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Real Life Lessons

How To Raise Great Kids

Number One - Love and value yourself

If you don't cherish yourself, you may end up treating your child with the same lack of respect or confidence you feel towards yourself. Remember, you are their primary role model. Your attitude will mold their own -they may well accept your dysfunctions as normative.

How you value yourself is also important because you will see so much of yourself (or your mate) in your child . Whether you will enjoy this and respond with love and respect, or react with disdain, will depend on how well you have accepted your own strengths and weaknesses.

Number Two - Give your kids lots of love

If you're capable of giving your children lots of love, this will surely make up for the lack of anything else you may wish to offer but can't. Many baby-boomers, like myself, didn't get much love and attention as kids, so we ended up love-starved, insecure, narcissistic and generally immature. Our parents may have loved us dearly, but their particular generation didn't seem to communicate it very well.

Many of my peers tried to fill their inner void by zoning out on drugs, sex, booze, or mind-numbing, non-stop routines of ear-shattering music, boring TV, or sports worship-anything to keep from thinking, reflecting, or feeling. Then we've had kids we really love, but have had a hard time paying attention to--which gets me to the next point:

Number Three - Give your kids lots of attention

This, after all, is one of the ways in which they'll know you love them. They instinctively understand something you don't: that the opposite of love isn't hate; it's indifference, the refusal to become emotionally engaged because the other person just simply doesn't matter that much.

Several reasons exist for why many parents find difficulty giving children the attention they require for becoming well-balanced adults. First, if parents struggle with self-loathing, the main type of attention they pay their children is negative. Since they're profoundly unhappy and troubled themselves, any attention they manage to focus on their kids (when not obsessing on their own problems) will gravitate to the negative.

Second, it's tough for "numb" parents to pay attention to much of anything. The very definition of numbness means tuning out the needs and emotions both of one's self and everyone else. A lifetime of enhancing your tuning-out skills is tough to reverse when kids come along, so you tend to plop them in front of the TV set so they can become numb, too.

Third, for two working parents who both come home at the end of their physiological and psychological tethers, it's just plain tough to give the kids attention. What's the answer? Of course, there's no easy solution, but you always have options. Find careers with flex time, or where one or both of you can work from home. Or maybe one of you needs to consider quitting work to stay at home for the most important job of all, training your own children. Sure, you may have to move into a less expensive house, maybe even a less expensive (and less desirable) city, town or state. Other lifestyle modifications may be necessary (including home schooling). The question is, are your kids worth it, and secondly, who do you want molding your child's self-image, values and worldview? This is a great time to sort out your real priorities.

Number Four - Give your kids the gift of values

Kids instinctively want and need values. They want to know right from wrong. They want rules and guidelines-and they'll drive you insane if they don't get them, which is why, in those early years of the terrible two's and three's, some disciplinary reinforcement is especially necessary.

How are they to know right from wrong? What criteria will they use to choose friends, mates, careers, noble causes, or presidential candidates? Some incredibly naive people in public education suggest that children find their own values, and of course, many of them do. Could this be the reason drugs, violence, unwanted pregnancies, sexual disease, abortions, alcoholism, incivility, aimlessness, alienation and general hopelessness run rampant among them?

Why don't we just expect toddlers to feed and clothe themselves without our help as well?

I'm not talking about dictating kids' political and religious beliefs. But don't you have some values you want your children to rely upon when the going gets tough - values like those the Book of Proverbs prescribes as "wisdom," which is knowing right from wrong and common sense? Of course, life-affirming and enhancing values don't grow on trees. They are, in fact, rooted within various moral codes, which in turn form the basics for religious beliefs of one sort or another. Christianity's Golden Rule, Judeo-Christianity's Ten Commandments, Islam's prohibitions on drugs, alcohol and diet, Eastern religions' emphasize on karma and ethics, are but a few examples.

Even secular ideologies like Marxism and scientism or postmodernism have value sets. So, the question is not will your child find values, but rather where will they find them- on TV, at the playground, from the neighbor kids, from their teachers (do you know what your kids' teachers' values are?), from church or from you? While your child will eventually sort out his or her own values, you can at least introduce them to a value system of your choice, or to a value system you think is appropriate.

A few helpful hints: Find a children's version of the Book of Proverbs and purchase The Moral Compass and Book of Virtues , edited by former Secretary of Education, Dr. William Bennett. And incidentally, don't just hand your child a 600-page book to read. Skim all the chapters in advance, noting which ones your child might enjoy, or which ones you may think most appropriate to his or her needs. You'll probably end up picking out every fifth story. One last thing about values: Your children will notice whether or not your behavior is congruent with the values you wish them to adopt-which leads us to the next point:

Number Five - Be authentic

Kids hate hypocrisy: phony values, phony adults, and, most of all, phony parents with phony values (which is why many 60's era boomers rebelled against the smug but empty moralism and materialism of their parents).

Number Six - Engage their minds and their imaginations

Take them places , talk about what you experienced, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. When you watch TV or a movie, discuss the moral of the story, or what lesson(s) can be learned from it?

When your children are young, read to them - often - particularly things that will teach values or virtues. When your children can read (hire a tutor for them if necessary), skim through (i.e. preview) a number of books you think they will receive value from; and after they read them, discuss with them what they've learned from each chapter. Even if the book is fiction, find out what's going on in it, why they like it, etc.

When your teenager is learning on his or her own, try to keep up with their world. Read, listen, and talk. Know what issues they're dealing with. Gently remind them of their values.

Number Seven - Build their confidence

Literally hundreds of studies and anecdotes have clearly demonstrated that even very average kids who are encouraged to believe that they have special gifts excel well beyond expectation. The opposite is also true.

My wife and I never miss an opportunity to praise our son, inspire him, or encourage him. When he wanted to draw, we praised his work and proudly filed it away for safekeeping. When he organized his "armies" of toy soldiers, we showed interest and spent an hour or so a day playing with him. When he wrote stories, we listened carefully, and my wife even typed them up for him-the young author. When, every week from ages 6-12 he developed a new scheme to earn money from Dad, instead of brushing my son aside (or pointing out that what he was selling me was something I'd invariably already paid for at some earlier point in time), I negotiated a price, simultaneously teaching him to negotiate and instilling in him confidence in his ability to "close a deal."

After hundreds of these confidence-building experiences, I'm sure he could teach Trump a thing or two. Of course, as a caution against hubris or false confidence, we've had just as many lessons and discussions with our son from Proverbs and Dr. William Bennett's books on the pitfalls of pride, arrogance and foolhardiness, and the virtues of humility, honesty and patience.

Number Eight - Be patient

Kids will be kids , and your child especially will be a kid. Remember yourself at that age? If you don't, just look at the replica of yourself standing in front of you. Patience, they say, is next to godliness. Your child is the reason for the saying.

Number Nine - Be respectful

This, of course, goes along with being loving and encouraging. Nothing damages a child more than disrespect-especially if it comes from his parents. How many times have you witnessed a totally undisciplined parent mercilessly berating his hapless child for some minor infraction? Show them enough respect, and sooner or later, they'll return the favor. Your children are a gift from God. Treat them the way you would like to be treated (or would have liked to have been treated as a child). They'll love and respect you for it.