Raising Everyday Heroes by Elisa Medhus M.D

Author:Elisa Medhus, M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beyond Words Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Avoiding conditional love and acceptance

When you place conditions on your love, unintentional or not, your child feels like she must work tooth and nail to win your approval. How do we imply that our love or acceptance comes with strings attached? Let me count the ways:

Love qualifiers

“I love you, but I wish you’d be more dependable.”

“I love you when you pick flowers for me.”

“I’d love you if you’d bring your poor old mom her slippers.”

Try to keep your statements of love separate from your feedback and requests. Here are some examples of alternatives to the qualifiers above:

“I get so frustrated when I come home from work to find dinner hasn’t been started yet.”

“You seem to know exactly when I need a pick-me-up. Things were pretty rough at work, but getting a bouquet of beautiful wildflowers from you makes me feel a hundred percent better.”

“Could you bring me my slippers, Honey? I’m tired to the bone and don’t think I could muster enough energy to blink, much less fetch anything.”

Apology qualifiers

“I’m sorry I spanked you, but you know how I can’t stand a lot of racket while I’m reading my paper.”

As you can see here, qualifiers tend to negate or lessen the sincerity of our apologies. It’s best to separate your apology from your discipline or negative feedback.

In this example, you could say, “I’m sorry I spanked you. I don’t believe in laying a hand on my children, and I should have kept myself under control. Please accept my apology.”

Later on (not within the next five minutes or so), address your child’s misbehavior: “You all were making a lot of noise while I was trying to read my paper. The living room is a place we can go to get peace and quiet. I want you to respect that in the future.”

Demands for reciprocity

“The least you can do is thank me for all the help I gave you on your homework last night!”

Instead of demanding gratitude, focus on how good it felt helping someone you love.

Nevertheless, we don’t want to raise a pack of thoughtless brats, so we must teach children to express appreciation. There are many ways you can do this. For instance, verbalize what you expect them to say aloud: “Thanks for helping with my homework, Mom.” Occasionally I substitute “O Supreme Commander of the Universe” for “Mom.” That always goes over well! But don’t nag them to repeat your words. Eventually they’ll internalize the manners you repeatedly model for them.

You can also provide objective information: “People like to feel appreciated when they help others,” or “The Jenkins family believes in showing appreciation when others help us.”

Modeling unrealistic entitlement

“I think it’s ridiculous that my boss doesn’t provide us with free parking!”

Instead of griping about what you think others owe you, keep it to yourself, or voice ways you think you can contribute: “The company doesn’t provide free parking anymore. I guess the recession has really hurt their bottom line. I’ll meet with the boss this week to go over some ideas I have for incentive programs that might boost employee productivity.

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