TELLING THE TRUTH TO YOUR CHILDREN

In previous chapters, we discussed and proved that we must never, ever express anger at our children. It destroys them. We talked about how we can get rid of our own anger, and that only without anger can we begin to teach our children everything they need to know about finding happiness.

In this chapter, we’ll talk a LOT more about how to tell the truth about our anger and other mistakes, more especially to our children. In the twenty years I was a surgeon, I sutured thousands of wounds, and just before I injected a local anesthesia into a wound, I often said, “This might hurt a little bit.” Similarly, telling the truth about ourselves can be uncomfortable but necessary.

As I said in Chapter Four, we need to learn to tell the truth about ourselves. Why? There are several reasons:

Why Tell the Truth about Ourselves to Our Children

First reason to tell the truth about ourselves:

If you have a stressed or difficult child—with any of the problems we’ve been discussing all along—that child does not feel loved, and likely they never have, not in the unconditional sense. There is no blaming in this statement, only a knowledge that will enable us to understand our children. So, when you first learn about Real Love, and realize how YOU haven’t had experience with it in the past, and when you recognize how that inexperience has affected your children, you’ll realize that you need to tell the truth about yourself to other adults who can love you unconditionally.

I’ve given a number of examples of this truth-telling, especially in Chapter Four. It’s how we find people capable of seeing, accepting, and loving us. And we tell the truth for this reason only to people who are CAPABLE of seeing, accepting, and loving us. (Truth ® Seen ® Accepted ® Loved)

We do NOT tell the truth about ourselves to our children for the purpose of finding Real Love, as I discussed in Chapter Four. Children are not in a position to love us unconditionally

There are other reasons to tell the truth about ourselves, and now I focus on those reasons that especially apply to our children:

In Chapter Four, I clearly said that we cannot ever expect love from our children. So the first reason for telling the truth about ourselves—to find Real Love—does not apply to our children.

THEN, when you’re feeling less guilty, more loved, and happier, you will bless yourself and your children when you share some of your realizations—the truth—with your children. Why?

Let’s talk about those reasons to tell the truth about yourself—in this case, TO your children—one by one:

To Increase Understanding And Decrease Confusion

If you were born into a family where unconditional love was insufficient or inconsistent—true of almost every family—you were unconsciously TAUGHT that tension, criticism, disappointment, neglect, and anger were NORMAL. But they were not healthy, so you still felt the pain, and you began to react to the pain. You got angry and frustrated, for example. You HAVE to decrease pain with something: anger, pleasing, lying, victim, withdrawn, drugs, alcohol, sex—something. BUT all those ways of decreasing pain make more problems and more pain:

And because you were BORN into a vacuum of love, and you continue to LIVE in one, where lack of love is NORMAL, you are SO CONFUSED.

You might think or say, “I just don’t understand why ___ (I get so angry, other people are so selfish, my husband/wife doesn’t understand me, and on and on.) When you don’t understand why people—including you—behave as they do, life is so confusing.

And your CHILD is confused too. Mostly unconsciously, they ask:

Why am I unhappy? Why am I angry at people? Why do I hate myself? Why am I cutting? Why are my parents so stupid and controlling, or neglectful, or whatever? Why can't I handle this? It’s a nightmare of confusion.

As Paul told the Corinthians: “There are ¼ so many kinds of voices in the world.” (1 Corinthians 14:10) And if we can’t discern the true ones from the false ones, we’re lost in the mists of darkness, where nobody is happy.

I was surgeon for 20 years. I learned that physical pain is bad enough for people to deal with, but if you don’t know cause, it’s crazy-making. It’s confusing, frustrating, and actually makes the pain worse (documented). We deal with our pain much better if we understand the cause of it. I have watched patients in pain sigh in relief and report less pain when they finally know the cause and that there is a treatment. They feel relief of the pain even BEFORE the treatment is given.

Your child is in pain—every bit as real and debilitating as physical pain—and not knowing WHY is confusing, and that confusion makes the pain worse. Which brings us to the first of the three reasons we mentioned for telling the truth about ourselves to our children.

As you tell the truth about yourself—I’ll give an example in a minute—you increase their understanding and decrease their confusion. Again, you’re not telling the truth about yourself in order to find love from them. No, you’re telling the truth here for the benefit of YOUR CHILD.

Another answer to:

To defuse conflict

Most children in pain—as proven by their acting out in a hundred different ways—are angry at their parents. At YOU. Why you?

Because you’re the closest to them, so in their minds, you must be the cause.

They’re in pain, and you are the one who tells them NO about things they want, and then they are immediately angry, SO you MUST be the cause. Seems to make sense.

You’re the one who tells them to clean their room, brush teeth, and more when they don’t want to. They blame you and get angry at you.

This proximate blaming—blaming whatever is close—is fueled even more by their confusion. (You SAY you love them, but then you do unloving things that hurt them).

If they UNDERSTAND the cause of their pain, which I’ve been teaching you all along in each chapter, and they know that you’re working on doing something about it—because you’re telling them the truth about yourself, which I’ll tell you how to do shortly—conflict decreases dramatically. Really.

Another answer to:

To increase trust

Can we feel God’s love without having faith in Him? No, impossible.

Elder Richard G. Scott said, “God has given us the capacity to exercise faith, that we may find peace, joy, and purpose in life. However, to employ its power, faith must be founded on something. There is no more solid foundation than faith in the love Heavenly Father has for you, faith in His plan of happiness, and faith in the capacity and willingness of Jesus Christ to fulfill all of His promises.” (Ensign May 2003)

Similarly, our children cannot feel loved by us if they don’t trust us.

They can’t trust us if they sense—deep down in places they can’t describe with words—that somehow we’re not telling them the whole story.

And OF COURSE they feel like we’re not telling them everything. They’re in pain and confused, and we’re not helping either their pain or their confusion, so how could they not conclude that we must be keeping something important from them?

Like what? What do we keep from them?

• Unconditional love.
• The lessons of life—how to have relationships, how to deal with the distractions of life.
• Explanations of the pain they feel
• And on and on

Do we withhold all this intentionally? NO, but children don’t care about that. They only feel the pain of not having what they need—what we didn’t give them.

Again, they can’t describe WHAT we’re not telling them—WE don’t know either—but they know SOMETHING is missing. They don’t much trust the world—why should they, if they’re in pain, and the world doesn’t stop the pain—and we’re the closest to them, so they trust us even less.

For proof of this lack of trust, look at a group of teenagers being approached by an average adult. You’ll see defensiveness, disdain, anger, disrespect, disgust, mocking. When they’re responding to us, their parents, often all that it is even worse.

Responsibility for Telling the Truth

The idea of telling our children the truth about the mistakes we’ve made with them is frightening. I really do get that, but the scriptures are not without guidance on the subject:

We know that our Protecting Behaviors are our sins, and in Proverbs we read, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses them and leaves them behind will have mercy.” (Proverbs 28:13)

What could be more ennobling than for us to tell the truth about our stewardships to those “lambs” (John 21:15) assigned to our care by the Great Shepherd? Paul suggested, “Look at yourselves, to see if you are truly faithful. Test yourselves.” (2 Corinthians 13:5) Are we willing to truly look at ourselves and see if we have been faithful regarding our children?

And real accountability comes as we share with others how we have fared with our stewardships. John said, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, God can be depended upon to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and we don’t believe what he has said.” (1 John 1:8-10)

Who better to confess our sins to than those we have sinned against, in this case our children? And do any of us dare to hide our mistakes—our sins, our Protecting Behaviors—in light of what John also said: “This is basis of the condemnation God makes, that light came into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Because everyone who does evil works hates the light and doesn’t come to the light, for fear that his deeds would be condemned.” (John 3:19-20)

We parents are terrified to make known our mistakes with our children. This telling of the truth allows us to follow the path that John immediately makes known to us: “But whoever lives by the truth comes to the light, so his deeds may be known, that they are done through God.” (John 3:19-21) Those who do evil hide their deeds from the light, while those who live by the truth bring their deeds to the light. In the process of changing our deeds from evil to good, it is necessary for us to bring our deeds to the light, which includes and directly refers to telling the truth about them.

James said, “Confess your faults to one another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.” (James 5:16) Healing of our spirits can come only by the Spirit and by the power of love, and a pre-requisite step is that we tell the truth about ourselves (“confess our faults to one another”).

Christ made it very clear during his mortal ministry that we need to focus on our own mistakes, not the mistakes of others. On several occasions in the New Testament, people came to Jesus with a story to tell about someone else. On each occasion, however, what did Jesus say? He said, why not look at the truth about yourself. Let’s look at a few of those incidents:

• One man said to Jesus, tell my brother to divide the inheritance of my father with me. And Jesus said, (you) be careful of greed, for a man’s life is not what he owns.” (Luke 12:13-15)
• “Some people told Jesus of some Jews who had been killed in a humiliating way by members of the Roman occupation army, implying that those people had sinned in some way. And Jesus said, do you suppose that those men were sinners because they suffered? No, but unless you repent, you will all be destroyed. Or, Christ continued, how about those eighteen who died when the building in Siloam fell on them? Do you think that happened because they sinned? No, but unless you change your hearts, you will all be destroyed.” (Luke 13:1-5)

• “The Jews brought to Jesus a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. And they said, the law prescribes that she be stoned, but what do you say? Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dirt as though he had not heard them. When they continued to ask him, he raised up and said, if any of YOU are without sin, be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:3-11)

On another occasion, Jesus summarized His attitude toward all these varied situations, when he said,

And why do you look at the speck of dust in your brother's eye, but you don’t look at the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, Let me pull the speck from your eye, when there is a log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye; and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)

We are so afraid of being wrong and admitting that we’re wrong. And yet the Lord says, “Whoever repents of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more. [And] this is how you’ll know if a man repents of his sins: he will confess them and abandon them. (D&C 58:42-43)

I’m going to give you an example of something that many, many parents have said to their children, which has proven to be a productive BEGINNING to establishing trust, increasing understanding, eliminating confusion, and extinguishing conflict. I’m NOT telling you what to say to your kids. I AM giving you one example that has consistently worked with thousands of kids.

That would be a LOT better than nothing, a LOT better than whatever you’re doing now—which is usually no truth at all. This single conversation could begin to change EVERYTHING in your family. There is a LOT of loving in it, so listen closely.

As I give this example, these are words you might say to your child, so read it as though you were speaking—meaning that each “I” is you saying “I” to your child. I recognize that some circumstances will be different from one child to the other. And the language will vary, especially with age but also with specific trauma and their individual reactions to pain. I’ll give examples in subsequent chapters that are tailored more specifically to the individual problems we’ve referred to several times in previous chapters.

We’ll call this your Initial Truth-Telling—and then we’ll discuss the individual pieces of the whole

THE INITIAL TRUTH-TELLING

For the rest of this training, I’ll be talking about what happens after this Initial Truth-Telling conversation—and how to modify it for age and circumstances—but for now, let’s look at what this statement really communicates. Now we’ll look at some of the individual sentences, and in the process, I’ll explain why you might be saying these words. I’ll also give you information you can use when your child has questions about what you’re saying.

Back to the beginning of the Initial Truth-Telling:

First, pay attention to how you feel before you speak. Pay attention to your TONE. You CANNOT be afraid as you say any of this. None. I suggest you find an adult friend, preferably somebody who has done this training—or is doing it with you—and practice it with them.

Second, you can’t feel guilty, which is just another form of fear. If you cry as you speak, for example, your child will feel responsible for your happiness—or unhappiness—which is exactly the effect you do not want. And if you feel guilty, you will be so distracted by that feeling that you will not be able to adequately love your child. Guilt is far too expensive. For one thing, if you feel guilty, you will be teaching your child that simply telling the truth is an agonizing experience, so they will tend to avoid it.

How can you get over the guilt? You have to accept that you did your best as a parent with what you knew at the time—right up to this point—and now you’re going to change direction. There is NO guilt that makes any sense if you made mistakes in ignorance.

The Apostle Paul said, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has empowered me, counted me faithful, and put me in the ministry, even though I was once [wicked]. But I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly and without faith.” (1 Timothy 1:12-13)

King Benjamin echoed these thoughts when he said that Christ’s “blood atones for the sins of those who have fallen by the transgression of Adam, and who have died not knowing the will of God concerning them, or who have ignorantly sinned.” (Mosiah 3:11‑12)

Either you believe in the Atonement of Jesus Christ, or you don’t. If you do, then let go of your guilt. If you don’t believe, then it makes no sense to even be here in this Training—or anywhere else.

I don’t know how to play hockey. I don’t feel guilty about my utter lack of ability. I would not feel guilty if I failed to score the winning goal for my team because I was never taught to play. Get rid of the guilt for not knowing what you were not taught. We talked extensively about guilt and agency and accountability in previous chapters.

Back to the first two sentences of the Initial Truth-Telling:

Let’s look at what you’re communicating here. When you tell your child that you need some time with them, I can tell you—in part because you’re here watching this training—that they will feel some fear. On uncounted other occasions when you’ve spoken to them, there has been some disappointment, criticism, irritation, frustration, controlling, whatever. Your child suffers from PTSD about all those traumatic events—no, I’m not exaggerating. Read again the section on PCSD in Chapter Three or read the book Real Love and Post-Childhood Stress Disorder (found on RealLove.com). With their history of feeling assaulted emotionally, it’s only natural that your children would tend to avoid any situation that reminded them of past pain.

And in the past, when you have said, “We need to talk,” it’s never been good (almost without a single exception), so they’ll feel even more defensive.

That’s why in the first sentence you’re stating that you’re NOT going to be critical or demanding. You’re announcing, “This experience will be different.” I know, they might not believe you, but it’s a start. You haven’t begun many conversations this way, and if your TONE matches the words, your child is VERY likely to relax.

If you deliver this sentence in a loving way, the most important thing you’re doing is LISTENING. To what? You might be confused that I’m talking about you listening, because in this conversation so far your child hasn’t spoken yet. How could you be listening? Easy: It’s not about words. You’re listening to their PAIN. That’s huge and new.

There have been many, many occasions before now where you haven’t even been AWARE of their pain, even though they’ve been in anguish. The SINGLE thing you can do (1) first, (2) most easily, and (3) most effectively in loving your child is to LISTEN. When you say, “I’m not going to tell you what to do—FOR A CHANGE,” you’re acknowledging that in the past you HAVE told them what to do and HAVE hurt them.

Speaking broadly, we’re usually pretty bad at listening to our kids.

They speak. We tend not to listen.

AND

They express their pain in ways other than words—behaviors that are the reason you’re here right now—and we almost always miss the real meaning of those communications—entirely, or we tell them they’re wrong, or we try to fix them, or we tell them what to do.

We do not follow the example of the Savior, who inhales our words and feelings, and who FEELS our pain. Alma said, “He will suffer pain and affliction and temptations of every kind so that he can take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.” (Alma 7:11) That is listening on more levels than we can comprehend.

John confirms the Savior’s interest in our pain when he says, “And God will wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there will be no more death, or sorrow, or crying, or pain.” (Revelation 21:4)

The human species listens very poorly. Why? Because almost all of us are in pain. When you’re in pain as a parent, you become absolutely focused on yourself. Like I’ve said more than once, when somebody stabs a fork into your leg, the pain narrows your focus to ONE thing, and that one thing isn’t about loving others.

For the third time, we look at the opening of your truth-telling:

I’m going to say even more about ending that second sentence with “for a change.” That is not a little thing. It’s not just a conversational “add-on.” I mentioned it earlier, but now let me underline it

When you say, “for a change,” you’re saying “I HAVE BEEN WRONG IN THE PAST” to constantly criticize you and tell you what to do without listening to you.

There is usually NOTHING that gets the attention of other people—especially your child—and defuses conflict like those simple and powerful words, “I was wrong.” I’ve done it personally many times, and I’ve helped many other people do it, and the results are often amazing and immediate. Two people are arguing, or there is simply tension between them, and one says, “I was wrong.” The argument is over, the tension evaporates.

Next sentence:

“You’ve been unhappy” is not accusatory, not if you say it in a tender tone. No blaming, as opposed to, “Something has been wrong with you for a long time.” NO, don’t say that. So, Hurray! You’ve just indicated an interest in your CHILD, rather than expressing that something has been inconvenient to YOU.

The phrase, “The good news,” is encouraging, hopeful. Who doesn’t want to hear good news?

Then, “I’ve finally figured out a lot—not all—about why you’re hurting.” You’re not claiming to have all the answers. You’ve just learned a lot, which implies that you put a lot of effort into something for your child. Fireworks.

“Finally figured out WHY” communicates at least two messages:

1. “Finally” hints that you have NOT figured something out quickly. You’re admitting to being slow about something, which a child rarely gets to hear from a parent.
2. It BEGS a question from your child, spoken or not. WHAT did you figure out? Here comes the answer, a statement of what you’ve figured out. (Your child will be transfixed.)

This is an intentional lead-in sentence. It sets up the next one, and everybody knows it.

Like in a movie. “I know you THOUGHT that THIS was going to happen . . .”

What is the next word? BUT. You are creating cinematic tension, then relief, which audiences love—including your child.

After thousands of interviews, I can tell you that most children have NEVER heard these words from a parent. No kidding. Parents derive a great deal of their power from always being right. We’re AFRAID of being wrong with a child, because we firmly believe it will put us in a position of weakness. We think—and I know this because I’ve heard many parents say variations on this, “How can we be the parent if we’re wrong?” Or “How can my kids trust me if I admit I’m wrong?” But that thinking is a mistake.

When you say, “I was wrong,” it is very disarming and vulnerable—even endearing. At this point, your child will almost always listen—often stunned. (Often they enjoy it, which is just fine.)

When you say you’re wrong, yes,

There is an occasion recorded in Alma where a great number of the people of the Lamanite king Lamoni repented and were converted—possibly the greatest conversion story ever. Why? Because FIRST the king, Lamoni, repented and confessed his sins right there in front of everybody. And then “as many as heard his words believed, and were converted unto the Lord.” (Alma 19:31) That is the power of truth-telling, with its associated vulnerability and humility.

Parents are afraid of losing face with their children by being wrong. Oh no, not so. I’ve seen thousands of conflicts between parents and children resolved in exactly this way.

Suddenly—simply by saying you’re wrong—you’re approachable, tender. This business of being wrong and vulnerable and tender is powerfully effective with children who have every kind of behavioral problem, including YOUR child’s problem.

Next sentence in Initial Truth-Telling:

There is a mixed bag here.

“I’ve been learning some stuff” indicates that you are willing to be wrong AND to learn. This is potentially encouraging.

“I know that all you wanted was love” is potentially confusing, because the word “love” has so many meanings. Your child won’t quite know what you mean, but if your TONE is loving, they’ll at least be intrigued.

It’s a mixed bag, but it works.

Parenthetical note: If need be, if you’re nervous—you will be—write or print this initial conversation, all the points, down on paper or a card. Read it to your child if need be. Why?

So YOU will be confident. If you’re afraid of forgetting some of the points, your confidence will plummet, and you do NOT want to come across as unsure of what you’re saying. If your child looks quizzical or asks why you’re reading, you say, “I’m just learning this stuff I’m telling you, so I need the notes for help.” (You might compare it to your child using notes to do a presentation in front of class at school, or for a talk at church.)

I know I’ve claimed to love you in the past, but the kind of love you needed—the love you still need—is unconditional love.

“I’ve claimed to love you” again implies a willingness to be wrong, but it’s likely that your child will begin to get uncomfortable right about here. Children don’t know any way to live other than how they were raised. We DEFINED love for them as how WE raised them, and of course they believed us, even when they sensed something was missing, something was wrong. Because you defined their universe, they won’t easily let you change the definition.

When you say there might be something wrong with the kind of love you gave, you’re suggesting that your definition of love was wrong, and that could shake the foundation of their world. So what happens at this point? Ironically, many, many children begin to ... defend their parents at this point, at least in their heads.

I often talk to the kids, and in an attempt to eliminate the confusion of a lifetime, I explain that their parents didn’t love them unconditionally—without accusation. The kids often begin to defend their parents because (1) their parents TOLD them they loved them, and (2) if they entertain the idea that their own parents didn’t love them, what does that say about them (the kids)?

And you’ve introduced a new phrase here: “unconditional love.” They’re going to need an explanation of that right quick. They will not know what you’re talking about.

So now you’re going to define it with the next sentence:

You’re plowing right ahead with rocking this kid’s world. Repeat this sentence to them.

This is the foundation of a great deal that follows, so they need to understand it.

Notice how you ended that sentence, which is the natural conclusion to the sentence before it, where you said you had CLAIMED to love them. Now here you say, “I have not loved you like that.”

Wow.

1. Brave and open and vulnerable.
2. They’ll will almost certainly become uncomfortable and might defend you, which is really defending themselves, since they’re part of YOUR world.

Admitting that you have not yet mastered unconditional love is hardly a cause for shame. It only means that you don’t yet love as God loves. God loves us unconditionally. He is bound by universal laws and cannot give us blessings unconditionally because blessings are the natural result of obedience to law. But he does LOVE us unconditionally.

President Thomas S. Monson said, “God’s love is there for you whether or not you feel you deserve love. It is simply always there.” (Ensign Nov 2013)

Think of the purest, most all‑consuming love you can imagine. Now multiply that love by an infinite amount. That is the measure of God's love for you ... Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly. (The very definition of unconditional) ... He loves us because He is filled with an infinite measure of holy, pure, and indescribable love. We are important to God not because of our résumé but because we are His children. He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken ... even the proud, the selfish, the arrogant, and the wicked ... No matter our distress, no matter our sorrow, no matter our mistakes, our infinitely compassionate Heavenly Father desires that we draw near to Him so that He can draw near to us... Heavenly Father's love for His children is the core message of the plan of happiness which plan is made active through the Atonement of Jesus Christ—the greatest expression of love the world has ever known.... I testify that ... He is filled with infinite love for you." (Elder Deiter F. Uchtdorf, October 2009)

When Nephi saw the tree of life and identified it as the love of God, he added that the light of the tree “sheddeth itself” (poured outward) “abroad in the hearts of the children of men.” (1 Nephi 11:21‑22) Notice that the love of God sheddeth itself (goes forth) abroad in the hearts of all people. It doesn’t say that it reached only the righteous. It goes forth without conditions.

So what IS conditional? The closer YOU are to the love of God, the more you feel it, just as the closer you are to the sun, the more light and heat you feel. In the mists of darkness, people felt it less, or none. But if people held to the rod and moved forward, they were able to partake—FEEL—the love more fully. So God’s love is not conditional, but the degree to which we can feel it IS conditional. (Elder Uchtdorf just alluded to this.) He offers freely, and we CHOOSE whether to feel it. It must be this way because He is not “a partial God,” (meaning that He does not play favorites), He is not “a changeable God,” (Moroni 8:12), and He is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (1 Nephi 10:18)

Don’t let up here with your child. Now you launch right into PROVING that you have NOT unconditionally loved them. That’s required because they don’t quite have a grasp on this crazy new idea of unconditional love yet.

So what is the next sentence?

Children are almost always asked questions that involve some accusation or evaluation of them:

• Why isn’t this room clean?
• What is 8 x 7?
• Did you do your homework?
• Did you brush your teeth?

They get the same questions at school and elsewhere. For kids, it must seem like an endless Grand Inquisition.

But here you’re asking a challenging question of yourself, and about a potential failure on YOUR part. Your child WILL listen to the answer. Again, you’re getting and keeping the attention and trust of your child.

Every child identifies with being the object of disappointment and irritation: words, sighs, shrugs, rolling eyes, raised voices, and more—you might illustrate those behaviors in this conversation—so when you bring up disappointment and irritation, again, you’re getting their attention. BUT you still haven’t entirely explained how your behavior makes you not loving in this new, weird way—this unconditional way.

Now you’re going to explain it:

And there you have it. You’re loving and teaching again. It’s a brave and beautiful thing you’re doing here.

• You’re loving because you are profoundly caring about your child in the very delivery of this message.
• You’re teaching because you’re defining love in a way that will change their life. “Anger is always selfish. I have been angry at you a lot. It was NOT loving. I hurt you.” You could explain the ways that anger screams “me-me-me.”

You just rocked your child’s world. This changes everything. All their lives, without your meaning to, you have communicated your disappointment and anger at your kids, and on each occasion you’ve made it THEIR fault because you’ve been angry AS you’ve pointed out what THEY did wrong.

What parent EVER gets angry at a child and says, “The truth is, I’m angry because I was never loved myself, so I was never happy. I was overwhelmed, and everything felt like more than I could handle. So now if you inconvenience me, I’m in so much pain that I have to do something to diminish it. I get angry or critical or whatever because it makes me feel powerful or less helpless. You’re easy to blame, because I’m bigger and stronger, and you can’t fight back very well.”

No. Such an expression from a parent never happens unless the parent is profoundly humble and thoroughly trained.

So, we not only get angry at our children and communicate the “I don’t love you” message, but we blame THEM for causing our anger. That’s really insane, and it hurts them. It teaches them that they’re defective AND responsible for how we feel. It denies agency and accountability. It denies the Atonement. How? Because we’re not listening to the Savior when he said, “All you who work and are heavily burdened, come to me, and I will give you rest. Do my work and learn my way, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

Instead of coming to Christ for the healing of His love and His Atonement, we turn to our children and blame them. We insist that THEY remove the burden from our shoulders. Impossible and wrong and confusing to them.

But here you are telling your children that the old message you’ve given them is not true. You’re clearing up confusion they’ve lived with all their lives. They are finally understanding that their pain and confusion was NOT their fault. And YOUR pain and anger were not their fault. And now we’re back to the question we asked much earlier:

Why tell the truth about ourselves?

WOW, this is super-hero stuff. What would any of us have given to hear this from a parent?

This particular cluster of sentences really accomplishes one of the reasons for telling the truth that we’ve been talking about:

To increase UNDERSTANDING. Kids HATE confusion, and here you are saying:

• I DID try to love you (NOT an excuse, just an explanation—watch your tone)
• I didn’t know how to love you.
• Why? Nobody showed me.
• So I was LOST
• My best was not good enough. Doing your best without knowledge is just futility.

I’ve observed hundreds of children—of all ages—after their parents have said these things, or after I’ve said these things vicariously FOR parents. And the children have mostly said something like this: “WOW, this explains everything. I needed to feel loved more than anything, but my parents DID NOT KNOW HOW. So all this time I’ve been drowning, I’ve been dying of thirst, and nobody knew what to do. So THIS is why I’ve been miserable!!! So THIS is why I’m angry, or cut myself, or use drugs, or have the symptoms of ADHD, or whatever. And now my parents are telling me this to HELP me? My parents want to learn HOW to be better parents? Stunning.”

OR

If I’m saying this for the parents who can’t say anything like this—for whatever reason—the children say a very similar thing, mostly understanding that their parents WOULD have tried to love them if they had been loved and guided themselves.

Now, not all children will react in this way. Some simply won’t believe you—especially the first time you tell them the truth. After YOU taught them that CONditional love was the only kind of “love” there was, and after you taught them how the world was—from the time they were born—and after you inflicted wounds from their infancy, sometimes they just don’t trust you when you finally tell the truth and attempt to change the entire story of their lives.

Okay, fine, they have every reason to justify their distrust. You’ve suddenly changed the rules and definitions of life a LOT in one session. That’s a lot to swallow. What can you do if they are skeptical of this sudden change in your realizations? You just keep learning. You practice being as loving as you can be, and keep getting love and support—as I described in Chapter Four—and as you persistently and consistently love and teach, almost invariably they begin to trust you. They’re dying for your love, and they’ll begin to feel it IF you’re consistent and sincere and don’t try to do this alone.

This is LIFE changing for your children and for you.

You continue:

I know, you already said this. I promise you that you’ll be saying it many times. Why?

Remember the reasons for truth-telling. One is to foster trust. You can’t make a child trust you—or anybody else—but you can create a place where it’s much more likely for them to trust you.

“I hurt you” is a powerful way to foster trust. When you say “I hurt you” and you mean it, you have completely dropped all your weapons, all your Protecting Behaviors. You are vulnerable, something most children never see from their parents. Big stuff.

And “I hurt you” contributes hugely to understanding. Without them understanding that you hurt them, what do they have left? They blame themselves for their pain, and then they feel guilty and worthless for the rest of their lives. So it’s HUGE when you tell them that YOU hurt them. You tell them this for THEIR benefit, so they’re not confused, NOT to beat yourself up, which helps nobody, and is even harmful to you and your child.

And if they feel understood by you, and they understand their pain, and they trust you, how can there be conflict? There CAN’T be, and remember that defusing conflict was one of the other reasons for telling the truth to a child. Saying you hurt them, and that you were wrong, can change the rest of their lives.

You keep going:

WOW. Your kid has been feeling guilty, angry, lost, alone, confused, trapped, and more.

What you just said—that you understand WHY they’ve been behaving as they have—says, “I GET IT. I GET YOU. I understand you—finally. I DIDN’T GET IT BEFORE, BUT NOW I DO. Big moment for a child, and for you.

Also you’re saying, “IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.” (Because their pain was caused by you)

NOW, your child can finally say, “Oh, now I GET IT too. I DIDN’T GET IT BEFORE, BUT NOW I DO.” This is NOT to justify a child’s behavior—anger, breaking the law, addictions, blabla—but to EXPLAIN their behavior to them, so they understand it correctly, instead of blaming themselves and feeling bad about themselves. I’m NEVER justifying bad behavior—or sin—but we can all benefit from UNDERSTANDING behavior better. Certainly takes the sting out of it, for everyone involved.

This is an example of the magic of the phrase, “It’s no wonder.” I see people from all around the world. They talk about all the pain in their lives, often nightmare stories, and when I say some variation on “Well, yeah, of course” that happened, or “It’s no wonder” that you ... whatever (used drugs, got angry, broke the law, all the problem behaviors), their relief fills the room like a warm, white light in the damp darkness of a cave.

When you say to your child, “It’s no wonder that you’ve done blablabla,” They hear, “He UNDERSTANDS me. Wow. Nobody ever has.” And they say—usually to themselves—“So, it’s really not my fault?”

This truth-telling CAN produce IMMEDIATE understanding, and trust, and connection. I’ve seen that happen many times. Or it might take time and repetition and love. Many parents have said to me, “I told the truth to my child, and nothing happened.”

Well, ya think? Most of these things I’m saying here—what you will say to your child—have to be said multiple times and in multiple ways before they’re believable and sink in. Your kids have never heard the truth from you, so they might not fall into a condition of complete trust immediately. Obviously.

You continue:

This statement of NOT promising to stop all your anger immediately makes you far more credible. There is simply no way that you can hurt your child thousands of times, but now that you understand in your head what has been happening, you’re suddenly just going to stop. You’ll never do it again. Nah. Impossible. The pattern is too well-established. Too much muscle memory. Too much habit.

And look at how many times you’ve apologized for hurting them in the past, but then you did it again. Why? You didn’t know any better. So continued apologies are worthless. What kids really need to hear is that we finally see that we are WRONG, and HOW we are wrong, and that we are doing something to correct it.

Here you are stating that you’re willing to LEARN, and that’s all you can offer.

President Uchtdorf said, “Start where you are. Sometimes we feel discouraged because we are not “more” of something ... But remember, our weaknesses can help us to be humble and turn us to Christ, who will “make weak things become strong.” ... God will take you as you are at this very moment and begin to work with you. All you need is a willing heart, a desire to believe, and trust in the Lord. (Ensign Nov 2015)

Your admission that you will certainly make more mistakes, but also that you’re committed to learning, gives you HUGE credibility, which means they’re more likely to TRUST you.

THAT is a heavenly beginning.

(Before I talk about the next element of your Initial Truth-Telling, let me emphasize that all my comments ABOUT the individual elements are intended to do TWO things:

1. I’m explaining in more detail the background and principles involved in what you’re saying.
2. I’m giving you additional things to say to your child. Use them as you feel they will help.

Next part of the Initial Truth-Telling:

What are you saying here? You’re saying, “This conversation isn’t a one-time deal.” You’re saying, “After hurting you thousands of times, I don’t claim that it’s just going to go away. I’ll make mistakes. You’ll wonder if you can trust me. That trust will naturally grow as I just keep learning. I’m in this for the long haul, until it WORKS.”

How can your child know you’re in this for the long haul? You demonstrate that by

(1) continuing to learn and love (while you’re getting loved and taught yourself—even just regularly studying this training is a message to your child),

and

(2) because you just said, “You don’t need to be hurt anymore.”

That’s not a small thing to say. Translation? “I CARE about you enough that I don’t WANT to hurt you anymore. Because I LOVE YOU.” It’s a start, just a beginning.

You conclude:

Message? This is not a monologue, like I usually do with you. I’m really interested in LISTENING to you, which is part of loving you, something I didn’t know I was failing to do.

I’ll give you a hint here: They’re NOT likely to have questions. All this is pretty new stuff. They’ll feel overwhelmed, confused, doubtful. That’s okay

For guidance about an Initial Truth-Telling with an adult child—which can be quite different from an experience with a child still living at home—see an example at the end of this chapter.

This “first truth-telling” with your child, where you admit your role in their pain, is a big first step. It’s an example of a pattern you’ll be repeating a lot: LovingandTeaching, which involves:

You just did all that with your Initial Truth-Telling. Impressive.

Now, after this First Truth-Telling, you’re just warming up. There’s lots more to know and to do. You can’t just have that initial conversation and expect your child to suddenly heal from a lifetime of wounds and be happy. There’s way more to do.

The following list describes what you BEGIN to do after the Initial Truth-Telling, and what you will continue to do:

After the Initial LovingandTeaching:

1. Schedule future conversations, many of them, including family meetings
2. Remember the goal of all this training and activity: The Three Primary Responsibilities of a Parent: loved-loving-responsible = Happiness
3. Love and teach, sometimes with consequences (much more on that later)
4. WANT is not the same as NEED
5. “Tell me if I’m angry.

I don’t expect that list will be inherently clear, so let’s talk about each of the items.

After the First Truth-Telling

Schedule future conversations—on your calendar—or family meetings

FAMILY MEETINGS

I chuckle under my breath whenever I use the phrase “family meeting.” After hearing that phrase, most kids have a feeling much like the one they feel when they hear the phrase “Clean your room” or “Let’s read the dictionary together.” No fun, no yield, yuck. For many adults “family meeting” equates with a combination of a military drill and a good beating.

So there are lots of complicated and conflicting feelings. Let’s see if we can do something about that.

Imagine a large corporation where there are no meetings for training, planning, or coordination between departments. People do whatever they want and report to no one. When mistakes are made, however, supervisors come down with the wrath of God and punish the employees involved. An organization like that wouldn’t last long, and yet that’s just how most families function. Families are much more valuable than any corporation, but the planning, education, and communication in families are usually far inferior to what is found in an average business.

Purposes of Family Meetings

To be sure, we can learn to be stronger and happier through our individual experiences and insights. The learning process can be greatly accelerated, however, when we share our experiences with those who are learning the same things and with those who have already learned them. Family meetings give us these enhanced opportunities to share and learn. How much of the Book of Mormon, for example, is essentially a record of the family meetings held by prophets and their children?

We’ve spoken already about the primary responsibilities of parents. Naturally, the goals of family meetings are similar (and reflect everything taught in this Training):

• To create opportunities for parents to see and love their children
• To teach children how to love others
• To teach children responsibility

When family meetings accomplish these purposes, they considerably accelerate the growth of family members. Meetings are worthless if we use them only to schedule, report, and organize things. We’ve already discussed examples of family meetings in this Training—although we didn’t label them as such—and we’ll be describing many more.

Family meetings are wonderful opportunities for children to learn to tell the truth about themselves, and to be seen and accepted by their parents and siblings.

Frequency

When my own family first started having meetings, we held them every weekday. There was that much to learn. Kids go to school EVERY DAY to learn algebra and history, subjects that most of them will never use as adults, so why would we not have trainings (meetings) every day to talk about how to LIVE, how to be happy, how to have relationships, how better to follow Christ in every activity of the day?

Years later, our family was still holding meetings every weekday. It was the most important activity we did as a family. These meetings don’t have to take a lot of time, sometimes only a few minutes. The meetings are tailored for the needs of the parents and children, not some rigid agenda that people have to bend around. This tailoring reminds me of Christ saying that “the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.” (Mark 2:27) Meetings are meant to bless the lives of children and parents. We parents and our children don’t exist to conform to a meeting agenda.

MORE ABOUT FAMILY MEETINGS

I suggest that three topics need to be addressed regularly in family meetings, and usually in this order:

• Planning and Assignment
• Accountability
• Feelings and Teaching

There’s nothing formal or inflexible about this agenda, but most parents will accomplish more when they remember these three major components as they guide their families through a meeting. Remember that family meetings exist only as a tool to help families be happier, so adapt the meeting to your family; do not force your family to fit your preconceived notion of a meeting structure.

Planning and Assignment

Most events are more successful when they’re planned. Duh. While my children were at home, my own family kept a large calendar on the living room table, and we referred to it every day as we discussed who was going where, and when, and how they were getting there. If a child was on the swim team at school, for example, the calendar indicated all their practices and competitions, as well as who was responsible for transportation to those events.

Changes in long-term household chore assignments are made in this part of the meeting. One-time assignments are also made for other tasks: fix the broken shelf, get the car serviced, pick up Benjamin and his friend after school on Friday, prune the fruit trees, and so on. These assignments are then written and dated and placed where they can be easily seen.

Purpose of “Planning and Assignment” in Family Meetings

Although planning does make events run more smoothly, and although assigning jobs does help children learn responsibility, these are not the only purposes of planning and assignment. A well-planned activity is worthless if children don’t feel loved and happy. A child who is responsible but feels unloved is not a parenting success. Remember that a family meeting has three goals, and each part of the meeting should fulfill all three, where possible. It’s easy to remember the goal of teaching children responsibility as we talk about planning and assignment, but we must not simultaneously neglect the other two goals:

• To create opportunities for parents to see and love their children. As a loving family plans events together, a child should see firsthand evidence that his needs are important to his parents. He feels accepted, included, and loved.
• To teach children how to love other people. In the planning of events, one person’s interests sometimes conflict with those of another. Perhaps two events are held at the same time and transportation to both is impossible. As one person makes sacrifices for the other, he learns more about caring for the happiness of another person, which is the definition of real love.

Accountability (Section of meeting)

Children tend to learn more and be more responsible when they’re required to report to someone else about the work they’ve been assigned. Writing assignments down is also a helpful step toward achieving accountability. We can illustrate the teaching of accountability by observing Kyle and his father in the following interaction.

It was Kyle’s job to gather trash from each room every day. Each Tuesday he was responsible for taking the large trash cans to the street, where they would be picked up by the municipal sanitation department. Wednesday morning, at the family meeting before school, Father asked, “Kyle, did you empty the garbage cans yesterday and take it all to the street?”

“Uh, no,” Kyle responded.

Before we go any further, let’s be reminded of the purpose of these meetings:

Regular family meetings are great opportunities to teach children about accountability, responsibility, and loving.

Purposes of Accountability in Family Meetings

When we correctly ask for an accounting of each assignment given to a child, we do not become disappointed or angry if the job isn’t done. The purpose of accountability is not to control or shame anyone. Again, the real purposes of accountability are the same as the purposes of a family meeting:

• To create opportunities for parents to see and love their children. As Kyle’s father talked about his son’s lack of responsibility, it was obvious from his facial expression and tone of voice that he still accepted and loved Kyle. That has a powerful positive effect on children, far greater than the positive effects of praise, expensive gifts, or the often hollow words “I love you.” Children don’t really feel loved until they’re accepted while they’re making mistakes.
• To teach children responsibility. Sometimes simply loving and teaching a child are not enough to change his behavior. Kyle had been loved, and he had been taught responsibility, but he still didn’t consistently complete his assignment. So his father imposed a consequence for the purpose of helping Kyle consider more carefully his responsibility. He assigned Kyle to take the garbage to the city dump, quite some distance away. In the following weeks, Kyle remembered this inconvenience and chose to take the garbage to the street.
• To teach children to love others. Kyle was too young to drive, so his father assigned Kyle’s sister Brooke to take him to the dump. This gave her an opportunity to accept and help Kyle while he was an inconvenience to her. In the process, she learned something about Real Love.

Accounting for Success

Accountability is not just a way of identifying mistakes. Children need recognition and discussion of their learning and accomplishments, too. Weeks after the family meeting described above, Kyle was addressed by his father in another family meeting.

Kyle’s father didn’t praise him. When we consistently praise our children, they tend to do the right thing only to please us or to avoid our disapproval. That is not a mature motivation that will serve them well as adults. They need to learn to make choices based on what is right or loving or responsible—independent of what pleases us. When they can do that, they have found the secret to happiness. Father recognized that, and when Kyle did the right thing, he expressed his pleasure that Kyle had made choices that made Kyle happy, rather than praising Kyle for doing something that had made Father happy.

Children need to feel the joy that comes from being responsible. When they feel that consistently, they tend to be motivated to be responsible on their own, without us constantly pushing them to do the right thing. Family meetings are a good time to point out their moments of success and create opportunities for them to experience the happiness and fulfillment that come from being responsible.

Feelings and Teaching

The third part of the meeting is an opportunity for people to discuss how they feel and what they’re learning, as we see in the following account of a family meeting involving Zachary, age eight, and Katherine, age fourteen.

Zachary and Katherine frequently quarreled. In the family meeting, their father asked, “Are there any feelings to discuss?”

There was no response. (You can almost count on that in the beginning.) Until our children feel certain that they’re unconditionally loved, they won’t feel safe talking about their feelings. We may need to help them get started.

Mother wisely chose not to get bogged down in an argument about who did what to whom, which would have gone nowhere and helped no one. She knew that the central issue in a dispute between children is always the same: They’re not feeling loved. Zachary was the youngest child and was often treated like a baby. Katherine disregarded his opinions and left him out of most activities because he “wasn’t old enough” for her.

As a result of his already not feeling loved by his parents for years before they learned anything about Real Love, Katherine’s treatment of him poked his old less-than-worthwhile wounds. Then he felt even more unloved and worthless, which was painful, and he reacted by attacking her. Sometimes he attacked her preemptively, teasing her without her doing or saying anything to him.

In the meeting, Mother helped Zachary see how he was feeling and reacting. She then helped them both see that when Zachary defended himself, Katherine also became afraid and reacted by attacking him even more. Mother added that it was her own failure to sufficiently love them both unconditionally that had led to their emptiness and quarreling in the first place. Parents saying “my fault” wins again, on multiple levels.

As Katherine and Zachary felt accepted by their mother, and their perspectives changed, their fear and anger largely disappeared—and the transformation during the meeting was rapid. Naturally, other conflicts occurred between these two, but this first discussion in a family meeting led to other similar conversations, and gradually they saw one another more clearly and naturally became more accepting of each other.

The Reward of Family Meetings

Miraculous experiences happen in family meetings. We learn to be loving as parents. Children feel loved and learn to be loving themselves. They learn to be responsible. The lives of parents and children are changed forever as they use these meetings to tell the truth and love one another.

INDIVIDUAL PARENT-CHILD INTERACTIONS

Although family meetings are important, we often have an even greater impact on our children during the time we spend with them individually. When we talk with our children one-on-one, we create opportunities for them to feel highly valued.

“Purpose” of Interactions

I smile as I talk about the “purpose” of interactions with our own children, because our children are not goals or agendas or objects. But we DO need to have some overarching purposes in mind, just as the Savior did when he commissioned Peter—as He would commission us today—to “feed his lambs.” (John 21:15)

Not surprisingly, we will find ourselves more in alignment with God’s will for us, and with the Light of Christ that fills the universe (Doctrine and Covenants 88:12, 6-7), if we are at least aware of our responsibilities and opportunities with our children always:

• To create opportunities for us to see and love our children
• To teach our children how to love others
• To teach our children how to be responsible

What Kind and When

There are at least two kinds of parent-child interactions, informal/impromptu conversations and planned interviews. Please keep in mind that my interest here is only to provide direction to parents who otherwise would have none, NOT to formalize or regiment how a parent loves and teaches a child.

Informal interactions

Ideally, you’d like to spend some individual time with your children every day. Children tend to remember and be affected MUCH more by one-on-one time with you than they are by group gatherings. Sometimes, daily individual interactions are not possible. Sometimes they’ll last for only a few minutes. On occasion, they might happen by text or in writing. Shortly, we’ll discuss what these might look like.

Planned Interviews

The simple act of planning time with your child communicates a lot. You’re saying:

• I care about you enough to set aside irreplaceable time just with you.
• I love you.
• You will be my primary focus during this time that will not be interrupted.
• I want to connect with you, just you.

Such communications are so much more important in the process of a child developing a sense of worth than any number of gifts, birthdays, vacations, and so on. I highly recommend that you make an inviolable commitment to spend such time with each child every week. For how long? Fifteen minutes? An hour? It may vary from week to week and day to day, but if you have it in your mind to make it happen, it will tend to happen.

During this time, your entire focus will be on that child, without interruption. Many parents have said to me that they don’t have time for this kind of commitment. If that’s the case, you might consider re-ordering your priorities. You’ll never spend time more profitably than in these meetings with your children.

How do you schedule these individual times?

1. You might set up a regular time every week: every Sunday at four o’clock, for example. Then you must regard these appointments as you would a business engagement. When someone else requests an appointment with you that conflicts with your scheduled time with a child, tell him or her that you already have an appointment. Your children will thereby see how important they are to you.
2. You may not have a schedule that permits you to meet at the same time on the same day of each week. So be more flexible. At the end of a time together, you might set up the time of the next one.
3. You might be more spontaneous than either of the above approaches. You might decide at the morning family meeting on a time to spend with a child that afternoon or evening.

The details of scheduling don’t matter. The one-on-one time with your child DOES matter. You’ll figure out something.

Where

Informal interactions can happen anywhere—at the sink washing dishes, outside raking leaves, sitting on the edge of a child’s bed. But WATCH for them. Just be aware of opportunities to love and teach your child, while at the same time being aware of the need to just have fun. If you teach your child something every time you open your mouth, eventually they’ll regard you as a teacher, which is an inferior position to that of a real parent.

Planned interviews need to take place in an environment where you won’t be interrupted, where your child will have an opportunity to feel the full impact of your undivided attention. You could meet in your home—after giving instructions that you’re not to be interrupted—or you could take your child out to dinner or to a park or to some other place that your child might choose.

What Does an Interview Look Like?

Do not over-structure your time with your children, or again you’ll become a teacher or school principal, or—worse—a detective or jailer, and you don’t want those jobs. Just be aware somewhere in your mind that your unique responsibility is to love and teach. You have a much more personal opportunity to do what is done in family meetings: to address accountability, thoughts and feelings, and to teach life principles. Spirit-guided interviews close separations between the two of you. And they’re meant to be enjoyable and tender.

Accountability

This is not an opportunity to criticize or shame a child, only to teach a child about responsibility and to create opportunities for him or her to feel loved. Following are some phrases that you might use during an interview or interaction that would teach accountability to your child:

• “How do you feel like you’re doing with your household chores? (It’s likely that you’ll already have talked about this in family meetings.) Are they a bother? Do you get any sense of satisfaction from contributing to the family?” It’s VERY likely that they’ll begin by saying “I don’t know” to everything. So share your observations of how they’re doing. You will have to rely on revelation and real listening to know how they’re doing. Teach them about the joys of responsibility that you have learned in your own life. More about teaching responsibility and revelation later.
• “What have you been learning lately? Describe something you’ve learned that has helped you to be more responsible or more loving or just happier.” Again, you’ll likely have to teach. If they’re being more responsible, that means they’re happier and caring about people more. TELL them that they’re doing that. They need positive reinforcement every bit as much as criticism.
• “I’ve noticed that the lawn gets pretty high before you cut it. Have you noticed that?”
• “Tell me how you’re doing in each of your classes in school. Not just a grade report, but how are you enjoying each subject, or what do you find difficult or annoying?”
• “Talk about something in your life that you’d like to improve.”

Thoughts and Feelings

Our children are eager to be seen, accepted, and loved by us. They really do want to share with us what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling. When you’ve already established loving relationships with your children, they will freely share their thoughts and feelings with you in an interview. Often, however, they need a little help with getting the sharing process started. You might help by using comments like some of these:

• “Yesterday I saw you sitting in the living room by yourself with the lights off, and you looked sad. Would you be willing to tell me what you were thinking about?”
• “A couple of days ago you were pretty angry at your brother. What happened?”
• “Several times this week I’ve seen you playing with your sister, even helping her with her homework. Were you having fun? How did you feel about her while you were helping her or playing with her?”
• “The other day you had your friend Cynthia over here. She really looked unhappy. You don’t have to talk about it, but I was wondering what was happening with her or with you two.”
• “How are we doing? Is there anything about our relationship—yours and mine—that you’d like to talk about?” (Parents, this kind of question requires courage.)

Teaching

Few children would be interested in your pulling out an eight-page lecture on responsibility during one of your interviews. Teaching children is done best as they share their experiences and feelings with you, not through the use of long lectures. You have already heard examples of such teaching, and there are many more to come.

Opening Lines

If you haven’t had interviews with your children before, you might feel a little lost and uncomfortable in the beginning. Perhaps the most difficult part of an interview is getting it started. Many parents have asked, “What can I talk about? I don’t know how to get it going.” You can create teaching moments from almost any conversation. You can easily begin a conversation with a child using the questions we just enumerated when talking about Thoughts and Feelings. But here are a few more ways to begin a conversation with a child.

• “Tell me about somebody at school you find difficult to get along with. Somebody who doesn’t like you, or talks about you, or anything you don’t like. It will stay between us no matter what.” Asking a child how he FEELS is usually about as productive as asking them to assess their present mitochondrial efficiency in manufacturing ATP. Clueless, and afraid, but they will sometimes identify something or somebody they don’t LIKE. Your tone is huge. If you act like a judge or policeman, they’ll shut down completely.
• “As I was passing your room earlier today, I overheard you talking on the phone to your friend Emma. I did not stop to listen. I’m just asking you to tell me about her. What do you like about her? What do you not like?”
• “If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
• “If you could change one thing about our family—including me—what would it be? I mean it.”
• “Are you enjoying soccer this year? What do you like most about it?”
• “Tell me something you learned in school today or yesterday that you didn’t know before.” Most common answer is, “Nothin’.” Then what? You say, “So I’ll be the student. Teach me ONE thing you learned in the last two days.” Most likely answer? “I don’t know.” CALMLY you say, “I can wait. You’re a great teacher, so I’ve got all day.” They WILL come up with something, not only that they learned but something you can talk about.

Make a commitment to try some of these conversations with your children. The details aren’t important. What they really need is the feeling that you care enough about them to try to talk to them. The only way to achieve great conversations with your children is to be willing to move through those initially uncomfortable moments when you don’t know what you’re doing. Just start talking to them. You’ll be very glad you did.

Schedule your first family meeting

At that meeting, describe what they’re for, and what you’ll be doing. Tell them the meetings won’t be long and boring. You’re just learning how to make your family happier. At the end of the first meeting, schedule the next one. It can be limiting or rigid to set the same times and days every week. The idea of scheduling is that you choose to make the important things happen first. At first schedule one at a time, because you don’t want them to feel oppressed by scheduling long meetings 7 times a week. That would be the end of fun in the family.

Schedule meetings at least 2-3 times a week. Sometimes just 10 mins. Use the format we’ve talked about. You could also play parts of the Parenting Training and discuss them. Light touch at first.

Every time in this parenting training that I give you a sample conversation with a child—which is a lot of times—THAT is exactly something you could say in a meeting.

It is important here to restate the purpose of all these meetings, interactions, and lovingandteaching: the goal is happiness. Lehi knew that when he said that the primary purpose of our lives is to know joy (2 Nephi 2:25).

The pure love of Christ—and this training—are not programs or sets of rules. Boring. Ineffective

This is the beginning of one of the most important trainings anybody will ever take.

In school we take algebra, and trig, and history, and grammar, which most of us rarely use. We are not taught, however, the course we need EVERY day: LIFE. The LIFE course teaches us to feel loved, to be loving, to be responsible—all of which leads to the HAPPINESS we want more than anything. It’s the Life course that matters.

Without happiness, all the other courses are relatively useless. Who cares how much algebra you know if you’re miserable? God has given us the Plan of Happiness (Alma 42:8), and this is a practical course in that HAPPINESS. Yes, we have the scriptures and the Holy Ghost. And we’ve also been commanded to study and search, and that’s what you’re doing here.

You might try this experiment. In a quiet moment—no video games or phone—ask for a moment with your child. If you simply ask in a kind tone, that will seem odd enough that your child will listen.

Then ask, “Would you prefer to be happy or unhappy?” This question is almost rhetorical, kind of a trick question. It’s intended to engage them in a conversation they wouldn’t otherwise have. Just to be contrary, they might say, “Unhappy.” Okay, if they do answer “miserable,” you just laugh. You’ve engaged them in conversation, and they know it. So just continue until you’re having a conversation about happiness and how everybody wants that.

Then you tell them that from now on the family goal is happiness—including THEIR happiness. How could that be bad? Hard for them to argue with that. Then you say that every rule, every conversation, every interaction has to contribute to your family goal (which you just established), or else how would you ever reach it. That’s how goals are met. Done. Happiness is the goal, and everything you do is a step toward it. (Repeat for emphasis) Unarguable.

And you emphasize that the same rules will be true for YOU. You can’t detract from happiness either. They really LIKE it when we’re governed by the same rules. It means the family is governed by principles. It means we all follow Christ together, instead of the family being run by a dictator (YOU). And you’ll tell them that last sentence.

Establishing this desire that you’ll all work toward happiness ends more arguments than you could possibly imagine—and I’ll be illustrating that in subsequent chapters.

Briefly, though, let me provide an example now. Imagine that two kids are fighting, or one kid is exceeding his screen time. You might discuss fighting or screen time, yes. We talked about how to discuss whining, for example, in Chapter One. There is a good discussion outlined there, and we’ll be doing more for many of the behaviors that plague your children. But right now I’m giving you a shorthand approach. You simply say, “Does this (whatever they’re doing) contribute to the happiness we want in our family?” THAT is the goal, not control, or management, or just lack of conflict. It will take practice for you to learn when to say this, and with what TONE, but we’ll get there.

First Guideline in Finding Happiness for Your Children

First loveandteach, sometimes with consequences.

Memorize that, we’ll be using it a lot.

Individually and in family meetings, you explain that you will love your children the best you can—with mistakes and all—and also teach them. Teach them what? How to be HAPPY, and how do you do that?  We talked about that in last chapter, but with a slightly different approach.

Whatever you teach them is guided by your three Primary responsibilities—and you need to tell your children this, so they can see the uniting principles of everything you do (as we discussed in Chapter Five):

Primary Responsibilities of Parents

• To love our children
• To teach them how to love other people
• To teach them responsibility

These unifying goals will consistently help your kids to feel loved, to be loving, and to be responsible, and that combination DOES lead to happiness. You don’t actually pursue happiness. You train yourself and your kids to find love, feel loved, and be responsible. Then happiness is a natural result. EVERYBODY WINS. If I had to teach parents just TWO things, it would be this:

1. NO ANGER (we’ve talked about that a lot precisely because it’s THAT important)
2. LOVE children and Teach them to feel loved, be loving, and be responsible.

That’s the whole ball game.

Thousands of families have succeeded in doing this. It works consistently IF you are consistent in loving and teaching. If you are half-hearted or intermittent in Lovingandteaching, it does NOT work. This is much like so many things of worth:

Teach your children that WANT is not the same as NEED

In order to implement “no anger” with your children, you’ll need to teach your children that want is not the same as need. Why?

Lovingandteaching is NOT indulging, not permissive, not weak. I tell you this because . . . at some point—hundreds of times, actually—your kids will want or even demand something they don’t need. Guaranteed. It’s human.

It is critical that you teach them—repeatedly, firmly, gently—that WANT is not the same as NEED because you won’t believe how many conflicts it will solve and avoid. You will tell them that just because they don’t get what they WANT, that is not evidence that you are not loving them. Your job is to give them what they NEED. It's your pleasure to give them what they WANT sometimes, but not if it's going to detract from them being loving or responsible.

It is a GUARANTEE that your children will pull this trick on you:

If you don’t give them something they want—new phone, unrestricted and unsupervised screen time, trip to Paris with their French class, whatever—they will say with words or communicate with their faces, “See, you don’t care about me. You promised you’d learn to love me, but obviously that was a lie.” (Or something similar, especially after you’ve done the initial truth-telling where you told them that you’d be learning to love them better.)

Memorize what I’m saying, because several versions of this from your child ARE on their way, and if you’re not prepared, you’re going to feel stupid and helpless, OR you’ll react with defensiveness or anger. You can avoid all this.

How can you respond? EASY. With a firm but gentle TONE you say, “My job is to love and teach you what you NEED—to feel loved, to be loving, and to be responsible—NOT to give you everything you WANT, which is often very different from what you need.” Describe the difference between want and need. They WANT the latest designer clothing, the latest phone, a car, the latest Lego assembly. Of course they do. But do they NEED it? Does it fill any of the requirements for happiness, like feeling loved, or being loving, or being responsible? NO.

Am I saying that they shouldn’t have anything they don’t need? NO, of course not. I don’t NEED ice cream, but occasionally it certainly is fun to eat. There are countless examples of things we want that are just fun and not harmful, but your children need to be able to distinguish need from want. Why? Because as long as they believe they NEED something, they’re more likely to insist on getting it, focus on getting it, whine to get it, and feel victimized if they don’t get it immediately. None of those attitudes and choices contribute to happiness.

Admit to them that there are lots of things YOU WANT:

But because you can distinguish between want and need, you don’t focus your time and energy excessively on your wants to the point where you diminish filling your needs. This is a very important principle to teach them, along with the need to be grateful (which we discussed in Chapter One and will examine much more closely in Chapter Eight).

Another way to illustrate this principle of need vs want: If a cocaine addict screams that he wants you to give him cocaine, would it be unloving of you to refuse? The addict might think so, but NO. Because cocaine is not what he NEEDS. It’s what he wants, and in this case his perspective is distorted to the point where he does not know what he NEEDS—just as children, especially in the beginning of understanding real love and happiness, rarely know what they need. Most adults are confused about need vs want.

The prophet Alma nicely distinguished between need and want when “the people [wanted] Alma [to] be their king because he was loved by his people.” Sounds like a good desire, yes? “But he said, it is not expedient (wise or needed) ... that you should have a king.” (Mosiah 23:6-7) And then he taught them the dangers of having a bad king. Sometimes our wants can be thoroughly justified, but we must also ask if our desire is wise or needed.

“Tell me if I’m angry.”

In a variety of ways, we’ve discussed the elimination of anger from the family, including expressions of anger from you. If you really want to be a new kind of parent, I suggest that you say something like this: “As I learn not to be angry, it will help me if you tell me when I’m angry, because sometimes I’m irritated but don’t recognize it.” And you have to MEAN IT.

Why am I making this recommendation? Lots of reasons. Here are just a few:

1. Accountability
2. Self-deception
3. The unity of shared principles

Let’s look at these one at a time.

1. Accountability

We tend to be more responsible about promises when we’re accountable to someone else. Being accountable simply means that you report on how you’re doing and get feedback. It’s not the same as being criticized.

All through the years of high school, college, medical school, and surgical training, I took more tests than I care to recall. They were not trying to fail me. They were simply holding me accountable for the material that I CHOSE to study. They were checking up on me to see whether my avowed interest in learning matched my actual learning. And the tests helped me identify weak areas that needed attention. It’s WAY better to get feedback as you go than to get none and be surprised at the end that you’ve failed.

Accountability in parenting is good for us. If you are the sole judge of your own performance, you will tend to judge yourself by standards you learned from the past, and you’ve already learned that those don’t work.

With whom can you find this accountability? In Chapter Four I suggested that you tell the truth about yourself with other adults—people you see as good parents, or who are also studying this Training. As you discuss with these people what you said and did with your kids, these people can help you see occasions where you were angry or unnecessarily harsh with your child. We all need this kind of help. As human beings we’re very often blind to what we feel and do. We’re too immersed in pain, fear, and misconceptions to accurately judge what we’re feeling and doing.

Now for another source of accountability that might not occur to us right off, the one I alluded to just a few moments ago: Our CHILDREN. Why should we consider being accountable to them?

Our children are with us every day, in person. They watch our behavior live and unedited. This is invaluable to us, like having a mirror. But most of us intimidate or ignore or control our children and do NOT listen to them—especially if they’re offering input about US—so the mirror is useless. THAT is why we have to ASK them to tell us when we’re angry.

I emphasize the second of those two qualities children possess that qualify them uniquely to give us input: They’re right there while we’re angry.

I have counseled with thousands of people over the years, and I have learned three absolute truths about people and anger:

1. They get angry FAR more often than they realize.
2. They get much angrier than they admit.
3. If a discussion about their anger occurs more than a couple of hours after their angry event, they minimize their anger A LOT.

All of that is a lot of denial, which is a huge problem for the parent, because then they have no reason to work on their destructive anger. They just deny it. And this denial is obviously a huge problem for the child, who continues to be injured by it.

Now can you see why having a child give you feedback would be invaluable? They’re like little observation and recording devices right there in the room with you, to report to you what you’re doing.

It’s also VERY common for parents to say this to their children: “Now, I’m not angry at you, BUT . . . I’m angry at your behavior.” Absurd—stand-up comedy. No child can make that distinction, and it’s a lie on the part of the parents anyway. They ARE angry at the child. They’re just making excuses.

Or when their irritation is pointed out, the parent often just flat out denies it and says, “No, I’m not angry.” But they ARE. How do I know?

1. After doing this for 30 years, anger has acquired a smell, a color, a taste. It’s not subtle at all. Often after people have begun speaking for two seconds, I will say, “You’re angry.” “No, I’m not,” they protest.” I repeat myself and add, “And you’re angry a lot during the day—every day—with your spouse, with coworkers, with your children.” They’re offended. “You’ve only known me for a few minutes, and I just started describing something, so how could you claim you know all that?”

I say, “Can you tell the difference between a chicken and a watermelon?”

“Yes.”

“How long does it take you to make that observation?”

“Like a second. Or less.”

“And that is how long,” I say, “it takes me to tell whether you’re angry. Not exaggerating. I’ve been watching it, studying it, and helping people with it for a very long time.”

“Oh.”

2. How else do I know parents are angry with their kids.

Parents commonly tell me about an interaction with a child where they state emphatically, with no doubt whatever, “But I was not angry.”

Me: “Oh yes, you really were.”

Parent: “I was not.”

Me: “I’m not going to sit here and trade back and forth ‘Yes you were’ and ‘No I wasn’t.’ Who was it that called for help with a child? Did I call you? Or did you call me?”

At that point I usually get silence and a slight look of embarrassment.

I say, with a gentle tone, “You want to know why interactions with your child go badly, and I’m telling you—just answering you, not judging you. Now you have a choice to listen or not. You choose.”

If they choose to listen I explain further: “RIGHT NOW—while you’re describing this event with your child—you’re angry WITH ME, without the child there. You’ve been angry with me as you’ve argued that you were not angry. In dozens of ways—words, tone, facial expressions, and more, you’ve told me that you WERE angry with your child. It’s not a question.”

The parent sincerely believed they were not angry, so can you see how they would need HELP seeing their anger? I can help them—you will learn how eventually—but if they can get feedback on the spot with the child, even better.

3. The third way I know parents get angry with their kids more than they know: I’ve BEEN THERE and watched and heard their anger at the child. And when I’ve pointed it out on the spot, the parent denies it. This would be pretty confusing for both parent and child, yes? Because the parent is denying the truth about what is usually MOST of the problem—if not all. The ANGER. We MUST see it before we can address it, and most parents can’t see their anger.

So, if you really want to be all in with LovingandTeaching, get the feedback of your children. Just do it. That takes real commitment from you and them.

Now, let’s look further at you saying to your children, “Tell me if I’m angry.”

You’re ASKING them to tell you if you get angry. And—consistent with family policy of happiness—you suggest that telling you nicely would be more effective than saying it with spit and venom. You and your child have to come up with something YOU can hear, and which THEY can say.

This has to work for everybody. You might have to experiment with different things for them to say. For example, the child might want to scream, “I’m sick and tired of you being angry,” or “You’re such a hypocrite telling me not to be angry when you get angry yourself,” but that’s not likely to be well received by you. So allow me to offer some suggestions about what your child MIGHT say. At least these have proven effective in many other families.

Anger is Not the Same as Refusing a Request

Keep in mind what I said earlier about want vs need. I introduced the near certainty that sometimes your children WILL accuse you of not caring about them ONLY because you won’t give them something they WANT. They will do the same with your anger. They’ll insist on playing a video game past bedtime, or they’ll want a new phone, or money, or whatever. You’ll decide that they don’t NEED that, AND that if they get what they want, it will actually be harmful. (I’m making the very generous assumption here that you have no negative TONE at the time you deny the request.)

So you have to search your soul—real honesty—and if you really, really are not angry, you need to remind your children that it is not unloving of you simply not to give them what they want, because that is not your job. Your job is to ... no surprise here ... loveandteach them. Your job is to establish the three legs of the stool of happiness: loved, loving, responsible.

But children have strong desires with only infantile wisdom, so sometimes children will use your refusal to give them everything they want as an excuse to accuse you of anger. YES, they will, but even knowing that, I can tell you that 90% of the times your children tell you that you’re angry, you ARE.

You’ll swear you’re not angry, but if you don’t feel a Buddha-like peace as you’re teaching them or interacting with them—which means NO frustration, irritation, impatience, or even disappointment—you ARE angry. If you’re not angry, you’ll feel like you’re standing under the tree of life, directing the harvest of God’s love. Remember that they will see your anger sooner than you’ll admit it—at least in the beginning.

We’ve talked about identifying your anger and telling the truth about yourself, and even asking your child to tell you when you’re angry. But now, how do you AVOID this anger? Use all those resources in Chapter Four that I described for you to find love and support for YOURSELF. The more loved you feel, the less pain and fear you’ll have, and the less NEED you’ll have to get angry. Anger is a reaction to pain and fear. PREVENTION of anger with love is way more effective than trying to eliminate anger once it’s there.

If you are already angry, reach out and tell an adult. What can you say? The truth:

There will be times you’re angry. Admit it and work it out with other adults who can see you, accept you, and love you. Don’t dump your anger on your children.

Now, is it possible that your children will exaggerate your anger, to make you look bad, or to make THEM look better, or so they can feel persecuted or self-righteous, or to manipulate you to do what they want? OH YES. I’m not naive. Children are very good at manipulation.

For example, you might be angry at a level 2 on a 0-10 scale, and they react to you as though you were at an 8. That’s just arguing about DEGREE. The fact is, you’re still angry.

So, if they’re even partially right, you must admit it, or you lose credibility.

When they say you’re angry, pause before you immediately defend yourself.

You might say:

If you’re angry, you can’t truly LoveandTeach, because—obviously—anger isn’t loving. And the absence of loving makes real teaching impossible.

If you deny your anger, you lose TRUST, and you can’t help your own child

Don’t Get Confused about Being Accountable to Your Children

Remember that your children are HELPING you with Accountability, but you are still the parent.

You are not obligated to report to them.

They are NOT in charge of you

As you ask for their input, do NOT become confused that in any way they are responsible for your happiness. You’re asking for INFORMATION from them, not their love or teaching.

Doris Kearns Goodwin said, "Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives (your children would qualify) who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation." You are still divinely appointed to be the leaders of the family, but you need all the information you can get. The Lord’s Church provides an example of this: The President of the Church is the single man appointed to administer all the keys of the priesthood on the earth, and yet he gathers the wisdom of his counselors, the Twelve Apostles, and many others as he makes inspired decisions. President Nelson said, “I know that good inspiration is based upon good information.” (Ensign May 2018)

Remember, some time ago, we began talking about the three reasons we need our children’s feedback about our anger. The first reason was accountability.

The second is self-deception, a subject we introduced in Chapters Four and Five. If we’ve been taught from birth that anger is normal, we WILL believe that. And if we encounter information contrary to that belief, we’ll deceive ourselves in any way we can to hang on to a principle that has become familiar and self-protective. Self-deception REQUIRES input from others, and our children can help us with that.

I should emphatically state here—or should have earlier—that we are very likely to benefit from making the same request, “Tell me when I’m angry,” to our spouses, who have more experience with our anger and who might be less likely to be intimidated by us.

The third reason to ask our children to point out our anger is the unity that comes from shared principles. Most families are run as benign dictatorships, since the parents are clearly the “boss of everything,” at least in the beginning. In truth, a great many such dictatorships are not so benign. If we parents ask our children to point out our anger, it becomes immediately clear that the entire family will be living by shared principles, rather than simply the preferences and commands of the parents. Families that live by shared principles are far more connected emotionally and spiritually than the families that use manipulation and Protecting Behaviors to get things done.

THE FIRST TRUTH-TELLING TO YOUNGER CHILDREN 

After all this talk about you telling the truth about yourself, what about younger children? Almost everything in this Training has to be modified according to the age of the child.

You can use the entire Initial Truth-Telling sequence above with children who are seven or eight years old. Children younger than that, however, won’t understand all of it. With younger kids, there is far less instruction, far fewer words. In fact, it’s better to teach them in a more casual way.

An example:

You get angry at your four-year-old. for pouring cereal and milk all over the floor.

The floor still needs to be cleaned up—by the CHILD, which we’ll be talking about—AND you also tell the child, “Billy, you did make a mistake when you made this mess, but I was wrong too. I was wrong to be angry at you. I was not loving.”

It can help if you’ve already discussed these principles in family meetings.

A six-year-old is even better able to understand you as you tell the truth about yourself.

You CAN actually have a family meeting that lasts like 5 mins, where you say, “We have a new goal in our family. We’re only going to do stuff that makes us happy, and we’re NOT going to do the things that make us UNHAPPY. Hiding our mistakes makes us unhappy so we're going to be telling the truth about our anger.”

Then you can do some role playing and contrast loving with unloving behaviors.

Role play #1

You say this to your child:

“Let’s say we’re at the table eating dinner. And you get down from the table to play before you’re finished eating. And I say (with an angry tone), ‘Sit down right now. How many times have I told you not to get off your chair during dinner?’

So, then you ask me, ‘Mom, Was that loving?”

You’ll come up with lots of examples, just write them as you come across them during day.

Here’s another way to do initial truth-telling and establish a new direction for the family.

You say to a 6-year-old, “Do you like it when I’m angry at you?”

“No.”

“Then we’re not going to do that anymore. I was wrong when I did that yesterday when I (give a specific example, like when you told them to go to bed for the third time).”

You: “Do you think your brother (a 4-year-old) likes it when YOU are angry at HIM?”

No.

“So we’re not going to do that anymore either.”

Then you explain how you’re going to love and teach them every time there is an argument.

(We’ll be talking about HOW in subsequent chapters, but we’re getting there)

All this might not be well understood or well received in beginning. That’s understandable. You’re changing the rules—for them and for you. Keep going, and you’ll win. The alternative—to quit telling the truth in order to avoid your children’s disapproval—is unthinkable. They don’t just stumble across learning to feel loved, to be loving, and to be responsible, and if you don’t teach them, they very likely will never learn, which will adversely affect the rest of their lives.

TELLING THE TRUTH TO YOURSELF

We’ve talked about telling the truth about yourself to your children—and also to other adults who will love and support you.

Now we’re going to talk about you telling the truth about yourself to YOU.

In an earlier chapter, we talked about EJFR: Event → Judgment → Feeling → Reaction 

Our unproductive feelings and reactions come from wrong JUDGMENTS, judgments that are lies, lies we were taught. And we keep using these wrong judgments, over and over, mystified by why we keep having negative feelings and behaviors.

We have to learn to tell the truth about ourselves in the moment, even if we have only ourselves to talk to. If we can learn to do that, we can change everything for ourselves and our kids. It’s even better—much better—if we can tell the truth about ourselves WITH the additional help of feeling loved by others as we tell the truth to them (to other adults, as we’ve described in Chapter Four).

Let’s look at some of the lies we tell ourselves—actually false judgments we were TAUGHT—around just ONE subject, which is the endless variations on the command, “Stop that!” which we say when our kids are fighting, arguing, doing something annoying, doing something dangerous, and more. With different words, we say “stop that” a lot to our children, which they translate as “Stop being YOU,” as well as “There is something wrong with you.” We need to get much better at seeing what we say to them.

Can you see how utterly unreasonable it is that we demand that our children simply ignore their pain and fear? That we demand they be loving when we haven’t taught them how?

If we can face the truth about ourselves—that we don’t know how to properly love and teach our children—we can begin to genuinely change. Again, it’s best if you can tell the truth to another adult, so another person can see you, accept you, and love you while you’re being unloving.

BUT if no other adult is available in the moment, you can still tell the truth to yourself, because as you do, it makes an important change in the JUDGMENT that leads you to FEELING angry at your child. Event → Judgment → Feeling → Reaction

Let’s look at what Judgment changes as you tell this particular truth I just laid out. 

OLD JUDGMENT

When those two kids are fighting, they’re defying the many times I’ve told them not to.

Their fighting is inconvenient

I don’t know what to do.

I feel out of control.

I’m not a good parent.

The only way to change this conflict is to order them to stop it.

But when you tell the truth, as I just showed you relative to “Stop fighting,”—telling the truth about your own fear and selfishness—you can learn a new judgment:

NEW JUDGMENT

My children are reacting to pain.

Almost all of their pain is caused by me.

It’s not productive to hate their behavior. In fact, hate is counter-productive, because while I’m hating, I can’t be loving.

I’m not out of control, as I have been all my life. I can learn to make new choices.

Their fighting is just a minor inconvenience

This is just an opportunity for me to learn about loving and teaching them.

RESULT: The judgment changes, the subsequent feeling is immediately different (calm instead of afraid). There is no anger, no controlling (“stop it”), no further wounding of children.

To paraphrase Elder Renlund, “We must see our children through Heavenly Father’s eyes. Only then can we begin to accomplish our work here.” (Ensign Nov 2015)

President Nelson says, “A mother with focus nurtures her son, crippled for the whole of this life. Daily she thanks her Heavenly Father for the privilege of laboring in love with a child for whom mortality’s vale of tears will be mercifully brief. Her focus is fixed on eternity. With celestial sight, trials impossible to change become possible to endure.” (Ensign May 1988)

Now, consider another variation on “Stop that”:

What is the change in judgment that needs to be made to get from “Stop that” to the truth? The change is similar to that involved with “Stop fighting.”

OLD Judgment: Kids make noise to be annoying.

THEY are annoying.

I hate having to stop it over and over.

But I have to stop it, because I hate it, and they need to learn to be quiet.

NEW Judgment: Kids MAKE NOISE.

They just do. They’re not making noise TO ME. They’re just kids.

Yes, there are times not to make noise. (We don’t dribble a basketball on the pews during sacrament meeting, but mostly noise is normal and acceptable.

Years ago I was the leader of a Varsity Scout team of thirty boys. We traveled everywhere on an old school bus. Rarely another adult would accompany us, and that person would usually say, “Is it always this loud?” with a tone strongly implying that the boys should be quieter. My answer was, “I could stop them in an instant, but I choose to let them be boys. Yesyesyes to noise.” And then I quit allowing other adults to participate in activities. But the boys also understood when to be quiet, and they instantly became quiet if I raised a hand.

If you learn all these new judgments—if you’re seeing things as they really are—could you be angry at your children? Impossible.

Another variation on “Stop it”

Can you FEEL the impatience slip away as you tell the truth about YOURSELF? It’s impossible to be impatient as you see your own selfishness. With our impatience we’re saying, “You’re four years old, but you need to act like you’re thirty.” You can begin to feel calmer immediately with a change in judgment.

More examples:

You get the pattern, which equally applies to “Stop running, bothering that person, bouncing in your chair, and on and on.”

Most of the time when we say “Stop it” to our children, what we really mean is, “Stop being yourself. Quit acting your age and inconveniencing me. I have huge expectations about what I want from you, and when you fail to meet them, you’re an enormous disappointment to me. You are defective.” I wish I were exaggerating about what we really mean—and what they hear—but I’m not.

Making noise, wiggling, arguing, and being foolish are natural, unavoidable characteristics of childhood. When we feel loved ourselves, these behaviors don’t bother us at all. We also need to see their Common Problem Behaviors as a sign of their pain, emptiness, needs, and fear, not as inconveniences that we need to quickly eliminate. And that would apply to all the behaviors below that we have discussed repeatedly:

Whining, anger, arguing, difficult, resistant, defiant, fighting

Addicted to phones, video games, social media, physical appearance

Withdrawn, depressed, cutting, suicidal thoughts

Anxious, worry, frustrated, cry

ADHD symptoms

Addicted to alcohol, drugs, porn, sex

Irresponsible with school, chores at home

Read each one of these. These behaviors are what children do when they’re in pain. And somewhere in there is YOUR child. We have been taught to believe that we have to address each of these separately. We believe that phone addiction is different from addiction to porn, for example, or drugs, or cutting, or ADHD, and so on. Then we have to take our child to the right specialist for each one, or go to the right treatment center. With rare exceptions, NO, that is all wrong. All these kids are IN PAIN, and most of all they need you to love and teach them. They need you to teach them to feel loved, to be loving, and to be responsible, which we have discussed and will continue to discuss.

When we understand what I just said, we see how selfish and harmful it is for us just to say “Stop it”—in whatever clever and self-justified way we do it. Again, this does not mean we should ignore inappropriate behavior—a child throwing cans off the shelves at the grocery store does have to stop—but WE must learn that we need to influence our children by loving and teaching them rather than simply controlling them. We’ll discuss teaching and loving much more in the remaining chapters.

Following are some more examples of truth-telling. Notice that I have never suggested that you just go out into the world and vomit your life to people as a form of truth-telling. I’m suggesting where the lies and truths are, as well as how you can be truthful and with whom. I’m loving and teaching you just as I’m suggesting you do with your children.

Let’s look at a very common lie we all tell, and then talk about the truth. Mostly we don’t even recognize that we’re lying.

The Lie

“How many times do I have to tell you . . .” (to clean your room, do homework, get off your phone, etc). We say this when we’ve repeatedly told a child to do or not do something. It’s always said with an impatient tone of voice and a frown on our face.

The Truth (what we really mean):

“I can’t believe you’re so stupid, but you must be, or I wouldn’t have to keep telling you the same things over and over. If I were more loving, I would patiently teach you this lesson as many times as it takes, but my life is so empty and unhappy—I carry such a mountain of past pain—that if everything around me doesn’t go smoothly, I get upset and angry. So when you don’t listen to me, I don’t think about loving and teaching you. No, I selfishly attack you instead, and I try to make you do what I want.”

When we feel unloved and empty ourselves, it’s easy to forget that our role as parents is to love and teach our children. We don’t just forget: in our pain we CAN’T remember. When we don’t have any love to give, we require them to make our lives easier, or at least not to inconvenience us. When they fail to meet that expectation, we attack them. When we say, “How many times do I have to tell you . . .” our children finish that sentence in their heads with the words “you idiot,” or something similar.

If we told the truth, what would happen?

To other adults: We’d find people who could understand us, identify with us, and accept us. Then we would get some of the very unconditional love we need in order to love and teach our children

To ourselves: If we just stopped ourselves from saying the lie and figured out what was true, we couldn’t continue with our unloving behaviors. We’d be far too embarrassed. Or we wouldn’t feel the need to behave badly.

To children: If we were simply to tell the truth about ourselves, about our selfishness, we could eliminate confusion and establish trust and connection.

The Lie

A frown. Mostly we’re unaware of how often these expressions of disappointment and disapproval appear on our faces. But our children are quite sensitive to these silent but lethal communications.

The Truth

“You disgust me. Right now my life is less happy as a result of you being in it. You are inconvenient and irritating, and I wish you were different—or gone.” (No exaggeration, we just don’t like seeing the truth. Hence the lies.)

Our children really do hear all that each time we frown at them. When we don’t feel loved ourselves, we have enormous expectations of our children to make us happy—or at least not to add to our unhappiness. Although these expectations are understandable, they’re also selfish and harmful. Our children often make gallant efforts to shoulder these unreasonable responsibilities we give them to make us happy, but they simply can’t do it. When they fail, our disappointment is crushing to them.

Seeing the truth changes everything about how we feel and behave.

The Lie

“Give Mommy a kiss.” We commonly ask for signs of affection from our children, especially at bedtime or as they leave the house for school.

The Truth

“I often feel unloved and alone, but when you smile at me or kiss me, I feel valued, important, and less lonely. I usually can’t depend on getting affection from the adults in my life when I want it, so I ask for love from you. After all I’ve done for you, you’re less likely to refuse me than other people are. It’s your responsibility to make sure I’m happy.”

That’s a pretty big burden for a kid.

When we’re unhappy, we expect a lot from our children: respect, obedience, courtesy, and affection. We’ve talked about this elsewhere, that respect, obedience, and so on are good things, and we use that “goodness” to justify our demands. In other words, we say to ourselves, “Being respectful is good (true), so I have a right to demand it (Wrong). Demands never make another person feel valued, and we have NO right to expect love from a child, which we have talked about a lot. We also tend to justify ourselves by saying that we’re just making a request (for respect, affection, and more). BUT we confirm that our “requests” for affection are really demands every time we’re disappointed in them or angry at them on the occasions when they don’t give us what we want. Our children are not responsible for our happiness.

We would NOT tell all that truth to our children. That degree of honesty would not help them.

But we COULD tell it to ourselves (change judgment) and to other adults (accepted and loved).

The Lie

“I love you.” (Yes, you’re going to hate this one)

The Truth

“I love you” usually means “I need you. I need your gratitude, respect, and affection. If I genuinely loved you, I’d care about your happiness first, but that’s not my primary interest. I PROVE that beyond all doubt with my disappointment and anger each time you fail to meet my expectations. (Disappointment and anger are utterly incompatible with the claim, “I love you.”)

But I tell you I love you because:

• “I know I should. That’s what loving parents are supposed to say. I look good if I say it, and bad if I don’t.
• “Then you’re more likely to say it back to me, and I like that.”

The common exchange of “I love you” is a socially accepted obligation.

It is not with our words that we most powerfully and clearly communicate to our children how genuine our love for them is. No, it is our behavior—our smiles, frowns, silence, tone of voice, and the time we spend with them—that makes the greatest impression on them. When they see in our behavior that we disapprove of them, control them, and otherwise conditionally accept them, they actually come to resent us saying “I love you”—because they know it’s not true. THEN they often come to hate saying or hearing “I love you” as adults, which doesn’t work well for their partners. And it turns out that WE caused it.

In our defense, our deception with saying “I love you” is not intentional. We do generally give our children the best we have. When we fail to love them, it’s only because we were never sufficiently loved and taught ourselves.

And, again in our defense, we also tell our children we love them because we do have a genuine desire to be loving.

The Lie

“Where are you going?” We ask this—usually with an accusing tone—when a child is going out the door and we don’t know his or her plans (or we forgot).

The Truth

“I do not trust you. You are so foolish and irresponsible that you couldn’t possibly choose how to spend even the smallest portion of your time wisely without my supervision and control. In addition, when you make decisions on your own and don’t tell me, I feel helpless. I assume the worst about you. Ifeel left out and unloved, and I don’t like that.”

I’m not saying we shouldn’t know where our children are. Of course we should. But we often demand that accounting in such a way that they feel violated and controlled, not accepted and loved. When our children don’t tell us where they’re going and what they’re doing, we feel disrespected and out of control, so we insist on being informed (disapproving tone). We forget that the reason they don’t tell us their plans is that they fear and hate the criticism and disapproval we’ve given them so many times when they have shared their plans. (“You’re going where?” “Why would you want to do that?” “Who are you going with?” “And you’re going to wear THAT?” And so on)

When our children feel loved, they feel comfortable telling us where they are all the time, or at least when it matters. That is a truth I can confirm with vast experience. But what if they don’t feel loved? And what if a child is going out the door without your knowing where he’s going? What’s an appropriate way to ask him where he’s going? Keep it straight and simple. Just ask: “Where are you going?” (“You may have told me, but I don’t remember.”) But it’s not the words that matter. What’s important is that we’re not disappointed or angry with them—that’s what hurts them.

As we demonstrate our faith in our children, they begin to understand the faith God has in them, to grant them the freedom “to choose liberty and eternal life” among all the other perilous choices available to them. (2 Nephi 2:27)

The Lie

“You are so . . .” When we get angry at our children, we often use incomplete sentences, choked off by irritation and frustration. (Also because we know that finishing the sentence would be embarrassing) We say:

    “You—”

   “I—”

   “I’m so—”

   “I could just—”

   “I can’t believe you—”

    “What the—”

Sound familiar?

The Truth

“Because I’m selfish, I get angry whenever you dare to inconvenience me. I really want to say something mean and hurtful, but I don’t want to LOOK bad, so I’ll just start the sentence and let you finish it in your head with something awful. That way I won’t look completely unloving and out of control, but you’ll still get the disapproving and angry message.”

The Lie

Silence. This comes in many forms:

• The disapproving glance
• Failure to speak. When our children enter a room and we don’t speak to them, they often interpret our silence as a lack of caring (usually they’re right). How long does it take to speak a child’s name or say hello, and what excuse can we offer for not doing it? What could we be doing that’s more important than recognizing and appreciating our children?
• Physical withdrawal. We often don’t realize how much we avoid our children when we’re angry at them. (We do this with partners and others)
• Lack of interest in their activities. When we ask about the things they do, they know we care about them. When we don’t ask, they feel the neglect. Genuine interest is different, however, from prying or insisting on information that a child is obviously reluctant to give. You know the difference. Prying SOUNDS different: “Where were you? Who did you go with? Where do they live? What did you do? Did you ask to see their birth certificates?”

The Truth

“I don’t have the first clue how to engage you in conversation. For one thing, I haven’t bothered to learn enough about you to know where to start. So I take the easy way out and say nothing. Sometimes I’m silent because I’m disappointed or irritated. On other occasions, I’m just avoiding my responsibility to love and teach you.”

We often use silence as a Protecting Behavior—to run from difficult conversations—but it leaves our children feeling more alone and unloved.

The Lie

“I just don’t know what to do with you.”

The Truth

“It’s obvious that you don’t feel loved, or you wouldn’t act like this. But I don’t know how to love you and teach you, and then I feel stupid and helpless. So I’ll shift the blame—and hopefully the discomfort—to you.”

When our children behave in ways that frustrate us—meaning that we can’t control them—it’s tempting to blame THEM for how we feel. If we can reassure ourselves that something is wrong with them, we don’t have to consider the more painful prospect that we need to change. It’s a cheap way to make ourselves comfortable, but one that causes great harm to our children.

The Lie

“Don’t you talk to me like that.”

The Truth

“I feel unloved and alone. Without Real Love, I reach out for whatever Imitation Love—respect, power, and praise—I can find. After all I’ve done for you, you at least owe me some respect, and I’m in a position of authority where I can demand it from you, something I can’t do with most people.”

A child speaks disrespectfully only to defend himself or to relieve his sense of helplessness. If we saw him clearly, we’d give him what he really needs—our unconditional acceptance and guidance—instead of insisting on respect for ourselves. It’s true that children need to be respectful—it’s part of being considerate, grateful, and happy, as we discussed in an earlier chapter, but we rarely insist on them learning respect for their benefit. We do it for ourselves. We CAN teach genuine respect and gratitude and obedience to children, but only as we love them, which we have also discussed before, and will again.

Lie

“How do you explain these grades?” We say variations on this when our children perform in unsatisfactory ways in many areas, not just their grades (sports comes to mind).

I’ve always wanted to coach a child to actually answer this question, instead of just shrugging. Imagine a child saying, “Well, let’s see. I don’t study, I don’t turn in my homework, you don’t check my homework or progress even though it’s posted online, I skip class as often as possible, and I’m pretty disrespectful to my teacher—which you would have known if you’d attended the last parent-teacher conference. That might explain my grades.”

The Truth

“I’m so disappointed when you perform badly. Part of my motivation in encouraging you to do better is a concern for your happiness—poor grades will impact your ability to make happy choices in the future—but there is also a great deal of selfishness on my part. When you fail to do well, I feel like a lousy parent, and I’m embarrassed at the thought of other people thinking badly of me. I wish you were smarter, I wish you worked harder, and I hate it that you make me uncomfortable like this. I’m also embarrassed that I’ve done nothing to help you with your progress in school, and that I’ve never been an example of diligence for you.”

The instant children feel our disappointment for not meeting our expectations, they know they’re not being loved unconditionally. Criticizing our children’s performance never makes them happy and rarely improves their performance—not for long.

Ironically, even children who are praised for success often become miserable—sometimes many years later—because they know the praise they receive is conditional. They know that if they don’t live up to the expectations people have of them, they WILL be criticized and lose the approval they need so badly. They feel trapped by the obligation to succeed all the time. We talked extensively about the negative effects of praise in Chapter Two.

Lie

“You make me so mad.” There are few lies more common than this one. Every time we get angry at a child, we’re telling her that she MAKES us angry, even if we don’t use those exact words.

The Truth

“I hate being inconvenienced, and I selfishly want to control you and stop you from ever getting in my way. You can make your own choices and mistakes—you know, use your divine-given agency—with everyone else, but not with me. When you fail to recognize that the world revolves around me, I get angry, and I blame you for how I feel rather than taking responsibility for the lack of Real Love in my life.”

In previous chapters—beginning in Chapter One—I explained at length how other people never make us angry.

These are all lies and truths you can tell Real Love parents and others who will be loving and supporting you. You can tell them to yourself. SOME of these truths would be inappropriate to tell TO your child, because they’d be too hurtful and confusing.

As you talk with friends, don’t limit yourself just to telling the truth about the mistakes you make with your children. Also talk about your selfishness—and moments of kindness—toward your spouse, your co-workers, and others. Create as many occasions as possible where you can feel unconditionally accepted.

Initial Truth-Telling to a Difficult Adult Child

Earlier in this chapter I gave an example of telling the truth about yourself to a child. I also mentioned that telling the truth to an adult child could look quite different. Following is one example:

The Estranged Adult Child

A woman wrote to me: “For ten years I have not had contact with my thirty-year-old son. Recently I wrote him and asked if we could arrange to meet, because after watching the parenting training I realized what a horrible job I had done as a mother to him. I was angry all the time, mostly at his father, but also pretty much at the world. He wrote back and told me that he didn’t want to see me again. Not ever. He also said that he had two children who would never meet me. I’m heartbroken. What can I do about this?”

Let me suggest SOME of the words you might say or write to an adult child who wants nothing to do with you. You will find expressions below that can be very effective in beginning the process of reconnecting with your adult child, but you will also find some that don’t apply to you. Your first attempt will be more likely to succeed if you deliver it by text or other electronic message delivery.

• Before I say another word, you can relax. I don’t have a single critical thought to share with you here, and I’m not going to tell you what you need to do—for a change.
• I made your life hell. I did that. You are completely right. You have told me that I was toxic, and again, you are right. No excuses.
• Anything I say here is not to excuse my behavior, but I will EXPLAIN my mistakes, only so you can know that I’m beginning to understand how I affected you as a child and adolescent.
• I recently took a thorough course in parenting, where I learned what it really means to be a loving parent who can raise a child to feel loved and happy.
• I learned that I was FAR more unloving with you than I ever realized. I hurt you. I hurt you a lot. I can see that I didn’t intentionally hurt you, but that means nothing to a child. All you would have known was that I made you unhappy.
• I was way more controlling with you than I realized. I was constantly telling you what to do, which would have made you feel small and incompetent.
• I had a tone of disapproval and anger with you that was there a LOT. That would have made you feel defective, and it would have affected how you felt and how you behaved every day.
• I had unhealthy relationships with men, and those affected you.
• I was afraid/angry/controlling a LOT, and that would have filled your life with fear and loneliness.
• I drank far more than I should have, and that isolated me from you during tender ages when you needed me most.
• There were so many times that you showed me through tears, pleading, and asking for what you wanted that I wasn’t paying attention to what you really needed.
• Often I would turn you over to your dad, because I didn’t know how to be a parent, and I can’t imagine how painful that was for you.
• This list could go on and on, and it wouldn’t begin to describe all the damage I did in your life.
• You have every reason not to ever see me again, and I’m not writing this to get you to see me or talk to me. I have no right to persuade you to do anything. I do think you deserve to hear the truth about what I did to you. 
• As a mother, I was a real failure with you. I was WRONG. I was very wrong.
• I’ve been learning some stuff about parenting, and now I know that all you ever wanted from me was love. I know I’ve claimed to love you in the past, but the kind of love you wanted was unconditional love. Unconditional love means that I care about you without wanting anything from you in return, and I haven’t done that—not for your whole life.
• How do I know I’ve wanted something from you and not loved you unconditionally? Because when you didn’t behave like I wanted, I got disappointed and irritated. When I was angry, I was thinking about myself—anger is always selfish—and I hurt you. When I was angry, I was caring about me more than you, so you felt like I didn’t care about you.
• I consistently put my pain before yours. I put my needs before yours, and then I justified what I did.
• You were right. I hurt you a lot. I had no idea how to love you as a mother. I was lost. My very best attempts to love you were not good enough. My efforts were pathetic. I can see that clearly now.
• It’s no wonder that you’ve avoided me and been angry at me.
• I can’t promise you that I’m different now, and that I would never hurt you again. But I can tell you that I’m LEARNING how not to repeat the past. It’s up to you what you do with that information.

After sending this message, you might hear back from him, but you might not.

What if you DO get a response to your first real attempt at telling the truth about yourself?

• Give him an opportunity to tell you specifically how he feels hurt or abandoned. You might say something like, “I’d love to hear about how I hurt you all those years. You don’t need to worry about hurting my feelings. I know I did a terrible job. I’m sure you were hurt by many things that now I don’t even remember.”
• Do NOT DEFEND yourself. No matter what. If he describes something you did that you remember differently—or don’t remember at all—keep in mind that your memory of those days is severely impaired by the fears you had then, as well as the pain and fears you have now.
• Do NOT be disappointed if his response is not an invitation for you two to get together in person. He may prefer to stay safe and communicate electronically. If his response is positive and encouraging, you MIGHT ask to raise the level of intimacy for the next interaction. If he texts you back, for example, you might ASK HIM if he’d prefer your next communication to be by email, text, or Skype. Don’t push him too fast.

What if you DO NOT get a response to your first real attempt at telling the truth about yourself, or if his initial response is a repetition of “I don’t want to have you in my life”?

Every couple of weeks, you could text him SIMPLE, short messages, like:

"Thinking of you."

"I'm having a lovely day here. I hope you are too."

"Loving you."

NEVER say anything that implies obligation for your son, like:

"Haven't heard from you."

"Would love to hear from you."

"Would love to know how you're doing."

If he continues not to respond, remember that he has a long list of reasons not to trust you. He’s just protecting himself. In addition to the casual messages above, every few months you might send some tiny gift by mail: a handful of Hershey's kisses, for example. Nothing big. It's just a demonstration of your thinking about him and trying to connect in a non-threatening way.

I have seen miracles when parents follow the suggestions above. I’ve seen children begin communicating with their parents after decades of being completely apart. Sometimes that requires a long process of gradually getting closer. Sometimes that process is punctuated by the child going backward to complete withdrawal, often for reasons unknown.

Keep trying. Keep loving. With an estranged child, your focus is just loving, not loving and teaching.