time with parents. However parents are all busy and do not have the time to spend with children. How many games do parents play a week with their children or how many TV shows do they watch with their children? The family needs to come back together. TV is creating an isolated society, people do not even go to visit their friends. TV is a great medium for teaching, like Discovery channel, but children must be guarded from excessive TV watching. Parents should indulge them in playing game, going out for walks, or going to a park. Effective praise is sketching children in doing something right, parents need to praise their children three to four times for something that they do well.