MY CHILD NEEDS TO BE LOVED AND TAUGHT

In previous chapters I talked about the importance of our doing two things with our children:

After all we’ve discussed, that one word—loveandteach—means a lot more now, doesn’t it?

Without our loving them, our children can’t be happy. And if we give them what we CALL “love” without teaching, we are simply spoiling and indulging them, which produces children who are entitled, a horrifying condition.

Teaching Our Children

We don’t hesitate to share our opinions—a form of teaching—with other people about politics, health, and more. But with our children, ironicially, often we’re more reluctant to teach them because we’re afraid of their disapproval. OR we “over-teach” them, which really means to nag and control them, but without unconditionally loving them. Hence the need for lovingandteaching.

We HAVE to teach our children about pain, and fear, and Protecting Behaviors—their own and in the behaviors of others—and teach them about anything that could distract their course toward genuine happiness. We have to teach them WHEN they are using protecting behaviors because if we don’t, who will?

As we’ve talked about in previous chapters, in the short term both we and our children respond most immediately and powerfully to PAIN. We REACT to emotional pain just as involuntarily—and usually as quickly—as we do physically to being stabbed with a fork in our leg. We react mindlessly to pain, like rocks or billiard balls—like we said in Chapter Four.

In this chapter we’re going to talk about how you can CHOOSE to love and teach your children. You’re going to choose between being a rock and a human, and you’ll learn how to teach your children to do the same. As it is now, all day long you see your children REACT to pain as they:

And they see no other choice. You’ve SEEN that. I’m not guessing here. Their reactions to pain are why you’re here, and they keep doing the same unproductive things over and over—like billiard balls with no minds. Look at the list again:

A few words thread themselves through all of these behaviors. Reaction. Repetition. And no choice. Those words combine to equal addiction, and helplessness and hopelessness. This is how the world lives. It’s how most of our children live. NOT what we want.

People repeat the same unproductive, destructive behaviors until somebody teaches them otherwise.

It is OUR job to teach our children what leads to happiness and what doesn’t.

It is our job to teach them when their behaviors are not working—when our children are unhappy. Not lovingandteaching our children is the single greatest crime on earth today. No kidding. After decades of meticulous research and observation, I have concluded that the greatest cause—by far—of all the tragedies, acts of terrorism, selfishness, violence, drug use, wars, and sin is that children are not being taught how to make conscious choices instead of reacting to pain. Without loving and teaching, children get stuck in unproductive behaviors, and then they become ADULTS stuck in similar behaviors. It is tragic to see an adult with an adult mind and abilities, but with the pain and primitive reactions of a 4-year-old.

Importance of the Child Telling the Truth about Himself

And simply teaching our children is not enough. We must teach them until they learn to SEE their behaviors THEMSELVES. If we do the work for them, telling them what they’re doing again and again, we’re just nagging. They just get annoyed, and nothing is learned.

But if we teach our children until THEY see what they’re doing, they LEARN what matters. We’ll discuss more thorough examples of THEM telling the truth about themselves later in this chapter, but you need a brief real-life example now. (Keep in mind that the words you would use with your child will vary according to the child’s age, but this interaction can teach you a LOT about how to interact with a child who is making a mistake.)

A child, Jesse, made a casual observation about something—could have been about how to play a video game or something he learned in school, doesn’t matter. Lauren, his older sister, corrected him with a condescending, irritated tone. You’ve all heard some variation on this many times.

Dad heard this from the doorway and ignored the temptation nearly all of us feel to say something well-meaning but ineffective, like:

Those expressions do NOT work precisely BECAUSE—as we talked about moments ago—the child we’re talking to is REACTING TO PAIN, and essentially we’re saying, “Stop reacting to your pain.” See how crazy that is on our part? When people are in pain, they WILL REACT, but when the reaction of our children is inconvenient TO US, we tell them NOT to react to pain. That would be just like me stabbing you in the leg with a fork and telling you not to move or cry out. Absurd, especially since we caused most of our children’s pain.

Are you getting this? Can you see how foolish we can be as we fail to see our children clearly? We respond to their pain by controlling their REACTION to pain, instead of addressing the underlying PAIN, which means to loveandteach them. Until we address the pain, we can only be ineffective parents.

So, back to Dad not falling for the temptation to say some version of “Stop it.” Instead he came into the room, dismissed Jesse, sat down in front of Lauren, and said, “Tell me what you just did with Jesse.” Dad had NO accusatory tone in his voice. (The tone I’m using right now)

But she said, “What do you mean?”

Pretty cute, aren’t they? In the moment we point out a mistake, suddenly they tend to act as though their brain has never encountered a thought—as though no two brain cells had ever connected. They do an excellent job of acting genuinely puzzled. They’ve had lots of practice as they’ve learned to misdirect us.

But Dad said, “You just spoke to Jesse. How did you speak to him?”

“I don’t know.”

Children play these games with us because we have LET THEM. When they’re resistant and act dense, we often become frustrated, and either (1) we give up and walk away, muttering under our breath, or (2) we lecture them or criticize them. They’ve learned that as long as there is some chance of getting out of trouble, they will try pretending that they didn’t do anything wrong. Why admit a mistake if they can blow it off, right?

“I’ll help you,” Dad said, still as calm as a summer’s breeze. “Jesse expressed his opinion about X, and you corrected him, AND you did it with this tone,” at which point Dad repeated what Lauren had said, complete with the snotty tone. But Dad did NOT become snotty. It was clear that he was only repeating what Lauren had done.

“I didn’t say it like that,” she said.

“I was in the doorway, my dear daughter, so I heard you and I saw the expression on your face. I didn’t hear it secondhand, so I’m not asking whether you did that. I’m stating that you DID.”

Lauren shrugged and said, “Whatever.” Lauren was determined to blow this all off.

Mom and Dad had conducted many family meetings where they talked about being loving, so Dad knew that Lauren understood exactly what he was talking about. He said, “Let me translate that for you into English. Just now, when you said ‘whatever,’ you were really telling me, ‘Go away, you foolish and annoying man. I don’t want to talk about this, so that’s the end of it.’ It was pretty close to your saying ‘Shut up.’”

Lauren became animated as she said, “I wasn’t—”

Dad raised his hand to interrupt: “Again, I wasn’t ASKING what you did. I’m right here. I saw it and heard it. Clearly, you don’t want to learn right now—not about what you said to Jesse and not about what you said to me. And I’m not going to keep telling you what you did because you already know. Now you get to do this: get a piece of paper and a pen, sit right here, and write out what YOU did in your conversations with Jesse and me that might be interfering with the happiness you want.”

“I have to leave for volleyball practice.”

“No,” Dad said with a beautiful calm, “you don’t HAVE to be involved with volleyball at all. You DO need to learn to see your mistakes, admit them, and be loving if you want to be happy in this life—and in the next. This is far more important than volleyball. When you’re finished with your writing, you find me, and we’ll talk about what you’ve written. Keep in mind that if you’re not sincere in your writing, I will know immediately, and then you’ll get to do the assignment again.” Without waiting for an answer, Dad got up and left the room.

Ten minutes later, Lauren came into the room where Dad was sitting, dropped a piece of paper in his lap, and said—with unmistakable “attitude”—“There. I have to go to volleyball now.”

“No, you really don’t. You have something far more important to do.”

Lauren impatiently pointed at the piece of paper she had dropped and said, “I did it.”

“You made it LOOK like you did it, but you really didn’t. When I gave you the assignment, I said that you needed to ‘learn to see your mistakes, admit them, and be loving if you want to be happy in this life and in the next.’ Your entire attitude right now is screaming that you have not learned anything. How do I know? People who are learning are humble. You are being defiant. If you were learning, you’d be eager to gather information, but you’re being resistant and in a hurry to rush off to something else. I don’t even need to read what you’ve written. Your voice, face, tone, and words all tell me what I need to know—that you’re not learning. You’re just mechanically completing an assignment so you can keep doing what you want. So, take your time and try it again.”

Lauren stomped off to her room, and after a while Dad could hear some muffled sobbing. He went to Lauren’s room and said, “Look at me.” (TONE) He did not coddle her or act apologetic, which is very important. Had he tried to comfort her WHILE she was being defiant and manipulating him, he would have been rewarding the manipulation. This concept is very important to understand. Children are VERY observant, and if they can get what they want by using anger, whining, confusion, denial, and withdrawing, they WILL use those tools again.

Lauren continued to bury her head in her blanket, precisely to win sympathy and to end the lesson being taught, so Dad said, “Come and find me when you’re ready to talk.”

Lauren’s head popped up, and she snapped, “I’m missing VOLLEYBALL.” She quickly got over the crying for sympathy, didn’t she?

“Yes, you are. I’ll see you when you’re ready.”

After several minutes, Lauren appeared and said to Dad, “I don’t know what you want.”

“You really do, but you’ve learned in the past that if you act like you don’t know, or if you get angry, or whine, or give me attitude, eventually I’ll stop trying to teach you. I have given up and left you alone, and you have gone back to doing what you want. That is MY FAULT. I didn’t love and teach you well before. I was wrong. But now I know better, so we’re going to do things a better way. I’ll help you a little right now. In the past, when you’ve made mistakes, have I become angry at you?”

“Yes.”

“I was wrong, and I hurt you with my anger. So now when you make a mistake, you tend to deny it, or you act like you don’t know what I’m saying, or you cry or get angry, all so you don’t have to admit making a mistake. That actually makes sense under the old rules, where I got angry if you made a mistake.”

BECAUSE Dad wasn’t angry or impatient as he spoke, Lauren began to relax. She could begin to sense—although she couldn’t have described it in words—that he was really trying to teach her something important. He wasn’t trying to make her feel bad. She didn’t realize intellectually that he was LOVING her while he was TEACHING her, but she could begin to FEEL his love, and that is what matters.

Dad said, “Am I angry at you right now?”

Parents, if you ask that question, you need to be pretty confident that you’re NOT angry.

Lauren said, with some hesitation and bit of surprise, “I don’t think so.”

“I’m really not, kid. All that matters to me right now is YOU: your happiness, your learning, your success. And this is a very important moment for you. I’ve made so many mistakes loving you in the past, but right now isn’t one of those mistakes. So, take your time. You can either go back to your room and write out what I assigned you, or we could talk about it right now.”

Tears ran down Lauren’s face as she said, “I want to talk about it right now.” And she sat on Dad’s lap and hugged his neck tightly, something she hadn’t done in quite some time.

Dad cried a bit too, and then they talked:

• Lauren recognized and admitted that she had corrected Jesse when it was really none of her business to do that. Jesse wanted someone to listen to him, not correct him, and she recognized that when SHE speaks, she wants somebody to listen too.

• Lauren admitted that Jesse wasn’t the REAL cause of her snottiness. She was just feeling alone and hurt and confused about her life, and she was taking it out on her brother.
• Dad admitted again that HE was the cause of her pain, and that he had not loved her enough or in the way she needed. And he told her that she was only using behaviors that either (1) he had taught her or (2) allowed her to use.
• Lauren told the truth about her being resistant and disrespectful toward Dad when she “threw” the paper at him as a declaration that she had completed his “stupid assignment.” No, she didn’t SAY those words, but that’s what she meant.
• Lauren said that she had NOT understood in family meetings what loving and teaching was. She needed to SEE Dad DO IT first. She needed to admit she was wrong and FEEL him NOT be impatient or angry. She needed to feel him NOT withdraw his unconditional love for her before she could believe that he actually was loving her.

Until a child feels loved while making a mistake, they can’t know what the pure love of Christ feels like. THAT is how important it is that we love and teach them, and they can greatly accelerate the process of feeling loved if THEY tell the truth about themselves. Lauren just illustrated that, and we’ll talk more about it shortly.

Now you can begin to see what we talked about many minutes ago—why it’s not nearly enough for you to repeat observations or instructions over and over to them. That’s called nagging and lecturing, and until they feel loved enough, they’ll do almost anything just to get your words to go away. No, THEY have to tell the truth about themselves.

Now, let’s go over the reasons they need to tell the truth, and you’ll be more motivated to make this happen, as Dad did with Lauren.

FIRST Reason Children Need to Tell the Truth about Themselves: Ownership

When they do speak the truth about themselves, now they OWN the words. When THEY speak the words, they become THEIRS. They will remember words THEY speak 10 times deeper and better than if YOU say them.

Another way of saying this: When YOU repeat a principle, children usually hear it as nagging and throw it out. When THEY repeat it, it sinks in. That’s called learning.

SECOND Reason Children Need to Tell the Truth about Themselves: Connection to All Truth

Jesus said, “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life.” (John 14:6) He also said, “I am the light of the world.” (John 8:12) And John said, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) So Christ has said, “I am the way, the truth, the light, the love, and the life.” Nephi saw a vision where the love of God was depicted as a tree whose light poured out into all the world.

All of these—truth, light, love—are intimately and inextricably connected, and this light and power “goes forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space.” (D&C 88:12, 6-7) It is “in all things [and] gives life to all things” (D&C 88:13). It’s quite real that as children speak the truth about themselves—Truth being one of the names of Christ—they connect with that light and love that give life to everything and fill the immensity of space. They’re in the flow that connects everything in the universe, like the flow of a river.

On many occasions I have navigated a canoe down some treacherous whitewater rapids, and I discovered that when I stayed in the main “flow” of the river, I smoothly shot by all the rocks and other hazards that could interfere with my journey, injure me, and even drown me.

It is so with our children. When they tell the truth about themselves, they connect with the divine flow. With the truth they are not alone. They’re happy. Without it, they cut themselves off from all that is good, exposing themselves to the rocks and other hazards of life’s journey.

THIRD Reason Children Need to Tell the Truth about Themselves: More and Better Choices

If we consistently teach children what is true, and help them FEEL loved, they will naturally TEND to make loving and responsible choices. Why? Because they have an inherent desire to be like their Father in heaven. With loving and teaching, they naturally want to stay in the flow of the river, in the flow that is “in all things [and] gives life to all things,” (D&C 88:13) as opposed to being dashed on the rocks of the river. Sure, we all make lots of mistakes as we move forward and learn, and we get distracted by the world and the pain of the past. But we tend to choose genuine happiness—as do our children—because it FEELS good. It feels good to be in the flow of the universe, the flow of all things. It feels good to have the Holy Ghost walking by our side.

This is an important principle: We teach our children because we love them, and because they are inherently GOOD, if we expose them to how they can feel loved, be loving, and be responsible, they will naturally TEND to make those good choices. Another way of saying this is that we TRUST our children while we love and teach them.

We teach them for what reason? So they’re just more cooperative with US? More pleasant to be around for US? So they’re easier for us? No.

We’re teaching our children so we can increase the CHOICES available to them, the choices that can lead to happiness, and with love we give them the ability or power to make good choices. THAT is true power. What will we ever do that will make a greater impact on the world than that?

Teaching them increases choices, and as THEY can see and tell the truth about themselves, and as they feel genuinely loved by us, they become very powerful. Look at the power Lauren felt as she felt loved and shared the truth about her behavior. And remember the fighting Canadian children from Chapter Two, where Mom asked them why they were unhappy. The three-year-old said,  “Oh, we’re just empty and afraid.” THAT is a powerful child, a child who can be truthful and then can make different choices from that place of truth, light, and love.

FOURTH Reason Children Need to Tell the Truth about Themselves: Feel Loved

In Chapter Four we talked about this sequence,

mostly in relation to us finding Real Love for ourselves as adults. It applies equally to children.

If we teach them WHILE we love them, they naturally tend to embrace the TRUTH. As they tell the truth about themselves—as Lauren in my description of a few minutes ago—they feel seen, accepted, and loved, so they can make more loving and responsible choices.

I’ve said it before—and will again—that most of us, including our children, simply REACT all day to whatever happens: what other people say, what people do, circumstances, the weather, whatever. We’re prisoners to our reactions. The moment we say, for example, “He makes me angry,” we’re just reacting, and we see NO CHOICES.

When we teach our children the CHOICES available to them, they can begin to stay in that infinite flow that governs the universe. They stay in the FLOW of the river. You WANT—and they want—to be in that flow. Why? Because it’s LOVE, and truth, and light, and because it’s joyful. Because it’s our very reason to live. If they’re in the flow, they draw from the strength of all love—they’re interconnected to all that is good and loving. If they’re not, they smash against the rocks and can’t go ANYWHERE.

No More Wounds

Our children are GUARANTEED to encounter rocks—obstacles of every kind—as they flow down the river toward the fountain of living water (John 4:10; 1 Nephi 2:9)

They will encounter enough rocks in their journey without US PUTTING obstacles in their way, or allowing obstacles that could reasonably be removed. While increasing the flow in our children’s lives, and while helping them to build a foundation—using our love and the pure love of Christ—we cannot allow destructive forces to weaken the foundation or stop the flow. 

In Chapter One we talked about a Zero tolerance for whining. None. NO whining without addressing it, loving the whining child, and teaching the child choices that are more loving and responsible. Why? Because ONE moment of whining can destroy a hundred moments of peace. Pain and fear are that powerful, AND if we allow whining to happen at all, that behavior—along with the underlying pain—becomes exactly like a weed that spreads insanely and without any intentional nourishment on our part.

In Chapter Five we talked about a Zero Tolerance for anger, again because of the horrifying damage that it can cause even if permitted briefly. It’s too destructive to be allowed a place in the soil of our garden. It creates far too large a rock in the river we navigate to “the fountain of all righteousness.” (1 Nephi 2:9)

I repeat: We’re teaching our children to increase their CHOICES, and with the love we give them, we increase their ability to make those choices. THAT is true power. And we must be committed to eliminate anything WE do, anything our children do, that interferes with the truth, with love, and with the fulness of agency.

So, the first step in loving is to STOP ALL WOUNDING. Another way to say this is to stop all distractions, anything that would obstruct the flow we’re in, or stop the flow of the Spirit within us. That’s what all the “Thou shalt nots” are about. God is NOT trying to stop us from being wicked. He doesn’t believe that inherently we ARE wicked. He’s trying to stop us from being distracted from our path home and dashed on the rocks. He is telling us—from an eternity of experience—that He KNOWS what will cause us to take our eyes and hands off the rod of iron and the path to the tree of life. He really is the “way, the truth, and the life,” and he carefully instructs us in how to stay in the “way,” or the flow, or the path.

Most of us have absolutely no idea how often we wound other people, nor how often we have been wounded ourselves. We don’t even have MEMORIES of 99% of wounds from the past. (Actually way more than 99%) We don’t remember because the wounding was so common—all the forms that the “I don’t love you” message was delivered—that we came to accept it as normal. To put a fine point on it, we have forgotten the hundreds of times we saw and felt a parent sigh or roll their eyes in disappointment. It was not remarkable, it was not out of the ordinary, even though it sucked the life from our bones.

We WANT to remember loving and happy childhoods, so we BURY our pain, because we don’t want to keep facing it. Burying our childhoods is so common as to qualify as normal. One man told me he could remember nothing of his childhood, and I said it didn’t really matter, because he was wearing it on his face. We may not remember the details of how we were injured, but the wounds still fester, bleed, and scar our souls, and this pain comes out in the ways we have discussed many times now:

• Protecting Behaviors  
• Imitation Love: praise, power, pleasure, safety
• The Common Behavior Problems we’ve talked about many times, including this chapter

We may not remember our traumas, but they did leave their imprint in the wounds we feel every day, wounds we have felt for so long that we barely notice them until something or somebody suddenly adds to them. This is the very nature of the PCSD we discussed in Chapter 3, which affects us all day every day, even though we don’t REMEMBER the original trauma—the thousands and thousands of incidents of trauma. How horrifying is this, to live in response to events we don’t even remember?

We live in a prison we did not create—for crimes we did not commit. And we never knew that the prison door was open the whole time. We had no guide to love and teach us, to take us by the hand and lead us out of prison. THAT is what the Savior does. He “opens the prison to those who are who are captive.” (Isaiah 61:1) THAT is what we do for our children in His name.

Every day I talk to people who say some variation on, “I feel so stuck.” Read the word “stuck” as “imprisoned by lies and pain.” Without sufficient love and instruction, our agency is taken from us. The old “I don’t love you” wounds take us over, which is Satan’s primary delight.

And it doesn’t matter whether the wound is delivered with anger, yelling, hitting, sexual abuse, or just plain neglect—emotional and spiritual. Most people—by far—walk around suffering from PCSD (Chapter Three), and they don’t even know it. It’s actually worse that we don’t realize it, and that nobody intended to do it, because then it remains obscured, and we can’t address it. As a society, we are zealously occupied with our efforts to eradicate the more visible problems—AIDS, cancer, violence, sexual abuse, racism, and more—while we’re ignoring the root of all emotional pain in the world: not feeling loved. That root problem is not as visible, or bloody, or dramatic, or newsworthy as the problems that get all the attention. So we keep pulling the tops off the weeds, ignoring the roots. Kinda foolish.

So, obviously it’s loving and teaching that will solve the problems of the world, but that requires a great deal of instruction and dedication. In the beginning, at the very least, on our way to loving and teaching we must first adopt a policy of

NO MORE WOUNDING.

What would that look like in your family? You can’t just say “No more wounding” and expect that you, or your partner, or your children will somehow just stop inflicting emotional wounds upon others in the family. We need to get specific.

We wound other people when we are in pain ourselves, which is immediately followed by our selfishly protecting ourselves. We focus entirely on our own pain, which uniformly has the effect of being selfish and unloving toward others. When we’re in pain we’ll do ANYTHING to diminish it, including the use of all the Protecting Behaviors and Common Problem Behaviors that we’ve listed—

• Praise
• Power
• Pleasure
• Safety
• Attacking
• Lying
• Acting like Victims
• Running
• Whining, anger, arguing, resistant, fighting
• Addicted to phones, games, social media, appearance
• Withdrawn, depressed, cutting, suicidal thoughts
• Anxious, worry, frustrated, cry
• ADHD symptoms
• Addicted to alcohol, drugs, porn, sex
• Irresponsible with school, chores

WHILE we are screaming that we NEED love, in our self-focus we are also shouting “I don’t love you”—or anyone else.

Selfishness always communicates those two two messages simultaneously—“Love me” and “I don’t love you.” We’re not feeling loved, we’re in pain, we react to the pain, and then we cause pain in others. What a tragic cycle. It’s a cycle the whole world is trapped in, explaining all the anger, violence, wars, political fights, racism, and more.

We MUST stop this cycle. As parents you are trying to build lives. You can’t do that while destruction is happening. The Savior Himself said that there is no sense planting a vineyard without also building a wall around it and a watchtower, both of which are to keep out anything or anyone who might harm the grapes of the vineyard. (Matthew 21:33) Nor does it make any sense to plant a family and then not watch for and keep out anything that might harm the children within it.

Almost NO parents talk to me WHILE they’re designing and planting their vineyard, so they’ll be PREPARED for the invasions of the world that will destroy their tender children. No, they wait until the deer are eating the beans, lettuce, and cabbage. They wait until insects are devouring the brussel sprouts (aphids), spinach (thrips), and corn (ear worms). Now, we’ve talked and we will talk about what to do with infestations of the destructive distractions to your children, but we also need to emphasize active protection and prevention.

To be very specific, begin with a family meeting—loose, casual but with purpose, with you and your children—where you clearly state that nothing good and lasting ever happens accidentally. You need to intentionally plant grapes, for example, if you want the fruit of the vine.

So what is the primary goal of your family? Talk about it. Perhaps first talk about what it’s NOT. In my own life, I had all the success you could want in education, career, and more. That didn’t produce happiness. The end of that road was me sitting in the woods with a gun to my head. I have counseled with many billionaires whose lives are a swamp of misery.

The other day I talked to the CEO of a large corporation who was describing how his life and his marriage were a constant battle because their son was a terror, a living nightmare. The son ruled everything. He was controlling, angry, critical, impossible to please, demanding. I asked the father how old his son was.  He said, “Four.” I would have shaken my head in disbelief if I hadn’t heard this story many times before. How could this happen? It happened because the father planted his vineyard but without a wall, and without a watchtower, so the influences of the world FLOODED into that home and ate up his son and him as surely as animals and pests eat an unprotected garden. That big house was filled with toys, food, phones, games, and other entertainment, but they were missing the overall picture, the goal that matters.

Back to your family meeting. You or the family will eventually come up with HAPPINESS as the goal—and that’s what Lehi told his family (2 Nephi 2:25).

If anyone suggests other goals, go through them, and point out the innumerable examples of public figures who have achieved vast quantities of money, power, fame, praise, Facebook popularity, and more, but ended up depressed, broken, and suicidal.

So what creates happiness? As I’ve said earlier, happiness is a natural result of building the three legs that support it: feeling loved, being loving, and being responsible. We have to help our children construct and maintain all three.

Happiness is the central goal of life, so any behavior that contributes to that goal is right. We must constantly be asking ourselves in real time, What are those behaviors or conditions that contribute to happiness? We’ve gone over this in previous chapters, and now you’ll do it in family meetings and every day in countless situations where you wonder what to do. You’ll ask these question over and over:

Does this proposed activity contribute to happiness? Does this contribute to loved, loving, responsible?

Example: a child has the responsibility to wash the dishes—or whatever. But his friends come by, and he asks to go and play with them instead. What do you do? Ask the three questions and you’ll have your answer. One of the questions is NOT whether the activity will entertain the child or make the child like you.

Anything that leads to happiness is right or good. Mormon taught this. (Moroni 7:16-24) Just as important, any behavior that DETRACTS or distracts from happiness is WRONG or potentially harmful.

You have an opportunity here to teach your family this: “Our goal is Happiness, and no longer will we tolerate any behavior that is not consistent with happiness.” Now, don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean by “not tolerate” that we’re going to CONTROL behaviors. Not at all. By “not tolerate” I mean that when an unloving or irresponsible behavior occurs, we are not going to let it go without addressing it in some meaningful way. And we’ve talked about all the behaviors that are unloving: protecting behavior and common problem behaviors.

But these words—lying, attacking, victimhood, addiction—are not all used in everyday language, so we need something specific and common and direct and brief that our children can remember.

I suggest one family motto that has proven very useful to a great many people: “Our family has a ZERO TOLERANCE for anger, whining, teasing, lying, withdrawing.”

Why is this effective? Because it puts into just a few words concepts that are interwoven in all the problems children and families have.

(Put up two slides for Protecting Behaviors and Common Behaviors Problems, and go through each, illustrating how the five simple Zero Tolerance Behaviors are involved in—and often precede—all of the items on the longer lists.)

Anger, whining, teasing, lying, and withdrawing are all words kids understand.

Every kid knows what anger is, and whining, and teasing (anything done TO the other person that they don’t like, regardless of your “supposed” intentions). They know what lying is, and you can explain withdrawal by pointing to the examples of shyness, isolation, burying their heads in phones at the dinner table, excessive video games, and more.

If you’re going to implement this Zero Tolerance, you’ll find it convenient to have a mnemonic device for them. You can make up your own—many people have—but I suggest this one:

Always The Loving Way, or—for our purpose—AlWays The Loving Way (two caps in AlWays), AWTLW. Put those five capital letters vertically, and you get:

Anger

Whining

Teasing

Lying

Withdrawal

Now, I recognize that you can’t just tell a child not to be angry, for example. Impossible. Zero tolerance doesn’t mean you will STOP all those things. Ah, but you WILL require that they TALK about those feelings and behaviors—in ENGLISH (as we did with whining in Chapter One). Stomping and throwing things and having a fit is “unfocused” anger. It’s not talking. It’s not exploring. It does not create opportunities for feeling seen, accepted, and loved. It does not create solutions.

Why a zero tolerance for these 5 things? Because they’re all DUMB CHOICES. Not “dumb” in a condescending, snotty assessment, but “dumb” in the sense that these five choices—or, more accurately, reactions—NEVER work in leading us toward the tree of life. More pointedly, they will destroy our children’s lives, in all the ways we’ve talked about.

One day I was called to visit a young man I had been home teaching. He was in the intensive care unit of the hospital, and he had been beaten very nearly to death. He’d been an alcoholic for years, he had lost his wife and child, and was living miserably and desperately. From his early childhood, his parents had ignored ALL the behaviors in the Zero Tolerance list. The parents USED all the behaviors themselves with their children, and of course they did nothing to teach their children about the disadvantages of them. The darling little children of our Heaveny Father NEVER suddenly become alcoholics, or lose marriages and children, or get beaten to death by accident. No, they get there one behavior at a time, each behavior ignored by parents who might be having home evening and attending every church meeting. You and I are here to pay attention to these behaviors and actually do something about our children wandering off into the mists of darknessand drowning in the filthy river. (1 Nephi 8 and 11)

We’ve gone through the longer lists of behaviors to watch for (two sets of slides), but it can become so much more manageable to start with eliminating FIVE. (the list of AWTLW) These five tend to lead to all the other problems. We can make it simpler for our children. To put a fine point on this, you have two choices:

1. You can engage in the five behaviors: AWTLW

OR

2. Be happy.

You can’t have both. Lehi said it well when he said that every choice is between freedom and eternal life or prison and death. (2 Nephi 2:27)

Why the emphasis on ZERO tolerance? Why not just gradually work on these behaviors instead of going for Zero? Let me illustrate by talking about anger in the life of a real parent.

I know a single mother, Ellen, who has two children, Eric and Maureen. Ellen was raised in a home where anger was expressed with such regularity that it was accepted as normal. (In other words, a fairly average home) So, naturally, Ellen learned throughout her life to use anger to get what she wanted. (Face it, anger DOES work in the short term) Ellen didn’t manipulate people with anger intentionally. As a young child she just discovered that people tended to give her what she wanted in order to avoid the exceptionally unpleasant experience of her irritation. Once Ellen learned this lesson—well before the age of two—she continued to use it. Children EVERYWHERE use their their anger and their parents’ fear of disapproval to get what they want. It might be the number one manipulation, certainly the number one gateway to entitlement.

So, of course, Ellen used anger with her husband—it was pretty much the only tool she had learned. Well, surprise!—NOT—he got tired of that and eventually left her. Even when she could see that her husband was leaving, she COULD NOT stop using this familiar tool. Of course she couldn’t. It’s all she knew, and of course she blamed her anger on him.

She used anger to motivate her children. (Children do move faster in the short term when they’re yelled at. (Mimic yelling at a kid to clean his room) And then, no surprise again, the kids—Eric and Maureen—learned anger from their mother, and they used it right back at her and with each other. It was a perfect storm of emotional conflict and disaster. Hurricane Ellen, and Eric, and Maureen every day. No meteorologist required to predict these storms.

The kids were stuck in an endless cycle of arguing. And Ellen made it worse by getting angry at the kids for fighting. Ironic, eh, her being angry at them for being angry at each other? As parents we demonstrate buckets of this kind of hypocrisy nearly every day. 

But Ellen learned about the power of Real Love, the pure love of Christ. So, in family meetings—many of them—Ellen taught the kids about the destructive nature of anger and about the positive effects of love. But one day she called me and said, “We’re getting better—we get angry at each other less often—but it doesn’t take much for it to come right back again. And then people’s feelings are hurt, and it takes quite a while for the bad feelings to go away.”

Without the slightest conscious intent, this whole family had settled into a pattern of manipulation with anger. It’s so easy, isn’t it? There’s always a great justification for anger, isn’t there? People are always doing something inconvenient where we can say, “He made me angry.”

Zero anger seems almost impossible, but in truth there are so many precedents in life for going from frequent use of a thing or behavior to NO use. Is there any drug treatment center that advocates a gradual decrease in using cocaine? No. The solution is immediately NO use. How about drunk driving? Less? No, NONE. And the 5 Zero Tolerance behaviors are every bit as harmful as cocaine and drunk driving.

So how WOULD you get a child to clean his room, for example—without anger? 

Surprise! Love and teach.

OFFER to help the child clean his room ONCE. Get it acceptably clean—not perfect, just acceptable. Then loveandteach:

You’re loving them and teaching them the benefits of a clean room and a sense of responsibility. It’s quite fine, actually.

So first you teach by example and with words. Be specific.

• Tell them that the room must be kept clean for inspection at 6 pm every day.
• Give them photos of a clean room, very specific, no nagging in between.

If that doesn’t work—teaching with WORDS—you teach with consequences.

NOTICE: Real Love does not mean real indulgence or real entitlement. No, you’re teaching children to LIVE in the real world, and that requires real responsibility (and feeling loved and being loving). Failure to prepare them for life is criminally negligent, and yet most parents commit exactly that crime.

Loveandteach.

And this preparation for LIFE—mortal and eternal—is entirely the justification for Zero Tolerance. The goal of life—and the goal of every sensible family—is happiness, and NOTHING that interferes with happiness is to be tolerated. We all understand immediately a zero tolerance for poisonous snakes or sarin gas in the house. Duh. But we fail to recognize that anger is a poison, and similarly is not to be tolerated—at all. Really. Zero. This concept of zero isn’t hard to understand. It doesn’t matter how much nutritious food you give your children, for example, if occasionally—just now and then—you sprinkle a meal with a few grains (hardly anything, really) of cyanide. Excuse me? Anger is like that.

Is it possible to ingest just a tiny bit of cyanide and live? Yes, but is it worth the risk? Would you feed practice doses to your kids? NO. Same with anger. The only dose of anger or cyanide that is truly safe is NONE.

Anger is sneaky and powerful, a very dangerous combination. Once you’re angry, it’s very much like drinking alcohol. Once you’ve started drinking, your brain is immediately impaired. ALWAYS. And one of the first abilities alcohol steals from you is the ability to know just how much you’re impaired. So how do you know that you’ve drunk too much to drive safely? Almost impossible.

We’ve all seen the drunk who is asked by other people, “Are you all right to drive?” And the drunk usually answers, “Yeah, sure.” That’s one reason the legal limits for blood alcohol keep going down and down, because people have no idea how impaired they are. What’s the best way to know you’re not impaired? NO alcohol.

And it’s the same with anger. How much is safe? How angry can you get without hurting others and losing the Spirit yourself? NONE.

Paraphrasing Elder Scott, “Selfishness—including anger—is the crowbar Satan uses to open a heart to temptation in order to destroy agency. He want to cultivate selfishness in order to bind the mind and body through crippling habits and thereby separate us from our Father in Heaven and His Son.” (Ensign May 1989)

Elder Ballard talked about addictive behaviors—like anger—and said that they “overpower the part of our brain that governs our willpower, judgment, logic, and morality. The addict abandons what he or she knows is right [and] the hook is set and Lucifer takes control.” (Ensign Nov 2010)

If you set a standard of “less anger,” you will play around with the “maximum allowable limit” all the time (just as drinkers play around with the legal limit in alcohol), constantly going over the line, often without realizing it. The only safe amount of anger, or alcohol, or any poison, is NONE.

Now, to be realistic, good luck with just telling your kids “zero tolerance for anger” and expecting positive results. It won’t happen.

Your children will be tempted to say that they “hardly ever” get angry, or they will find excuses to do it. Or they’ll use the “I’m not angry” defense, “No,” they’ll protest, “I’m just annoyed.” They’ll do the same with the terms irritated, frustrated, exasperated, impatient, blablabla, just like adults do to minimize admitting their anger.

Now back to Ellen’s kids, Eric and Maureen, who were blowing anger at each other in a perfect storm. And Mom reported to me that they were sometimes angry less, but it wasn’t really improving steadily. They would all constantly make excuses for their anger, certain that THIS TIME they had a pretty good reason for it. I had a conversation with Mom about Zero Tolerance.

Shortly afterward, Maureen (daughter) was making excuses for her angry intimidation of Eric, and Ellen (mom) said, “Let’s say that every time I see you, I kick you in the shins. Would that be acceptable to you?”

Maureen looked at Ellen like she was crazy and said, “No.”

“Suppose that I kicked you only when you say irritating things, or when you don’t do what I want? In other words, I’ll kick you only when it’s justified. Would that be all right?”

“No.”

“Okay, what if I ‘work on’ my kicking you. I’ll try harder and do better, so maybe I’ll kick you only half as often? Would that be all right?”

“No.”

Ellen: “I agree. With some things, you don’t ‘work on’ them. You don’t try harder. You just STOP THEM. Kicking you in the shins is one of those behaviors, and drunk driving, and anger. What you don’t realize is that when you’re angry and controlling with your brother, you are emotionally kicking him in the shins. It is not okay. Not ever. You get no credit for doing it less—or for working on it—just like you don’t get credit for stopping at stop lights MOST of the time. If you stop BETTER, you’ll still die pretty soon.”

Maureen said, “So, you’re telling me I can’t ever be angry at Eric?”

“Nope, didn’t say that at all. You can be as angry at Eric as you wish, but if you express that anger TO HIM, he will take it as an attack, and then things will go very badly, as you’ve proven every single time before.”

“So if I’m angry at Eric, what do I do with it?”

Ellen: You can tell him that what he’s doing is inconveniencing you, or affecting you negatively in some way, and ask him to do it somewhere else, or not at all. That’s ONE possibility.

Maureen: He won’t listen. And then I’ll be mad again.

Ellen: “I think you’re right about that. So let’s try something more effective. If you tell ME that you’re angry at Eric, will my feelings get hurt?”

“No, probably not.”

“Will I get angry at you?”

“No.”

“But if you tell me the truth about your anger at Eric—or anybody else—many good things can happen. First, you can express honestly how you feel, which is almost always feels great. You don’t have to hold back your anger. You can tell me you want to shoot ‘im. I can handle hearing that, and you’ll feel like you got to express yourself and be heard. Second—more important—how will I feel about YOU? Will I get angry at you or criticize you?”

“No.”

“In fact, isn’t it likely that I will unconditionally accept you?”

“You have every time so far—lately at least.” (Mom is still learning about Real Love, and Maureen is learning to trust that.)

“So if you tell ME the truth about your anger at Eric or whoever, you’ll feel freer and unconditionally accepted. Another benefit is that I’m not stuck in whatever crazy thinking is leading to your anger. I’m not afraid or needy, so I can help you see more clearly what the real cause of your anger is and how you might respond instead. That’s a lot of benefits, don’t you think?”

This might as well be Amanda’s children from Chapters Two and Four. These are the kids she told “a million times” to stop arguing. But that doesn’t work. Lovingandteaching does. Maureen and Eric might be YOUR kids arguing over the remote, or the game controller, or about more phone use, or whatever.

How to Completely Stop a Lifetime Habit of Anger

YOU might be thinking—as your child might—“But how do I just suddenly stop doing something I’ve been doing all my life?”

Excellent question, and I suggest a three-part answer. (You may come up with your own)

First Way You Completely Stop a Lifetime Habit of Anger

Think before you open your mouth. Yes, it’s that simple. Reaching the tree of life requires real commitment, instead of just empty wishing and posturing, which we can be very good at.

You simply make a solemn promise that you will never allow anger to spill from your mouth again. This is not an unreasonable suggestion. No matter how justified you might feel, you would never say certain vulgar words in public, would you? Unthinkable. Not once. Some things you just decide not to do. There are words you do not use with your child. There are jokes you do not tell. You just DON’T.

Another example: Suppose that you have the nasty habit of texting while driving, but one day your best friend is killed while texting you. Do you think that at that point you’d be able to make a commitment to stop texting while driving? Completely? Some things we STOP.

So the first part of stopping anger is THINKING before using our mouths. Think what? Think this: Will my anger be loving? Will it make the other person—like my child—feel loved? Will anybody be happy? NO. So, I choose not to do it.

President Uchtdorf said that we need to choose: “When we feel hurt, angry, or envious ... [or we’re tempted by] hating, gossiping, ignoring, ridiculing, holding grudges, or wanting to cause harm, please apply the following two-word sermon: Stop it! ... We must replace judgmental thoughts and feelings with a heart full of love for God and His children ... Let us be kind. Let us forgive. “Let us do good unto all men.” (Galatians 6:10) (Ensign June 2013)

Second Way You Completely Stop a Lifetime Habit of Anger

Feedback. Remember that in Chapter Six we talked about your initial truth-telling with children, where you tell them how wrong and unloving your anger has been. Now I’m suggesting that you take a giant and potentially scary step further and say this to them:

“I don’t ever want to be angry at you again. It’s not loving, and I don’t want to do it anymore. I know I’ll make mistakes, but I’m committed to stopping this. Sometimes I don’t realize I’m angry, so if I am ever angry at you, I am asking you to tell me.”

Now, be careful. This approach does have risks. First risk is that it is NOT their responsibility to teach you not to be angry. It is not their job to loveandteach YOU. You are just asking for FEEDBACK, for information.

AND give them the words they use to inform you. Choose words ahead of time that (1) you believe you could hear in the heat of your anger and that (2) they could say—something simple. You might, for example, ask them to say to you, “You seem irritated,” which works far better than them saying, “You’re angry again, I hate you.”

Let’s look at a second risk in their informing you of your anger. In Chapter Six I mentioned that on occasion children WILL accuse you of not loving them—or of being angry at them—only because you have decided not to give them something they WANT. In that chapter I distinguished between WANT and NEED, and the words to say to them about that are found there. Briefly, though, you simply tell them that your refusing a request by itself doesn’t qualify as anger. If they tell you that you’re angry just because they didn’t get their way, you might say, “Thanks for telling me that. Are you hearing a stern tone in my voice?” Or, “Is my face angry?” Then you just thank them for the information and carefully consider whether you WERE angry.

If you deny being angry after they inform you that you are, you need to be quite certain that you were not. If you feel your emotional energy heightened at all, that’s a clue that you probably are angry and are simply not recognizing it. You can’t ask them to point out your anger and then defend yourself every time they inform you. That won’t work.

The concept of feedback about anger can help your children to stop their own patterns of anger. Suppose that Child A is getting angry, Child B might say—as you’ve taught them in a family meeting—“I think you’re beginning to get angry.”

There is a strong tendency for this to turn into a contest as Child A then retorts, “You were angry first.” Of course then Child B has to say, “No, it was you.” Or they argue about who was the angriest or who said the ugliest thing. (This is similar to “You hit me,” followed by “You hit me harder” and so on)

If two children can’t resolve the anger between them, you can teach them the alternative of coming to see you for feedback. With practice they will learn that if they’re angry, you’ll be teaching them about it. You’ll help them recognize it from their tone, words, and facial expressions. You’ll also teach them how they could both tell the truth about their OWN mistakes rather than the mistakes of the other, which tends to end arguments. It’s all about learning, not about who was right in a given moment. Again, you are lovingandteaching them.

As you teach your children about the selfishness and futility of their anger, it begins to change. Example:

As my grandson, age 10, was trying to read a book, his sister, two years younger, was bothering him to pay attention to her, and also trying to irritate him so she could self-righteously point out his anger.

Ah, but their mother had taught them several lessons about anger, so after a few attempts on her part, he looked up from his book, turned to her, and said, “I choose not to participate in this conversation.” Remember, he was 10 years old. Rarely have I seen adults avoid irritation as elegantly. Impressive. And this is also one example of something you could teach a child to say to a bothersome or irritating sibling instead of being angry.

Or you might teach a child to say, “I’m going to ask Mom what I should do next when you’re teasing me (or being angry or whatever).” NOT tattling, just learning a wiser way, which of course also stops the teasing child from continuing, since they know they’ll be held accountable.

OR, one child just leaves the room where the anger is building.

By giving them feedback about their anger and loving them, you can teach them a much happier way to live, one they’ll use all their lives.

Third Way You Completely Stop a Lifetime Habit of Anger

The big one: get enough Real Love to make anger unnecessary. In Chapter Four I talked a lot about how YOU can find the love you need. Without it, you will NOT be able to stop your anger. You’ll be inconvenienced in some way by your children, and that will poke pain from the past, and you will react to your pain in some way. Reacting to pain never comes out in a loving way.

As you learn how to find love, have faith in love, feel love, and remember love, you will nurture your HOPE in the power of the pure love of Christ.

Let’s talk about

Hope and Remembering

Remember that loving and teaching is often not easy. You’re changing the world for yourself and your children. How could such a wonderful and lasting thing be achieved easily? When you remember that, you’ll be less likely to become angry. You’ll remember the goal you hope for and take another step toward it instead of gratifying your brief need for lashing out in anger.

Remember that we’re here to love and teach, NOT to make our children comfortable. We follow the example of our Heavenly Father, who—as I said in the last chapter—is far more interested in our education than our comfort. This understanding will give you courage as you hit the hard spots where children claim that you are hurting them by not giving them what they WANT, as opposed to what they need.

Remember not to gauge whether you’re doing the right thing based on the reaction of your child.

Children who have NOT been taught to feel loved, loving, and responsible tend to resist like crazy when you suddenly change the rules and tell them how your family is going to be different. They’re ACCUSTOMED to the old ways and know how to manipulate you. When you change it all and take away all the manipulation, they feel helpless—until they feel safe in your genuinely loving arms. When you are grateful for the love YOU have, and you remember your purpose to love and teach, your anger will evaporate.

Remember that when your children are in pain, they WILL defend themselves in some way, which does communicate that they don’t love you. You MUST NOT CARE, and you must remember that it is YOUR job to love THEM, not THEIRS to love YOU. If you want to love them unconditionally, you cannot need their approval or fear their disapproval. If you do have need or fear, you will defend yourself in some way—including the use of disappointment and anger—and that will make loving them impossible. You really do not want to go in that direction.

Remember that you have an ongoing need for love yourself. Keep being truthful with other adults who can see, accept, and love you. Keep reaching out for the witness of the Spirit that God loves you infinitely and unconditionally. It is not your job to please your children, nor can you allow yourself to need their approval—which you will not need to do when you feel the pure love of Christ sufficiently from other adults and from God Himself.

More Hope and an Example

Let me give you some additional hope with a couple more real stories about stopping anger:

1. A parent was passing by a doorway and heard two kids arguing angrily. One of them suddenly said, “What do you think? Should we stop arguing now, or should we wait to talk about it with Dad in the family meeting later on?” The argument was over, not because of the threat of having to talk to Dad but because they could both hear in their minds how silly they’d sound as they defended their anger in front of the whole family. They had really learned that anger never works on the path toward loved, loving, and happy. This is a powerful kind of learning, far superior to a child simply complying begrudgingly with a rule.

Example 2. Another parent was passing by a room and heard Child A saying, “I was angry when I said that. I was wrong to talk to you like that.”

Child B: No, I think I was angry first. 

Child A: I’m pretty sure it was me.

The parent left, smiling.

True stories like this can give you great hope in the power of loving and teaching. And these unintended observations of your own children can give you deep insights into their hearts.

Children WANT to live in the universal, eternal, and infinite flow of love. They just need guidance. And once they find this love, they want to stay there. Remember that when they’re resisting you. You are guiding them NOT toward what I call “barely minimal compliance,” which means to keep rules just because they have to or to avoid consequences. No, they’re here to cultivate the “willing heart” (Exodus 35:5; D&C 64:34) the Lord requires of us to participate fully in the blessings of the Atonement.

Practical Approach to Anger

Let’s get practical here about the concept of “No Anger.” Child A (Angry Child) grabs a toy (or phone or controller or whatever) from Child B. They begin to argue angrily. What can you do? A possible suggestion:

You interrupt, not to be rude but because making excuses is fatally distracting to learning true principles. “Yep, that’s the one. You were angry. So, instead of anger—which never makes anybody happy—how could you have handled that?

Here is a wonderful opportunity for loving and teaching. Depending on the age and experience of the child, you’ll present options and modify them according to the creativity of the child. These are just SOME options to begin with and to give you ideas for more:

Option One:

Option Three:

You (to the angry child): We’ve already figured out that being angry doesn’t work, so if you can’t figure out a solution, come to me. We’ll talk about what we could do. It might be something you could do. I might suggest something else you could do for a while, while your brother plays with your toy. I might go and get your toy from your brother. Who knows? But it won’t be anger, because it’s not loving or happy.

Anger in Older Children

Now, what if angry kids are OLDER? They’re cleverer about using their anger, and with age their anger becomes harder to stop. Why?

• They’ve LIVED with anger longer. They’re more accustomed to it. In fact, often they are addicted to using it as a tool to get what they want and to protect themselves.
• They feel more justified in using it. Why? Like I said, they’ve used it longer, and because we haven’t stopped it, they interpret our inaction as a kind of permission from us.
• YOU’VE been using it a long time with them and set an example they’ve followed.
• Because you’ve been using anger longer, you’ve HURT them more with the “I don’t love you” message. So they NEED their anger—or so it seems to them—to protect themselves more, and to feel less helpless.
• Anger has become not only an addiction to treat their pain but also a habit. They use it reflexively, unconsciously.
• With more years, they’re more experienced and more creative, so they both disguise and justify their anger with greater skill.

So let’s illlustrate Zero tolerance with an older child (which can still apply to a younger child)

You’re eating dinner, or you call kids to dinner, or just sitting in a room together—circumstances don’t matter much. In comes a child—teenager—who could best be described as having “attitude,” which could mean grouchy, prickly, grumpy, cross, irritable, bad-tempered, snarky, cranky, testy, touchy, snippy, snotty, stroppy. It’s an emotional, physical tone in everything. You can FEEL it. It involves a degree of sneering and itching for a fight.

This is VERY common in most older kids, seen daily to the point that when adults see it, they tend to say, “Oh, he’s just a teenager.” Wrong, it’s a product of pain.

And you see it in all of these behaviors we’ve discussed many times:

So it’s a virtual certainty that your kid does this “attitude” thing from time to time, some doing it so often that we’ve simply come to accept it as normal—the worst thing we could do. AND as you do your job as a parent with this child with attitude, you’ll be helping to address or prevent all those problems on the list, no matter which one your child has.

A very important concept here is one we’ve discussed before, and a short description is this: ROCK or PERSON.

We’ve talked about how most of us react to pain all our lives. Simple reaction is, quite literally, mindless. When the doctor taps the patellar tendon at your knee, your foot jerks forward, and that is a neurologic reaction involving only TWO nerves: one going from the knee to the base of the spinal cord, and the other returning from the spinal cord to the muscles that extend your lower leg. The brain isn’t even INVOLVED. You’re not consciously aware of what happened until it’s over.

Regrettably, most people respond to pain—in the present but mostly from the past—just as mindlessly, as though their brains weren’t involved at all. Just like you would react physically to me stabbing you with a fork in your leg. Just like a rock reacts to being pushed down a hillside. Rocks—and billiard balls and most people—just react, involuntarily and mindlessly. OR we can learn to become real human beings, real people, who make CHOICES. For many hours now, I’ve been teaching you how to do that and how to teach that to your children. And more and more, you’re going to be teaching your children how to make choices, how to be a person, not a rock.

As I said in Chapter Eight, we are here to teach our children to replace reaction to people and events with genuine CHOICE—real, empowered agency.

Let’s make this circumstance we began to discuss more real: We’ll make the name of this kid with attitude Sylvia, age 15. (Don’t pay so much attention to her age or gender. All this applies to both genders over a wide range of ages, because we all have similar needs, fears, and reactions to pain.) I will alternately talk to you (1) as though you WERE Sylvia’s mother, then about (2) what YOU MIGHT DO in a similar situation, and (3) what Sylvia’s mother DID do.

This irritable, grumpy child—Sylvia—is doing at least 4 of the 5 things your family now has zero tolerance for:

(Notice how Sylvia is angry, whining, lying, and withdrawing)

What can you do here with Sylvia and this attitude that appears regularly and more frequently? You can do your JOB as a parent, which always, always means that you LoveandTeach

So, let’s get to it. How do you loveandteach this admittedly difficult kid? Notice “love” is first, so we’re going to talk about how to love our children.

How to LoveandTeach Difficult Children

First Way to Love Our Children: NO ANGER

We spent an entire chapter on this subject—and then some. You cannot be angry and love your child at the same time.

Sylvia is doing her very best to be irritating—expressing her anger and discontent so she can feel powerful, or at least less powerless—so it’s VERY understandable if you do become angry.

BUT

You cannot be angry and teach them anything but “I don’t love you.”

So if you’re angry, put your lips together and keep them there. Wait until later to address the subject. It’s no better if you do angry looks, or sighs, or exasperated posture, or anything the indicates disapproval. If you’re angry, get out of the room, because you will communicate your anger. You’ll swear you’re hiding it, but you’re not. You’ll bite your lip, but it will come steaming out your ears.

And what precedes anger every time? Before we become angry, we violate the next part of loving our children: NO FEAR, which is the 

Second Way to Love Our Children: No Fear

Children can smell fear like sharks smell blood.

That is NOT to say that they’re malicious about it, only that they’re that sensitive to fear. So why is that a problem?

If you’re afraid—of your children’s disapproval, for example—your focus is on YOURSELF, and in that self-centered condition you cannot love them.

They FEEL our fear and selfishness—unconsciously and nearly instantly—and after they sense it, it doesn’t matter how you excuse it or rationalize it.

If you’re afraid, you’re done as a parent, and nearly all of us are afraid of our children’s disapproval. Those looks of anger and disgust on their faces are paralyzing to us.

Children also translate fear as weakness, so with fear you lose your credibility as a teacher.

All this applies to Sylvia. With her anger she has always provoked fear, so now her parents must find the love of other adults and from God that will eliminate their fear. As John said, “Love eliminates fear.” (1 John 4:18) In the same verse he said, “There is no fear in love.” Love and fear cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

The Third Way to Love Our Children: Tell the truth about yourself 

By far the most effective way to prevent fear is to feel loved. You achieve that by finding other adults and God to be truthful to, which we discussed extensively in Chapter Four: Truth ® Seen ® Accepted ® Loved. Call a friend and describe how you’re being selfish or angry with your kids. Feel the acceptance they offer. Some people you call will offer sympathy or advice. You don’t need sympathy. So keep calling people until you find someone who is capable of truly listening to you and accepting you.

Now, more about fear. Here’s this pricky kid, Sylvia, who might be triggering your PCSD—pain from the lack of love in your own childhood, which we discussed in Chapter Three and many times since. If she’s doing anything that reminds you in any way of your not feeling loved when you were a child, you will be triggered by all that past pain. It’s NEVER what your child is doing in any given moment that you find difficult. She is just poking old wounds in a dozen ways, and you may not know it. This is pretty important to understand.

WHAT are we afraid of?

• More pain or inconvenience
• Looking bad
• Disapproval

In the end all fear comes down to a fear of not being sufficiently loved. How do I know?

Because if we DO feel sufficient love, there is NO FEAR. John said so: “There is no fear in love.” (1 John 4:18)

AND throughout scriptural history if people have felt sufficiently empower by love and the Spirit, they have faced death, wild animals, war, and all manner of suffering without fear. Remember the thousand Lamanites who lay down before the invading Lamanite army and allowed themselves to be killed with swords while praying to the Lord? They were fearless because they felt the pure love of Christ.

It might seem that if a child is repeatedly disobedient and inconvenient, a parent’s feeling wouldn’t be fear, but it is:

• Fear of looking like a stupid parent
• Fear of having to go through this nagging and repetition and resistance again and again
• Fear of the child’s approval
• Fear of feeling worthless because of being an ineffective parent
• Fear of the child growing up to be irresponsible and lost
• Fear of feeling unlovable because of all that.

Fear—and the potential for fear—is EVERYWHERE, without exaggeration. Satan is the Father of fear. God has commanded us not to be afraid more than he has commanded anything else because he knows the emotional and spiritual death that follows fear.

So, how do you know if you’re afraid? Easy? How do you know whether a car has driven across your yard? You see tire tracks, torn-up grass, garbage thrown out of the car, and more. The car leaves prints or evidence. Fear always leaves plenty of evidence.

Most of us have lived in some measure of fear for so long that we don’t even realize it. We don’t consciously FEEL it, so you have to look for the many responses you have to it, and manifestations of it. Examples:

• Anger. If you feel the slightest bit irritated, you ARE afraid. Anger doesn’t spontaneously appear. It’s always a response to pain or fear or both. Brief example: We don’t become angry when people do wrong things all around the world, all day, every day. But if one of those “wrong things” affects our peace of mind, or sense of worth, or comfort, THAT is physical or emotional pain, and if we’re in pain we’re ALWAYS afraid. Of what? MORE PAIN. Pain puts us on edge and arouses fear of more pain.
• Anxiety. It’s VERY common for people to tell me they’re not afraid. They say, No, I’m just a little anxious, or edgy, or “off” in some way. We hate admitting that we’re just AFRAID. It has a connotation of weakness, so we make up these other words to hide it. But it’s still fear, and I PROMISE you that your children FEEL your fear, and then you’re done as a parent.
• Frustration. That’s just fear plus a dash of anger and hopelessness.
• Hesitant. Fear.
• Impatient. Just fear and anger.

We are afraid FAR more often, and to a greater degree, than we ever appreciate. That includes you. John said that there is no fear in love (1 John 4:18), and the overall existence of truly unconditional love is fairly rare, which means that fear is everywhere we look.

Inevitably parents ask, “Do I have to wait until I have NO fear before I can loveandteach my children?” No, or you’d never be a parent. Gradually, and simultaneously, you will both (1) find love for your own happiness (as discussed in Chapter 2) and (2) you will loveandteach.

It can be messy and imperfect. Welcome to parenting.

This is going to take some practice. Hence all the resources mentioned in Chapter Four—resources for you to find unconditional love for yourself from others and from God.

While you’re practicing all this getting love and giving love, you WILL make mistakes. Lots of them. What can you do if you DO get angry? Remember from Chapter Five the Five Steps to Eliminate Anger:

Be quiet, Be wrong, Feel loved, Get loved, Be loving

To illustrate just one of these steps, let’s suppose that you become angry in response to Sylvia being irritable for the twentieth time that DAY. You might say, “I was wrong to be angry”—or to be impatient, or intrusive, or controlling. It’s VERY vulnerable of you to say this. And fearless. And courageous, which is just moving forward anyway in the presence of fear. All of that is another way of saying that you are choosing faith over fear.

Let’s look at a fourth way you can love your children, which will assume you have accomplished less fear, and NO anger (absolute), meaning that you can begin to make choices like a human, not just react like a rock.

Fourth Way to Love Our Children: Listening

Listening is the single most immediate, effective, and practical thing you can do in the process of loving another person. Listening draws our children in, values them, and connects them to you.

I will focus on two general categories of listening: Overall listening (general principles to apply to all children and other people) and situational listening (in specific situations, like with Sylvia)

1. Overall Listening

We’re going to be talking about this one for a while, because you HAVE to understand it well before you can even entertain the notion of dealing with Sylvia, who is being as difficult as she can be. Then—after considerable discussion of generalized listening—we’ll get back to Sylvia. Hang on.

Every time a child opens his or her mouth—or even enters the room and demonstrates a facial expression or behavior—we are presented with a life-changing opportunity.

In that moment we can communicate to that child one of two messages:

• I love you. Every word you speak is important to me, because I care very much about your happiness. OR
• I don’t care. What you’re saying is just not that important to me, no matter what I claim with my words. And as for your just entering the room, well, I can ignore that easily.

Whether we realize it or not, we DO communicate one of those messages—and sometimes a mixture of the two—each time a child speaks or breathes in our presence, regardless of the subject. Children FEEL the messages we send.

Books and articles describe lots of techniques for effective listening and communication, but you could follow every single suggestion of those techniques and programs, and it would help you and your children NONE without understanding the primal, urgent, and continual need a child has to feel loved. One prominent and accepted communication technique, for example, is reflective listening, but without genuine caring, this technique is hollow, even just silly.

I’ll give you an example of reflective listening, which means to “reflect” back to the person speaking what they just said, to indicate that you heard them. So imagine that you have a child blowing up, huffing and puffing, and they say, “I hate you.” Reflective listening recommends that you say something like, “You seem angry,” reflecting back what they just said. But saying that in this case indicates no understanding. A child will NOT feel seen and accepted. The reflection of their words, in fact, is just insulting, certainly not on the path to healing.

Every time your child speaks to you, he or she is offering you a very personal gift—literally a part of who he or she is, like giving you a piece of them—and how you listen is unavoidably perceived as a strong indication of how you receive that precious gift. When you really listen, you communicate to your children that they matter to you, that they’re important to you—that you care about them. Real listening is an expression of love. In fact, listening is the most immediate, effective, and easy way to begin loving a child.

Let’s look at two examples of how we tend NOT to listen to them—examples taken from events I’ve seen repeatedly:

Example #1: Your child says, “I’m hungry,” and you respond with, “Oh, you couldn’t be hungry. We just ate two hours ago.” (Some version of that is what MOST parents would say)

Without realizing it, you just told your child, “You’re too stupid to know if you’re hungry. I will tell you if you’re hungry or not.” It’s a bit absurd because it utterly invalidates them. And this kind of “not listening” has become entirely normal, not even notable.

Let me hasten to say that you don’t have to give your children everything they demand—we’ve talked about distinguishing between what a child Needs vs what he Wants in Chapters Two and Six—but you still need to listen. When your child says, “I’m hungry,” listen first.

Say, “I believe you.” Listen. THEN say, “We’ll be eating soon, but if you’re starving, you could have a banana or an apple. Which would you prefer?” That’s just one example of what you could say.

If the child is older, you might say something different. You might say, “Me too. I’m hungry, and I’m waiting for dinner in about an hour, but it’s up to you what you do. You know where the food is, yes?”

There is NO attitude here on your part. The food just doesn’t matter much. Parents tend to have so many arguments where they insist that a child eats everything that is prepared for a meal, and not ruin their appetite, for example. They say things like, “You’ll ruin your appetite.” Not worth it. Save your NOs and your lectures and your controlling for things that matter. If a child eats before meals, though, he cleans up the mess—leaving no evidence whatever of having snacked.

If you’ve listened like I just described over and over and over with a child—consistently—you won’t have a SYLVIA walking into the room with a snotty attitude. Genuine listening stops all that.

Example #2: Your child says, “My teacher is stupid.”

Like other parents, you might tend to respond with:

“No, she’s not STUPID,” or

“It’s not nice to talk like that,” or

“Stupid is not a nice word to use.” or

“I know you don’t mean that.”

(Those 4 responses cover nearly 100% of parents)

BUT: You’re still not listening. Your child is giving you an opportunity to enter his/her world. Really. How can you listen and accept their invitation? You can ask more questions about what the real problem is. For example, you might ask:

• Well, maybe he is. What makes you say so?
• What do you hate about that class?
• How are you getting along with the other kids in the class?
• Do the other kids think he’s stupid too?
• Tell me something “stupid” your teacher said today.
• What else in your life do you think is stupid? (After completing conversation about stupid teacher)
• Do you like the subject of that class? (Math, biology)

If you ask questions like that and genuinely listen, you’ll likely discover revelations like this:

• Your child is utterly lost in that class and feels stupid. Each time the teacher calls on him—no matter how helpful or kind she’s trying to be—the child’s confusion is confirmed and displayed to the class, so he feels even worse.
• He’s having problems with some of his classmates. Perhaps he’s being bullied. The teacher tried to help, and it went badly. So the child blames the teacher, or at least associates negative feelings with her.
• The teacher really is angry, critical, and unloving. You can turn this into a great opportunity to teach your child that adults are often empty and afraid, just like children. Then you can teach him how to respond to this angry adult.

• He’s unhappy about a lot of things—at home and at school—and the teacher is just the straw that broke the camel’s back. (You’ll possibly learn what YOU are doing that is stupid)

Although Real Love—genuinely caring about your children—is the key ingredient to real listening, I will still describe some of the mechanical characteristics of good listening, and from these we can all learn to listen to our children in ways that are more accepting and productive—IF we are also loving.

Key to Listening: Be Quiet

Most parents don’t really listen. They’re only looking for an opportunity to speak themselves, so they frequently jump into the conversation without the slightest regard for what their children are saying. We want to correct them, solve a problem, describe our point of view, whatever. Although we often do need to make responses to our children, one of the most powerful indications we can give that we’re listening is that our upper and lower lips are sealed together. Let your child speak until he or she is finished. If you’re not sure whether he or she has more to say, ASK. Say, “There’s something I’d like to say, but I don’t want to interrupt you. Are you finished talking about that?” (Most kids have never heard those words)

Another key to listening: Little advice

In most cases, what children want most from a conversation is our love and support—as usual. With that they have the confidence to do almost anything. Regrettably, we often abandon our roles as listeners—as loving parents—and instead offer advice. We FIX things, as though we were mechanics. When we offer unsolicited fixing, our children usually hear that they’re defective, that we don’t trust them, that we don’t believe they could handle their lives without our constant controlling. We tend to say, Do this, do that, don’t do this, no that’s wrong. Or, “What you need to do is . . .” When you do that, watch their faces. They know we don’t trust them. Do they sometimes need advice? Sure, but in measured, conscious doses.

There’s a lake behind our house. Every pre-toddler grandchild has crawled to the edge of the dock, frequently looking behind them to the adult who is with them. The implied question of the look is, “Is this okay?” If I’m the adult present, I just wave or say their name. One kid got too close, stumbled on one hand, and into the water he went. I jumped in and put him up on the dock, spluttering and crying. I got up on the dock, ignored the crying, and said, “Was that fun?” He shook his head. I did NOT have to give any advice. The lesson was thoroughly learned.

Another key to listening: Don’t modify

When children are sharing information with us, we tend to point out any inaccuracies in what they’re saying. We do it with other adults, too. A couple of examples:

We feel so justified in correcting them because, after all, we’re right. Again, remember that what a child needs most is to feel loved, not to hear your command of relatively meaningless pieces of information. They want to know that every word that drops from their lips is important to us. With that need in mind, how could we change the responses I just mentioned?

Your child always needs your listening and love more than your information.

Notice that the first three keys to listening—be quiet, little advice, don’t modify—are all variations on “Shut up.”

Another Key to Listening: Non-verbal acceptance

Some studies suggest that as much as 93% of human communication is non-verbal. At least half of that is transmitted by way of facial expression, while other modes include tone of voice, arm and leg position, foot and hand movement, and overall body posture and motion. As you raise your brows, shift your eyes, furrow your forehead, sigh, shuffle your feet, cross your arms, and change your tone of voice, your child can easily recognize your lack of acceptance or interest. Then she will usually change what she’s saying either to protect herself or to get something she wants—acceptance, cooperation, and so on. When she does that, you’re no longer having a conversation with her, only with an acceptable picture of herself that she projects to please you.

One way to indicate non-verbal acceptance is NEVER to multitask. In Chapter Seven I said that the notion of multitasking is ridiculous. We cannot fully attend to two things at the same time, and if we try, and our children are one of those tasks, they will feel it. If your children speak, STOP what you’re doing and LOOK at them.

Another key to listening: Avoid the word BUT

Every time your child speaks, she’s sharing who she is, creating opportunities for you to see, accept, and love her. If you criticize her or argue when she speaks, she’ll stop talking, or she’ll defend herself, or she’ll act out in some aggressive way, and then love becomes impossible.

When children speak, often the first word out of our mouths is but. Yeah, yeah, we may have something brilliant to add to the conversation, but when we say the word but, we might as well say, “I’m not really listening to you. My real goal is to be right.” When we criticize and contradict our children, we feel powerful or think we look good by comparison, but the effect on our children is quite negative.

Sure, sometimes we do need to make suggestions, but FAR less than we’re doing now.

Another Key to Listening: “Eight”

Our children never stop needing our acceptance and love.

AND they like to know you that really UNDERSTAND what they’re saying, because when we do understand them, that is the “SEEING” part of loving them. You may remember Truth ® Seen ® Accepted ® Loved. When we clearly demonstrate that we are really listening and understand them, they can feel seen, accepted, and loved.

Communicating real understanding is more than just nodding our heads as they speak. We do need to look at them and non-verbally indicate that we’re listening—as we’ve said before—but they need even more.

We can communicate our understanding especially well using a principle I call “Eight.” Suppose I say to you, “Two, four, six . . .” and then I ask if you understand what I’m saying. You respond, “Two, four, six.” Yes, you’ve demonstrated an ability to repeat what I said—what some communication experts call reflective listening—but you have not shown that you understand what I’m really saying.

On the other hand, if you simply respond, “Eight,” now I know you understand what I’ve said, because you’ve given me the next number in the sequence without me telling you. When your child speaks, he or she is often saying, “Two, four, six,” and it’s quite fulfilling for them when you say, “Eight.”

Let’s look at an example of using “Eight.”

Your son, Shawn, says, “I’m so mad right now. I’ve asked Stephanie (his sister) a million times to put my bicycle back on the rack if she uses it, but she never does.”

When children describe their feelings, often we solve problems instead of first ACKNOWLEDGING what the kid just said. So, before you open your mouth, think a second (real listening): What is Shawn angry about? The bicycle? Is he having a fit about the fact that he has to walk ten yards to put it away? Nah.

Always remember that every conflict is about Real Love and the emptiness and fear that always follow when someone lacks that love. So, your son’s real complaint is that he’s not feeling loved. Not kidding. In the pain of not feeling sufficiently loved overall—by you, by others—every time Stephanie fails to return his bicycle to its proper place, it’s yet another blow to his sense of worth. In his mind he hears her say, “I don’t care about you.” That is the subject of the conversation, and now you understand that.

So, you say, “You are right (those words have a magical effect). I’ve seen her do that. In fact, she does that kind of thing with you in lots of ways. She goes into your bedroom when you’ve asked her not to. She changes the channel when you’re watching something on television. And she’s often unkind as she speaks to you. In a lot of ways, she tells you that she doesn’t care about you.”

Notice, you didn’t tell him to be nice to his sister, which is boring, and ineffective, and actually convinces him that you didn’t hear a word he said. And you didn’t just nod your head as he talked. Trees can do that kind of listening. You SHOWED that you understood what your child was saying. The calming effect is profound.

You’re not bashing Stephanie. Not at all. Without any critical tone, you’re simply telling the TRUTH about her behavior and how it affects HIM—the real subject of the conversation. You’re remembering that as you tell the truth about HIS world and his pain, you begin a process that ends in love: Truth ® Seen ® Accepted ® Loved

In this simple description of Stephanie, he’s feeling LISTENED TO in ways he never has, AND you’re helping Shawn to understand human behavior.

But now we need to finish this conversation with your son, not just agree that his sister can be pretty unloving. What’s next?

You say to Shawn, “So we’ve established that Stephanie can be pretty unloving toward you sometimes, yes?”

Son: Yes (somewhat triumphantly)

But you say, “Now, back to you: You seem angry at her.”

Son: Well, yeah. She’s always leaving my bike out.

You: And I’m sure you’ve told her that.

Son: A million times.

“Which you have a right to do,” you say. (You’re listening and affirming.) “Now,” you continue, “can you tell me where you make YOUR mistake?”

Son: Me? I’m not the one who leaves out the bike.

You: Yes, I know. But you’re still making a mistake. What is it? (TONE not accusing)

Because you have family meetings regularly, your son remembers that there are five things your family has zero tolerance for, and he’s doing two of them: anger and whining.

He says, “I get angry at her, but she MAKES me mad.”

You laugh and say, “We’ve talked about that a lot. So, you’re saying that she CONTROLS you? She owns you? You have no choice?”

Shawn pauses and rolls his eyes: Okay, she doesn’t make me angry, but it’s hard to be loving when she’s being stupid.

You: YES, it is. You’re right. And that’s exactly when you can learn the most about loving.

(You could say more here to your son, but you just taught him about responsibility for his own feelings. Don’t teach too much at once.)

NOW, Stephanie. You COULD teach your son how to tell Stephanie nicely about putting away the bicycle and see what happens. Sometimes kind reminders work better than angry ones. But Stephanie has something to learn here too, and she needs to hear it from you, not her brother.

You talk to Stephanie and tell her that it’s HER responsibility to put the bike back if she uses it.

She says, “I do.”

You: “I would say that clearly that is not true. Think about it, kid. Shawn does NOT enjoy telling you to put his bike back. He hates it, in fact, so he wouldn’t complain that it was out of place if you had put it away. And he wouldn’t have to put it in the right place if it were already put there by you. So no, you don’t generally put it in the rack.”

Stephanie gets a pained expression as she realizes that she’s been caught in indisputable logic. But she resists a little more:“I don’t forget as often as he says.”

You: That is possibly true. BUT would it really matter whether you left it out 40% of the time versus 60% of the time? NO. The fact is that it’s not your bike, and YOU agreed to put it away EVERY time. Yes?

Her (sighing): I guess.

You remember that her simply being minimally compliant, barely cooperative, will not make her happy. That is not the goal. SO you continue, “No, you don’t guess. There is no guessing here. You agreed to put the bike back every time, yes or no?”

Her (Sigh): “Yes.”

Now it’s time to teach about not just the bike but about attitude.

You: “Your sigh right then says it all. You DID make the agreement. You ARE responsible, and yet now obviously you resent it. In fact, your sigh is a form of whining. What is our family guideline on that subject?”

Stephanie (reluctantly): Zero Tolerance.

You: Yep, and yet you’re still fighting this. You don’t want to (1) learn responsibility here or (2) freely admit you are wrong with your whining. You’re refusing to learn with kindness and words, so I’ll help you learn another way. Your brother is actually kind to allow you to use his bike at all, but now—in order to help you learn both responsibility and a willingness to learn—I’ll make the decision that you are not allowed to use his bike for as long as I choose.”

Stephanie: What!?”

You smile at her stubborn persistence to fight back. You are NOT annoyed, just indicating to Stephanie your amusement that she would continue fighting what is both truth and loving. You say, “YOU made the agreement with your brother. Then YOU chose to violate the agreement. And now you’re resisting the truth of your responsibility here, and you’re fighting my attempts to teach you something. So I’ve decided that you simply get to pay the price for all those unloving and irresponsible choices. You’re not being punished, only taking responsibility for your own choices. If you keep up the ‘attitude,’ I won’t be bothered in the slightest, but the consequences will get bigger. We’ve talked about this before, Stephanie, that first I’ll use words to teach you, but if those don’t work I’ll use consequences, and if you resist those, the consequences will increase. At no point are you being punished, only taught important life lessons. It’s up to you how you learn. You can make it easy or hard.

Her: “How long before I can use his bike?”

You: “Oh, at least a week. You need to feel the price of your choices. Possibly much longer than a week. Depends.”

Her: “On what?”

You: “You and your attitude. You need to talk to both Shawn and me some time in the next couple of days and explain—humbly, with no attitude—how you were irresponsible, how you were snotty, how you were unloving, and what you’re going to do about it. Then you might get permission to use it—IF he agrees—in a week. Oh, and by the way, you really do leave it out more often than you think, because I hear about it each time you do.”

Next Key to Listening: Ask questions

As your daughter walks in the door, for example, don’t just keep reading or playing on your phone. Indicate a real interest in her. Ask her how she’s feeling and where she’s been.

First, however, let’s look at the prospect of asking questions. Be AWARE. The words you use—“Where have you been?” for example—can demonstrate either a genuine interest or an accusation, depending on your tone of voice and other non-verbal clues. (Illustrate two approaches) Big difference.

Your tone is everything here. If you say, “Where have you been?” with a tone of interrogation, your conversation is over. Your child will withdraw of defend herself to the death. And yes, it will take time and practice to learn to really ASK questions, and more time for your child to trust you. You’ll have to learn to firmly but compassionately continue a conversation past the usual point of mild discomfort where so many conversations stall. But I’ve given you a number of examples of doing exactly that all throughout the Training thus far.

When your daughter does answer, she might respond with grunts or one-word answers. Ask for more details. Tone is everything. If she says, “I’m too tired to talk about it,” that is never the truth. If she felt loved by you, she’d be eager to share the events and feelings of her day. So you say, “Me too (tired), but I’d love to hear about your day.” (STOP everything you’re doing and LOOK at her, in the eye). Ask her to tell you more about this or that thing she says. It’s not the additional details that matter—again, not an interrogation—but your indication of being interested in her life.

Putting it Together

Now you’re really listening, and you want to do that consistently, over and over, because ONLY after a lot of practice with listening will you be ready for the kid who stomps into the room with the snotty attitude—remember 15-year-old Sylvia who we’ve been talking about, the one who walked into the room all snippy at everybody? If you haven’t diligently practiced real listening—with lots of mistakes—you won’t be ready for Sylvia.

Now, an example of listening:

Your child walks in the door after school.

You: How was school? (So often we ask this question just because we know we should, or so we look interested, rather than being genuinely interested.)

Child: “Okay.”

Nope, this is not even CLOSE to enough of what your child needs. This is not a communication. It’s just an exchange of social obligations between two people, who might as well be two strangers. It’s like the exchange that happens so often that it’s become a cliche: “How are you?” “Fine.” Meaningless.

So, instead you might say, “Have a seat.”

He might resist you, might give you more attitude, might turn to walk away.

Remember that this will take time. This might be an occasion when you remind them of some of what you said in Chapter Six, where you learned the Initial Truth Telling. I told you that you’d use that material again, in pieces. Here’s one of those times.

An example of you continuing your truth-telling with your child might be:

“I don’t blame you one bit for not being thrilled at the idea of talking to me. I’ve done a pretty lousy job of listening to you before. Like I said before, I’m learning to change that.”

OR

Gently touching your child, you might say, “So, again, how are you really doing?”

If you still get nothing (not unlikely), say “Tell me something you hated today about school.” Children tend to like talking about what they hate.

This is going to take time and repetition and consistent listening. Have no foolish expectations about how quick this is going to happen. We’ve hurt our children with our disapproval for years, so we can’t expect that the healing and trust are going to happen in two days, certainly not one conversation. I must say, though, that if you feel sufficiently loved and confident, the trust CAN develop with astonishing speed. I’ll illustrate the possibilities later in the chapter with a story or two.

Proactive Listening

One kind of overall listening is proactive listening. Example:

Sharon was the mother of two small children, and she called me to complain that her three-year-old boy, Maurice, clung to her legs or clothing all day—crying and demanding attention in such a way that he prevented her from doing most of what she needed to do. As we spoke on the phone, I could hear Maurice screaming and demanding Sharon’s attention.

I asked, “How much time and attention do you give him?”

“That’s all I do,” she said with an irritated tone.“I feel like I’m answering questions and doing what he wants every minute I’m awake.”

Pay attention to this answer, because although this story is about a 3-y.o. boy, notice that Mom is saying that the kid is screaming and demanding her attention all day. YOUR child is screaming for your attention all day too, but mostly you don’t recognize it. You’re not hearing the cries for help. You’re hearing and seeing the bad attitude, the poor attention span, the addictive behaviors, the withdrawal, but not recognizing that they’re begging for attention and love.

Now, back to Sharon, mother of Maurice, the 3-year-old.

Me: “Here’s the problem. Maurice is constantly DEMANDING your attention, so when you do give it to him, it doesn’t really count for anything. He doesn’t feel loved. He just feels like his DEMANDS are being filled, much like you were a store clerk filling orders.”

“I don’t understand yet.”

Me: “If you force me to look at you—at the point of a gun, for example—or you pay me to look at you, how fulfilling would that be for you?”

“It wouldn’t.”

“No, it really wouldn’t. But what if I freely offered you my time and attention, without your doing anything to earn it or demand it? Would you like that better?”

“Sure.”

Me: “You might even feel loved, yes?”

“Probably.”

I explained to Sharon that what her son wanted was her UNCONDITIONAL love, the time and attention and caring she offered freely. I told her to try an experiment: go and find Maurice ten times a day, spending only a few minutes with him each time. Sit down on the floor at his level, look him in the eye, touch him, and talk to him about whatever he is doing.

 “That’s a lot of time,” she said.

I laughed. “Do the math,” I said. “I’m proposing that you spend 3-4 minutes with him 10 times a day, which would add up to 30-40 minutes. Right now, in your own words, you spend “every minute you’re awake” trying to satisfy his demands as you listen to him cry and scream and demand your attention. I’m proposing that 30-40 minutes is less than all day. It would be a LOT less stress too, again by your account. And what I’m suggesting is entirely different in its effects. You’ll be giving Maurice attention proactively—before he demands it. Another way to describe proactive attention is to call it attention FREELY given. I’m not exaggerating when I say that one minute of proactive attention is worth fifty minutes of attention that is not freely given.”

In TWO days, Sharon called me and said, “It’s over.”

“What is over?”

“He’s quit complaining, whining, screaming—all of it. He plays by himself. He smiles when he sees me. I haven’t seen that smile in a long time. And I love playing with him.”

This all changed in TWO days. I’m not promising you’ll have that effect with your child, but your child is SCREAMING for attention—usually with behaviors, not words—and has been for a long time. In your defense, you didn’t recognize the screams as anything but inconvenience and causing problems. But now you know better.

You might be wondering, but you said you were going to talk about proactive LISTENING, and your example of the 3-year-old. is about proactive ATTENTION. Giving your children attention IS LISTENING—to their NEEDS, often not expressed with words, more often expressed with behavior. So, proactive listening and attention are just two forms of proactive LOVING, the kind the Savior gave and still gives—the pure love of Christ—the kind we all want to give our children.

Kids love this kind of listening and loving. Everybody else loves it too: Partners, friends, coworkers, employees, everybody. Don’t take my word for it. Try it and find out for yourself. FIND the people in your life and ASK how they’re doing. Or GIVE them what you can see and feel that they need. And MEAN it. See what happens. It can be miraculous.

Now I’m going to suggest another example of real listening.

The first was when you asked, “How was school?” Just asking was proactive, and you continued to be proactive after you got the initial response of “Fine.” Then you got resistance and continued with your proactive listening when you said, “Have a seat.” All proactive.

The second example was with the 3-year-old. who demanded Sharon’s attention.

Now, the third example of real listening.

Your child says some variation of, “I hate living in this family.” (Spoken with anger, of course)

This would be quite an easily justified opportunity to be angry in return, by shouting—or even just THINKING—“Are you kidding me? After all I’ve done for you, YOU don’t like living in THIS family?”

OR

“YOU hate living HERE? You mope around all day, treat everybody like servants, spend all day on your phone, never complete your responsibilities, and YOU hate it? How about ME? You think I don’t hate it? You think I don’t hate having you live here?”

Understandable responses, but they won’t work. EVER. How COULD you respond to such an aggressive and ungrateful statement?

Let me tell you a story:

Long ago I read a novel about those years when tensions were always high between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the story, an unidentified plane disappeared from radar as it was approaching the United States from Europe. The U.S. reacted by sending bombers to approach the Soviet Union. When the mystery plane reappeared and was identified as a commercial airliner, the U.S. bombers were recalled, but one U.S. flight group was mistakenly ordered by computer to go ahead with bombing Moscow.

Working with the Soviets, the U.S. military helped to shoot down their own planes, successfully destroying five of the six bombers. But one US bomber reached Moscow and dropped nuclear weapons. The U.S. President knew that many of the Soviet leaders would not be convinced that the attack was accidental—which would lead to Soviet retaliation and probable global nuclear war—so the US President ordered a U.S. bomber to drop nuclear weapons on New York City, where he knew his own wife was visiting. The crisis was over.

What a lesson. How was worldwide destruction avoided? The U.S. assumed responsibility for causing the problem, even though it wasn’t intentional, so they also took responsibility for solving the problem. This is the very rare gambit called, “I caused the problem, so I’ll solve it.” Almost unheard of among most human beings.

This approach will help you enormously as a parent, and it begins with the belief that you ARE responsible. We’ve talked about this before, but this is another perspective, which looks like this:

YOU start every argument you’ll ever have with your child. You are responsible.

That is a bold thing to say, but it’s true.

How do you start every argument? Very often you don’t say anything, and your child starts off on some tirade, or behaves badly, or has a tantrum, or cuts herself, or uses the phone later than prescribed, or whatever. SO, how could YOU be responsible for starting THAT, right?

There IS an answer. You started it by not being loving, either actively or with simple neglect or inattention. THAT is your nuclear bomb, the bomb you dropped on your child. You started it.

Your child is just RESPONDING to that. With THEIR nuclear bombs—some quiet, some loud.

So how can you respond? Drop more bombs? NEVER works, but we keep trying, by criticizing them, getting angry, controlling them.

How can we finally do this differently? Just like the American President in the novel, when he dropped a bomb on his own country.

What am I saying? I’m saying that when your child bombs you with “whatever behavior,” you refuse to bomb in return. Instead you drop a bomb on yourself.

No, I’m NOT talking about you feeling shame or guilt.

I’m suggesting that you simply tell the truth about YOURSELF.

It would be like the Initial Truth Telling of Chapter Six, but now we’re going to make it more specific.

Let me illustrate by finishing the interaction with the child who angrily said, “I hate living in this family.”

What would real listening look like, as opposed to retaliatory bombing?

You might say something like, “Of course you hate it here.”

Then you repeat some version of the Initial Truth Telling.

You talk about some of your mistakes as a parent and about how those hurt your child.

You started the war, and now you can end it by telling truth about yourself.

I’ve seen miraculous results from the approach, no kidding.

So far, we’ve talked about general listening, and it started with the entrance of snotty Sylvia into the room, quite some minutes ago now. I promised then that we would talk about situational listening.

2. Situational listening

Sylvia—or insert your child’s name here—comes into the room irritable, prickly, snotty.

Now you understand that she is TALKING to you, even though she may not be ADDRESSING you: She complains about breakfast, can’t find her skirt, needs money for something at school, on and on.

But now you understand that she is talking with more than words:

She’s communicating with her tone of voice, speed of speech, staccato of her word bullets, huffing, puffing, posture, and way she walks.

She is screaming, “I am unhappy. AND I want somebody to love me.” And she’s talking to you.

And she has NO idea that she is talking to you, much less crying out for help.

Neither have you, all her life. Which is how we got here.

All this unconscious pain has been drowning everyone. No blaming.

But now you understand all this—or you’re beginning to.

As soon as a child comes in the room, almost always he or she is talking to you.

If you haven’t done the overall listening beforehand—the kind we’ve been talking about, consistently, lovingly—you don’t stand a chance here in this difficult individual situation. Why?

Because she’s communicating her victimhood: she’s whining, she’s angry, she’s on fire

She’s angry at a lot of things, but primarily at YOU.

If you haven’t done the preparatory listening, she will not trust that you can listen to her.

If you haven’t done a lot of preparatory listening—loving—with a child, you won’t be ready when listening is critical. BUT you still have to try. I know, sounds impossible. Certainly it is messy, yes.

Now we’ll talk about how you might listen to a particular situation whether you’ve done the preparatory listening or not.

So you say to Sylvia in her “attitude: “You look pretty unhappy, my dear. Do you want to talk about it?”

Predictably, Sylvia barks, “No” as she turns away.

You walk over to her and touch her shoulder until she’s looking at you. She might angrily shrug off your hand. You don’t care. This is a necessary action because in her tornado of fury, she’ll be looking all over the place and likely avoiding looking at you.

You: You can be angry—I won’t stop you—but not talking about it is not really an option. You’re an important part of this family, and we talked about our family goal of being happy. We can’t be happy while we’re angry or whining or complaining, and that’s what you’re doing. (TONE) You can do all those things, but it’s my responsibility—my privilege—to love you and teach you when you’re doing anything that affects your happiness or the happiness of the rest of the family.”

That seems like a lot to say.

You won’t have to do it every time. The process becomes shorter and shorter as she learns to trust you.

Eventually, you’ll just say, “I understand your anger. You have lots of reasons. Now, tell me in

English what you’re upset about.” (Much like we talked about in Chapter One)

With even more practice, you’ll just say, “English.”

And if she’s on her way to school—or some other event—and she claims she can’t talk because she’ll be late, you have two choices:

1. You MIGHT say, “We’ll talk about this after school, at XX o’clock.” What if she has some activity after school? She’ll miss the activity and be home to talk to you at the appointed time, which is a natural consequence of her refusing to listen now.

OR

2. When she says, “I don’t have time to talk now. I’m late for school (or other event),” you say, “Then you’ll be late, or—if you keep resisting—you’ll miss it entirely. THIS conversation is far more important than school today (or cheerleading practice, or whatever). I’ll write you a note and say that your being late was my fault.”

One mother told me that she had been driving her daughter to the airport to fly with her high school Mandarin language class to CHINA, an event they’d planned for two years, but on the way to the airport, the daughter got snippier and snottier by the minute. (I’m supposing that the daughter thought that since she was about to get on a plane, she could get in a few slaps at Mom and leave the country before Mom could say much). So, Mom took an exit off the Interstate and parked on a side road. The daughter was furious that they might be late, and Mom explained that until the daughter acknowledged how she was behaving, and TALKED in calm English about whatever was bothering her, they were not moving. The daughter held her ground and refused, continuing the verbal barrage. So Mom got back on the Interstate, heading HOME instead of the airport. She explained that her daughter was not learning to be loved, loving, and responsible, and those qualities were FAR more important than learning Mandarin in China. They went home, and the daughter missed her trip.

THIS is real parenting—the kind that requires insight, faith, and courage. Mom brilliantly believed that teaching her daughter a lesson about anger and loving was worth missing a long-planned trip. I greatly admire parents like that. They’re committed. They succeed. They understand that eternal principles are far more important than completing TASKS or accomplishing THINGS, which often results only in teaching a child to feel entitled.

Remember, when you begin to teach your children what they really need, you’re changing the rules they’ve learned in order to get what they want—rules you unconsciously taught them. So if you attempt to change those principles and rules, they WILL come up with very creative ways to stop you. If you’re not committed and firm in loving and teaching, you will not succeed.

Even animals need LovingandTeaching. I once watched a documentary about one of the original horse whisperers. He trained horses who were so difficult that they could not be ridden by their owners. He was firm and kind and consistent. He knew they were all wounded emotionally. He guided them confidently. He Lovedandtaught, almost exactly as we are learning to do here, and these impossible horses became manageable, sometimes in minutes. The owners wept at the transformation. He had LEARNED how to loveandteach. The owners had not. He demonstrated to the owners how to do that, just as you are learning here.

Back to Sylvia.

I can’t tell you every variation on the conversation you might have with Sylvia. I can only teach principles and give you some examples. Here is another example of what you might say after you’ve required her to stay home from school or other activity:

Her: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

In her defense, she HAS BEEN talking about it—with her attitude and tone of voice—but not in English, and that’s a requirement of your new, happier family.

So, you take in a breath and say, “Talking about it is part of your being in this family. There is no whining, no anger. Those are two of the 5 things we said there would be zero tolerance for without discussing them. You’re doing both of them. So, if you need some time, you can go into the other room by yourself until you can come back here and talk about how you’re feeling. You can choose to be angry, but then you have to be willing to talk about it—in English, with words, not just unfocused rage. If you’d like, I’ll come to your room, and we can talk about it there.” (ALL TONE-sensitive)

THAT is real listening. And real courage. And real parenting.

Earlier in this chapter we talked about how to LOVE as we teach a child—Sylvia, for example.  We began with how to LISTEN—generally and in situations—and that was quite a discussion. Now we’ll continue with other ways to demonstrate love to a child.

Another way to demonstrate love to a child: Looking

Look into their eyes.

Studies have proven that after only a couple of seconds of directly looking into someone’s eyes, they tend to look away.

Why? Vulnerability. People feel vulnerable when you look directly at them, as though you are looking into their souls. At that point, they make an unconscious choice:

1. To feel closer to you, which will happen only if they trust you from past experience and judgments. OR
2. They feel threatened, which is far more common.

So, if we want to increase the connection between us and our children, we must look into their eyes, but we must also recognize that in the beginning we have a history of hurting them, so they likely will NOT trust us at first. They might feel threatened. We have to persist, while we eliminate our own anger and controlling, which will create new events and judgments and feelings in our children, a process we have discussed thoroughly before: Event ® Judgment ® Feeling ® Reaction

We also need to be aware that when WE are afraid or angry, we do NOT tend to look directly at people—including children. They need that direct connection, and they notice when we don’t look at them. They feel it.

I’ve seen young kids repeatedly try to talk to their parents without success, and finally they’ll reach up and turn the face of their parent. They NEED the eye contact. When they’re young, they’re willing to get our attention and looking, but then we teach them that grabbing our face is intrusive, that we don’t like it. And we teach them in other ways—with our impatience, our irritation—that we resent their intrusions, so eventually they give up. And then they’re more alone. And we become less able to reach them.

Looking is so important in loving and communicating that I strongly suggest that your family implement the following guideline wherever possible: Do not communicate with anyone unless you are looking at them, and they are looking at you. So, what does this mean practically for you?

First Half of Looking and Talking: You talking

If you want to talk to a child, first you speak their name or touch them until they’re looking at you. It is VERY common that we speak to a child from another room, or while they’re looking at something else they’re doing. Then we expect them to have heard us. But how often do they NOT hear us at all, or hear us incompletely? VERY commonly. All of us can be very distractible—with phones, people or things passing by, other conversations—and we’ve talked about the FACT that we CANNOT truly multi-task—Chapter Seven.

What tends to happen is that we speak at a distracted child, they don’t listen, and then we’re annoyed at them for not listening. Wrong. Our fault. We didn’t insist on the other half of listening: looking.

If your child isn’t looking directly at you, they are NOT fully listening. But we speak to them anyway—while they’re looking away—and then we wonder why they don’t hear us or don’t remember what we said or don’t do what we tell them. We can be quite foolish. Stop all this not-listening right from the start. Don’t tell a child anything until they’re looking AT you. Their looking at you does NOT guarantee that they’re genuinely listening, but without the looking, it’s a virtual guarantee that they’re NOT listening.

Let’s address one objection that might come up here. What if you’re communicating with a child in the next room? DON’T do that, at least not in the beginning, while you’re learning to loveandteach. How many shouting matches have I heard between two people separated by a wall? No, teach your kids that for a good while, when you call their name, they will immediately say, “Coming,” followed by their coming to the room where you are. If they don’t respond with “Coming,” you will repeat their name until they respond. If they don’t come promptly, when they do arrive you’ll immediately ask—not accuse—why they didn’t come when called. If they were zoned out on their phone, for example, you might consider addressing that distraction in their life.

Second Half of Looking and Talking: You listening

YOU must look at your child if THEY are speaking. NEVER look at your phone or anything else while a child is talking, nor while you’re talking to them. Ever. Yes, I know, if you’re reading to them you can look at your screen.

Teach your child that it is more effective if THEY get your attention before they speak. Teach them that it is wiser if they speak your name until you’re looking at them—in exactly the same way that it’s more effective when YOU speak THEIR name before speaking to them. BUT don’t make them responsible for Looking and Talking. You’re the parent. It’s your responsibility to make looking and talking happen in both directions.

If a child begins speaking to you while you’re doing something else—a mistake on their part that you’ll gradually teach them to eliminate—YOU have the responsibility to initiate the Looking half of Looking and Talking. You might be engrossed in completing a single thought in a text message or something you’re writing. That’s fine, but while typing you raise your hand in the universal sign meaning “Stop,” or you will say something like, “Hang on a second” (TONE), and you’ll finish only what MUST be done in that moment. Then you’ll turn to your child and say, “Okay, I’m all yours. Start over.” This will all be more effective if you have previously explained that all this is designed to focus your entire attention on THEM. This is all LOVING.

What if you’re in a different room when they shout at you? Ah, this is easy. You respond: “I’m in the kitchen (or wherever),” and in a family meeting you will explain that when you shout your location, it means that they must come to where you are and speak to you.

It is simply more loving when people are looking at each other during communications, which leads to far more effective loving and teaching.

Another way to demonstrate love to a child: Touching

Watch an infant who begins to fuss. What do the caregivers do? They pick him up. And then the fussing stops—most of the time—where no other response works. Studies over hundreds of years have proven that young children DIE without touching. So do baby monkeys. We are very tactile. Infants don’t just like touching. They NEED it.

So do older children. So do adults. Take every opportunity to touch your children. Every time you see them.

Touch them on the face—gradually at first because it will seem unusual. Touch them on the shoulder as they pass by (while you LOOK at them), or when they’re sitting. Put them to bed, lie next to them as you read or talk about the day. Hug them from head to toe when you put them to bed.

Touching is different for each age, yes, but they still need it. Many teenage children APPEAR to be resistant to touching in the beginning, but I can’t count how many of them love it when you persist confidently and sincerely.

Some children WILL resist. I still chuckle when I recall one mother telling me that when she first began to touch her daughter, the girl said, “You’re violating my privacy.”

Mom said—with a twinkle and a smile—“Oh, you’ll get used to it.” She didn’t fight her daughter, just continued to touch her. The kid gradually grew to love it. She just wanted proof from Mom that she was sincere and not just using some new therapeutic trick.

Another example of responding to a child who resists your initial attempts at loving:

When they come into the room, hold out your open hand, palm up. Wait for her to put her hand in yours. Everybody knows what this gesture means. No words. Not threatening, partly because you’ve removed the tone of voice completely from the equation. Once she puts her hand in yours, begin to speak what comes to your heart.

All this is much easier if you’re doing the other loving things: no anger, no fear, telling the truth about yourself and finding other adults to love you, telling the truth about your mistakes to your kids, looking at them, and so on.

ALL of this loving—touching, looking, talking, family meetings—is done with as much confidence as you can muster, which of course comes with practice and learning from the many times where you do it really badly and without confidence. That’s the nature of learning. Love them firmly but not aggressively. You cannot be tentative, apprehensive, or hesitant, or they smell the fear, and you’re done.

LovingandTeaching

And then, after all that loving, and WHILE you’re doing all that loving, comes the magic of LovingandTeaching. As I said in Chapter One, the entire ministry of Jesus Christ can be summarized in the phrase ‘love and teach.’ That’s all He did. He loved the people as He taught them, and this had a great power over their hearts. He established the pattern that we parents need to learn in guiding our children.”

We’ve talked about the loving part of lovingandteaching. AND we’ve been talking about the teaching part a lot too. Now we’ll go ever deeper with teaching.

Remember Sylvia, who came into room just prickly and annoyed. Such an attitude infects the whole house. People behind closed doors can feel it. We’ll assume that you have already looked directly at her in a loving way, listened on previous occasions, touched her many times, taught her about loved-loving-responsible, taught her about zero tolerance toward anger-whining-teasing-lying-withdrawal. You’ve listened to her anger on many other occasions—possibly alone with her in the living room or in her room.

Now, after all that lovingandteaching, you have the opportunity—yes, opportunity, privilege, and blessing, not an annoyance—to teach this little child (no matter what age) the Course she’s probably never been taught. Not in school. Not much by you. We’ve talked about this. She’s learned Algebra, History, and Physics, but she knows nothing about Life, and you’re about to teach the Life Course even more than you already have.

As you teach this course, you are saving your children’s lives. I’m not being dramatic here, or trying to get your attention, just stating what is true. We can accept that fact and elevate our children, or we can ignore it and pay a terrible price. They MIGHT use trigonometry. They WILL need—every day—what they learn from their Life instruction, and right now you’re learning how to give it to them.

I will say in yet another way something we’ve discussed many times: We’re lovingandteaching our children so we can increase their CHOICES (with teaching) and their ability to make them (with love). THAT is true power.

Without lovingandteaching our children, they don’t truly make choices. All they can do is REACT to pain and other circumstances—as we see in a drowning person, or someone stabbed in the leg with a fork, or rocks falling down a hill, or billiard balls bouncing around the table. Who wants to LIVE like that? Actually, it’s NOT living. It’s just reacting, like an object. It’s not an over-simplification to say that we’ll get where we want in life if our guiding principle is to move from reacting to choosing.

People—real people who feel loved, who are loving, who are responsible, and happy—make choices. That is power. ROCKS simply react. If all we do in life is react to what somebody else does or to circumstances, then we become ROCKS.

Sometimes that is what our children need to hear. It’s very difficult for them to argue with if you explain it as thoroughly as I have to you—now and in previous chapters. And now YOU can explain it, because you have my explanations recorded and available anytime you want. For particularly important principles you find, I suggest you keep a log. Write down the principle, like, “choice vs reaction,” keep them alphabetically (easy on the computer), and then enter where it is in the training: Chapter 7, for example, at 2 hrs, 12 mins, 15 seconds. You’ll be glad you did this. (I know, I should have told you this way earlier in the Training).

So, back to Sylvia.

What would it look like to teach Sylvia? You can almost assume that the first time or two that you change a lifetime of rules for her—mostly unspoken—she’s not going to like your stealing her techniques for defending herself and getting what she wants. She’ll resist, and it’s very likely that she’ll end up missing school or losing her phone, or whatever as a consequence for her resistance.

Parents PANIC at the thought of doing something like taking a child’s phone, or telling them they’ll miss volleyball practice, or turning around at the airport and not taking the child to the school trip to China. They keep putting off the use of consequences, even when endless words have failed, and the child is obvious sliding off into all kinds of difficulty and misery. We talked a lot about consequences in Chapters Six and Eight of this Training.

Parents often say things like, “But I’m trying to find the right time.” Ha! There is no good time—no “easy” way either. The best time to impose a short-term consequence (Chapter Eight) is right while she’s being difficult, because in the very moment it’s very hard for her to deny it. If you wait, she’ll just entirely “forget” her behavior or rationalize it.

So, picture her fussing about missing school, or whatever consequence you’ll be imposing, and picture yourself saying, “Honey, I know you’re unhappy. It’s written all over your face. It comes oozing out in your tone of voice. Listen to me slowly (TONE here, and calm). It’s not your fault. Really. I TAUGHT you to feel alone and afraid, and you hate those feelings. Your unhappiness means that you’re in pain, and I caused that. If I had loved you unconditionally from the time you were born, this wouldn’t be happening. If I had loved you as you needed, you’d be grounded on a rock-solid foundation of love and happiness. Then when little things happened—friends are snotty, somebody posts something on FB or Snapchat that isn’t flattering, your sister takes something out of your room, blablabla—those things wouldn’t bother you.”

Notice this is a variation on the First Truth Telling of Chapter 6, which I said we’d be using,

AND it applies to all these kids, the ones who demonstrate:

This approach I’m describing to unhappiness, and to every other behavior we’ve discussed and will discuss, applies in some way to YOUR child.

Now back to you talking to Sylvia again:

You say to her, “You’re obviously unhappy, but it’s all not your fault, AND now we have to do something about it. We’re doing something about it for YOUR benefit. When you fuss and fume, YOU look miserable. Because you ARE. I’m not miserable. Just you. And the more you express your anger and misery without really talking about it the worse it gets.”

“I’m learning to love you better. And teach you how to be happy. It’s going to make a difference if you talk about it and feel loved while you do.”

(This is also a VERSION of the initial truth-telling from Chapter 6)

What did you just do with your child (or Sylvia)? You had a choice:

1. React to your child with more anger. OR
2. Love her.

You had a choice: to be a rock or a person.

At this point, some kids just break down in tears and hang on to you for dear life. Really, some of the most difficult and snotty kids you could possibly imagine. Your love is what they want most, and sometimes they’ll just drink in this experience. Sometimes they resist your initial attempts at loving, and then you just keep loving and teaching.

Some parents have said about the process of loving and teaching, “This is taking so long.” (After trying for a couple of weeks)

I just smile and say, “In all the world, what could you possibly be doing that would be more important?”           

At some point with Sylvia, SHE has to tell the truth about herself, or she learns nothing. You teach her what she is doing—with utter calm—UNTIL SHE GETS IT. You loveandteach until SHE can say what she’s doing. If that takes a long time, then it just does. How long do you have to work to fix a water leak in your house? Until it’s fixed.

SHE has to tell you what SHE is learning. She has to see and SAY—with your help—something like this (no less than this to start):

I was being snotty.

I was being selfish. 

I was in pain, so I was unhappy.

I don’t want to keep doing this.

I do need you to keep helping me with this.

We talked earlier in this chapter about the importance of our CHILDREN telling the truth about themselves, and how this fits into our concept of Truth ® Seen ® Accepted ® Loved. As THEY tell the truth, THEY feel more seen, accepted, and loved.

SYLVIA

Back to Sylvia, who came into the room just prickly and annoyed. We’ve used her as an illustration several times, for a reason. So you can see how many different ways you can love and teach one child in similar circumstances. And if your child isn’t a 15-year-old. girl, she will be. Or she was, or she acts like one, or HE does, or close to it.

Let’s assume that you—or you and your partner—have loved her and talked to her, many times, in ways similar to what I’ve described earlier in this chapter. You’ve had family meetings. Things get a LOT better. Sylvia listens as she is loved and taught. But sometimes she still comes into the room irritable, which is inevitable.

What do you do? You stop what you’re doing, you go over to her, face her, and say, “Tell me what you’re doing right now.”

She will likely say something like, “What do you mean?” (Kids love to play dumb and make you do the work)

You laugh but not sarcastically. “You know exactly what I mean.” NO TONE

Sylvia sighs and says, “I’m being angry.”

In summary, ASK your child what he or she is doing. They internalize it better. They make it part of them—they OWN it—when they say it themselves.

One day, my grandson Bruce, age 3, decided to be a tiger. What three-year-old wouldn’t, right?

So he made stripes with a permanent marking pen all over his skin and walked around naked.

Janette (his mother) saw this and spoke. It’s notable that she did NOT say “don’t” or “how many times have I told you ...”

Janette said to Bruce, “What is the rule?” It was a real question, not an accusation.

(Remember, children learn better when THEY see their behavior and describe it, which is the point of this story)

Bruce: “No markers on the skin.”

Then Janette cut up some strips of felt, and she helped Bruce glue them to a pair of jeans in stripes. Then she asked him, “Will this be okay and make you a tiger?”

“Yes,” he said. He was very satisfied and proud of himself. Lesson learned

His mother had loved and taught him on many previous occasions. He learned from all that love and teaching, but then he briefly forgot when he painted his skin with pemanent markers. But then he willingly admitted his mistake. Lesson learned. 

Another important principle involved in lovingandteaching:

Teaching is NOT praise or criticism

In Chapter Two we talked extensively about the dangers of praise, and we learned that what children really need is INFORMATION—or choices—that lead to better decisions.  Our job is to continually teach our children how the world really is, and who they are, and how they can find happiness in it. It is not our job to get them to behave in ways that earn our praise, or to avoid doing anything that will personally disappoint us. Those two goals are NOT worthwhile life skills for a child.

I just referred to teaching our children “who they are,” and to some people that might seem presumptuous. Like, how dare we tell a child who he is? No, that’s not presumptuous at all IF we are motivated by unconditional loving and teaching, not controlling.

In some respects, children are like little computers that are being filled with data all day, every day. But data by itself is useless. It has to be sorted, correlated, and interpreted. That’s what computer programs do. They take useless information and make use of it.

What nearly every parent fails to realize is that children already DO have a computer operating system and programs running—always running. You didn’t realize it at the time, but we talked about this back in Chapter Four: Event → Judgment → Feeling → Reaction. Let me explain: 

Every event in the life of a child is a piece of data that pours into our children’s brains and hearts. If an event occurs that is inconvenient or uncomfortable—like hunger, or the discomfort of a wet or messy diaper, or simply being alone in the dark—the Judgment program kicks in and judges this event, or assigns the label of PAINFUL.

The moment the judgment of Painful has been made, the child becomes afraid (Event → Judgment → Feeling → Reaction) and responds involuntarily (Reaction) with some action to express the pain: crying, screaming, squiriming.

The more these Judgments of Painful occur, the more they are accepted as normal, and a child intellectually accepts pain as a normal condition. But emotionally, a child NEVER becomes accustomed to living in fear, so they react to fear more and more often. These reactions eventually take over and replace any real chance at choice. And this is how our children’s lives become consumed with Protecting Behaviors and with the many Common Problem Behaviors.

As they get older, the entire world pours events AND judgments together into a child’s brain and heart. Inappropriate and misleading sites on the Internet, advertising, social media, video games, and far more flood children with more events than we could possibly know, and because these are so widely available, the Judgment of NORMAL becomes linked with the Judgment of painful and wrong. So children come to accept lies, unkindness, pain, and sin of every kind as normal and—eventually—acceptable and even desirable as the most popular people abundantly demonstrate these behaviors.

Pain is teaching our children judgments that are wrong: that the world is painful and scary and confusing, so they need to protect themselves. It begins a cycle of behaviors that often never stops.

Lies and confusion and potentially painful events surround them.

They become afraid.

They protect themselves.

When they use those protecting behaviors, unconsciously that confirms that they had a NEED to protect themselves. They reason, why would I be defending myself unless I were being attacked?

Those protecting behaviors cause problems with other people and subsequent pain.

The cycle accelerates and traps our children.

If we don’t intervene and supply our own loving Events, along with loving Judgments we know to be true—those from our own experience and from the gospel of Jesus Christ—the events and Judgments of the world will overwhelm everything good. It’s almost unavoidable, and eventually our children are no longer able to truly exercise agency at all, as we discussed in Chapter Three. They are dragged off into the mists of darkness or irresistibly invited to join the great masses in the spacious building of Nephi’s and Lehi’s dreams.

As absolute proof of the need for help with interpreting data, look at us as parents. I talk to parents every day who SEE the behaviors of their children (the raw data). But their observations are interpreted through judgments of their own past, which are heavily distorted by their own negative experiences, pain, fear, and the judgments of other people. They need help understanding what their children’s behaviors MEAN, which is what we’re doing in this Parenting Training. I’m helping you take raw data and interpret it differently. We’re replacing old, wrong, and hurtful Judgments with new, wiser, more accurate, and more useful judgments about what we are doing and what our children are doing.

Our children need the same help. We can’t stand idly by while our children are inundated with events and judgments that clog their computers and render them miserable and helpless.

A Child's Gifts and Their Sense of Worth

A few moments ago I said that when children feel safe and loved, they can practice being who they really are. But what is that? What are they? Who are they? Who are WE? How can we help our children discover who they really are?

These are infinitely important questions, and—finally, with an understanding of love—they are PRACTICAL questions, not just philosophical ones.

We can begin by describing to them the innate, divine gifts they have, the sum of these gifts making a significant contribution to who they are. The Doctrine and Covenants (D&C 46:9–11) describes the gifts of the Spirit, but this list barely touches on a few of the many gifts we have—carried over from our choices in the premortal life and perhaps given or enhanced by the Spirit in this life.

As I describe these gifts, and how to tell our children about them, keep firmly in mind that I am NOT talking about PRESCRIBING to children their gifts, as in, “I think you should be a doctor” or “You should be better at math.” No, I’m talking about sharing with our children their inner gifts in a way that they will feel more confident and use them more productively and joyfully.

We all have gifts: abilities and capacities that can enrich our lives and the lives of those around us. For example: tenderness (an ability to feel deeply), sensitivity (an ability to feel easily), emotional and physical energy, boldness, courage, trusting, persistence, vulnerability, a desire to do the right thing, willingness, a desire to love others. These are genuine gifts that exist to widely varying degrees in each of us and combine to create who we are. They are a result of our DNA, our epigenome, the experiences of our parents (also manifest in our epigenome), and the characteristics we were given and those we chose to develop in the premortal life.

These gifts are ALL GOOD. Let’s look at a few that we possess.

• Tenderness: We feel deeply, we feel much, our lives are enriched by this gift, we can share feelings with others and soften the world.
• Sensitivity: We feel easily. We are quick to sense fear and love, pain and joy. We are early to sense the feelings of others easily and quick to respond to them.
• Energy: Some tasks in life don’t respond to a little effort. They take enormous emotional and physical energy and persistence. People with this gift make these things happen in ways not possible with others.
• Trusting: Nothing good would happen without faith that acting would produce greater happiness. Trusting gives us the ability to connect to and benefit from our connection with other people.
• Boldness: This is the ability to fearlessly and aggressively teach the truth, or love, or take action where others would be too shackled by the norm, by what others would think, or by what has been done before. These people are dynamic pioneers without whom new thoughts and actions would not happen.
• And there are other gifts: Courage, persistence, kindness, a desire to do what is right, nurturing, music, art, intelligence.

The gifts are all good, but now what happens if we add pain or fear to the gift? If you substitute just one ingredient in a chocolate cake—cement for flour, for example—the cake, otherwise good, is ruined. Utterly. Hitler had the positive gift of persuasive speech. Had he been born in the United States into the family of a minister, he might well have become a television evangelist. But his surroundings led him to use his gifts to persuade an entire nation to commit one atrocity after another.

Our gifts—and the gifts of our children—are similarly affected by pain and fear. Pain doesn’t just neutralize gifts. No, it turns them into weapons of destruction that hurt us and others. Let me restate this: If we add pain and fear to our innate and beautiful gifts, the gifts become weapons that hurt us and others.

Understanding this concept is very, very important because:

1. Many children believe they have no gifts, so they feel small and worthless. Wrong. The gifts are there but are so distorted by pain that they cannot be recognized. Distorted gifts come out as protecting behaviors, or bad behaviors.
2. Once children recognize their underlying gifts in an atmosphere of love, they can begin to develop them and acquire confidence in them. And these children can begin to embrace a sense of worth as they get help recognizing their gifts instead of seeing only their mistakes. It’s a beautiful transformation.

Let’s illustrate what happens when individual gifts are distorted by pain:

• Tenderness: In the short term, pain trumps all the other feelings, so if we’re in pain AND have the gift of tenderness, we hurt more deeply, every wound is worse, and eventually we become crushed and hopeless.
• Sensitivity: In the presence of pain, we feel every offense more easily, we bleed more quickly when poked emotionally, we see offenses where none were intended.
• Energy: If you add pain, we use energy to more powerfully protect ourselves, by attacking, vigorously and relentlessly acting like victims, and becoming crusaders against all injustice (real and imagined) in ways that are highly unproductive.
• Trusting: When we are in pain, we often trust indiscriminately, not knowing who or what to trust, just desperate to find anybody or anything that will lessen our pain. Then we trust people who will hurt us. We end up disappointed and disillusioned, shredded by a long list of betrayals. We sink into a pit of hopelessnes, where faith becomes impossible. Despair.
• Boldness: This is a great quality when we’re loving, but with pain and fear we become reckless, inconsiderate, aggressively selfish in getting what we want and protecting ourselves. Boldness becomes aggression. Bold pioneering becomes intrusiveness and insanity.
• Persistence: In the presence of pain, it becomes destructive stubbornness.
• Kindness: When kind people are in pain, they become people pleasers, a condition that becomes an endless and exhausting burdcn.

You have ALL experienced your gifts being twisted in these ways. In fact, most of the time that we see the manifestations of protecting behaviors in our children, we can work backward and find the original gift that was twisted.

Example: I know a child who was hopelessly afraid of failure. More and more, she isolated herself. She was anxious and had a horrible sense of worth. She felt betrayed by everyone she interacted with. This is not a pretty picture, right? But the truth is that the degree of her anxiety revealed an underlying sensitivity and tenderness. She was a naturally trusting and willing soul, but because she was sensitive to pain, she felt betrayed at every turn and eventually withdrew from everyone. How could this be a good thing? Because when she felt sufficient Real Love, she was STILL sensitive and tender and trusting and willing, but now she trusted the right people, she was willing to take risks in following true principles, and she was able to lovingly touch people who could not be reached by others, because she was so sensitive to their feelings.

Each of us—with all our gifts—is like a mural, brightly colored with individually intricate strokes of the brush. But now imagine that someone comes into the room with a bucket of black paint and a roller. In two minutes, the mural is GONE. The black pain obscures all the underlying colors, even though they’re still there. Our job is to love and teach a child in order to reveal who they really are, to reveal the gifts hidden by pain and their reactions to pain. Again, we help REVEAL their gifts. We don’t create them.

In 1508 Michelangelo began to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In modern times, because of the dark tones in the paintings, art experts have theorized that perhaps he might have had visual problems or depression,.

But in 1980 they began restoration, removing 500 years of fine soot from candles burning nearly 70 feet below. Result? The ceiling was found to be BRILLIANT in color and detail. The Sistine Chapel gets 5 million visitors a year, almost as many as the Grand Canyon. It’s a brilliant work of art and world-wide attraction, all the more because the soot was removed. And that is what WE NEED—what our children need. Love heals wounds, removes the blood and soot, and frees our gifts—our children’s gifts—to be used. Love increases our choices, which with fear are SEVERELY limited to protecting—again, like our children.

How can we know our children’s gifts? How can we know what to help them develop? First we learn to feel loved ourselves, so we don’t cause more injury and add more soot to cover who they are. Then we learn to love them and teach them by revelation. LOVE removes the soot—the black pain and fear. Then we can see their gifts and TEACH them what we see. Loveandteach again.

We all receive the gift of life, as well as a unique collection of other gifts—intelligence, creativity, trusting, and more—that make us who we are. These gifts also make it possible for us to be happier personally and to make a singular contribution to the people around us.

But if we can’t see our gifts, and if we are not free of fear, our gifts effectively disappear—much like our agency does (Chapter Three). Tragic. In order to see these gifts clearly and to use them effectively, we cannot be distracted by pain, fear, emptiness, or anger—among other conditions—which blind us and make us deaf to who we really are. It is the same with our children. Fear and pain—along with our reactions to them, like anger, alcohol, porn, and any number of addictions—consume our souls and detach us from our gifts, thereby robbing us of our own happiness and our ability to contribute to the joy of others.

And this brings us to the real reason to avoid sin. I do not avoid sin because God said to. That reason rarely lasts long, as you and your children prove every day. Sin, almost entirely a reaction to pain, covers up who we really are. It distracts and blinds us. I cannot afford sin in my life because with it I cannot see who I really am. I cannot feel the Spirit who helps me connect to all that is good in the universe. I cannot feel like a child of God. With sin, I become alone and lost. THAT is why I avoid sin. And as others learn what Real Love feels like, they lose the DESIRE to sin, much as Nephi talked about (1 Nephi 4).

In Chapter Two I described a man who had become trapped in pain and sin for a very long time, but once he felt the freedom of the pure love of Christ—both from men, and from Christ as most prominently demonstrated by the Atonement—he found his REASON to change his perspectives and choices. Only with love did he recognize who he was and gain the ability to say to me, “Now I understand obedience. Now I WANT to be obedient because it helps me to be myself.”

With pain and fear our gifts are lost. We lose our direction and joy. We lose WHO WE ARE. We lose ourselves. We lose our way in the world. We simply LOSE. With love we gain a powerful desire to retain the joy that comes from feeling loved and from being loving and responsible.

We must unflinchingly dedicate ourselves to the elimination of pain and fear—with a zero tolerance—not because somebody, even God, has told us to, but because the alternative is unthinkable. And we have to dedicate ourselves as parents to helping our children eliminate their pain and fear, and to see and use their gifts.

Let’s look at a practical example of gifts and lovingandteaching our children about them. A father called me and asked about his two children, ages 10 and 11, who were experiencing the usual squabbles, anger, misbehaviors. He was finding it difficult to love and teach them. For some time I taught him about himself and how to feel loved, and then he began to love and teach his children. Let’s look at a condensed version of his interaction with his daughter, Lilly, age 10:

Dad: I want to tell you some things about yourself:

1. You are Sensitive: you feel things more easily than other people.
2. You are Tender: you have a soft sweet soul. You feel things more deeply than most people.
3. You are Creative: you see goals and ways to reach them that most people do not.
4. You are naturally loving.

Lily was obviously pleased to be hearing these things about herself. It felt significantly better than “Clean up your room.”

Dad: When you feel loved and safe, you use your gifts well. You are loving with younger kids and animals. You’re fun, and they love to be around you.

When you’re in pain and afraid, however, your feelings are easily and deeply hurt. And then you defend yourself. You get angry and get even. Then nobody wants to be around you—like your brother. And YOU are not happy, which is the most important thing.

Why is it so important that Dad teaches this to Lilly? Because prior to his teaching her, the message she had gotten from him and others was that when she reacted badly to things—when she got angry, or argued, or fought—she was:

• Too sensitive. Kids hear this a lot. It’s crushing for a child to hear that they’re “too” anything. They’re being told that they’re defective, and “too sensitive” is especially hurtful when “sensitive” is your real gift and part of who you are
• Too angry and even ugly. No, she was just protecting her sensitive self.
• Difficult to be around
• BAD

So her sense of worth was terrible, which added to her pain and fear, and led to a spiral of pain, being misunderstand, more loneliness, and more acting out.

After her father described Lilly’s gifts and how they were affected by pain and fear, she finally UNDERSTOOD her gifts and WHY she responded to things like she did. She was filled with understanding instead of guilt and self-loathing. Lilly felt her father’s love as he explained that she was not BAD during those times she acted out destructively. She was just responding to pain and confusion, and her gifts influenced how she demonstrated her pain through destructive protecting behaviors. She GOT it. She understood, to her enormous relief.

Dad continued to describe even more of Lilly’s gifts. He said, “You are (1) emotionally strong, (2) energetic, and (3) hard-working. Imagine how Lilly felt, hearing her father describe her GIFTS instead of condemning her reactions to pain. All this love and understanding really got her attention.

Lilly said, “That’s TRUE. I am strong.” Once Lilly caught on that Dad was lovingandteaching her, she stopped defending herself and became much more eager to participate in the conversation.

Dad said, “You have a lot of gifts. That doesn’t make you better than other people. Your gifts just allow you to accomplish things. You can serve other people better. You can have more fun. You do projects that other kids can’t do. You take on tasks that are impressively difficult. You keep going until you’re done, because you have the strength to do it.”

“BUT,” he continued, “what happens when you feel hurt and afraid? Your gifts of being strong and energetic are used to protect yourself, so then you become strong-willed, stubborn, and MORE angry than most people who get angry, like a bull running over people. Your gifts become twisted and actually make it easier for you to harm people, get revenge, win conflicts, and hurt the feelings of your brother and other people.”

Lilly is really enjoying the FEELING of being loved and understood in this conversation, so she is feeling much freer to participate and be honest. She said, “I really do get into trouble sometimes.”

For the first time in her life, Lilly is understanding and feeling that she is not BAD. She’s just in pain a lot—from not feeling loved—and her gifts make her reactions worse, and her gifts help her to protect herself in harmful ways. Hurray for finally understanding.

Dad said, “There’s more. You are emotionally intelligent. You can understand people and help them to understand themselves.”

At first Lilly tilted her head in some doubt—like, this is really different. She was searching her experiences for evidence of this gift. Finally, she saw it, that she really was perceptive of other people’s feelings and her own. She began to nod her head.

Dad continued: “BUT what happens when somebody attacks you, or you’re afraid? With emotional intelligence, you can see and feel more easily the times when people are angry at you, or disapproving, or snotty, or whatever. Sometimes you feel it EVEN BEFORE they know it themselves. They might even deny that they’re being angry at you—and MEAN it—but you know it and can feel it. And then your feelings are hurt. And because you’re sensitive and tender, you FEEL your hurt more easily and more deeply. THAT is the price you pay for having your gifts. Every gift has a price, and that’s the price you pay. But you’re also strong, so you can learn to feel the pain and not be crushed by it. And when you’re in pain, what is another gift you can bring in to help you?”

Lilly thought, rubbed her face, and then said, “I am trusting—that’s a gift I have—so I can trust that YOU love me. And that’s what matters more than other people not being kind to me.”

WOW, this child just got more education about who she is—and how her gifts can be both productive and hurtful—in ONE conversation than I got in my entire life from everybody combined. THIS is loving and teaching. Often we think about that phrase—lovingandteaching—to mean that we’re just kinder as we correct a child. NO. Lovingandteaching is a constant thing. We love them and give them information, increasing their choices, their awareness, and their abilities.

Are you even believing this? Because her father is LOVING her, which makes her feel safe, and teaching her—describing things she would not have seen on her own—she is seeing things that most adults NEVER realize. Adults LOVE it when I point out to them their gifts. One person said, “It’s like suddenly I understand myself. Children like it just as much.

On other occasions, Dad continued to point out Lilly’s gifts. What a beautiful gift from him to her.

Before you point out your children’s gifts, as I said at the outset of this discussion, be CERTAIN that you’re not trying to do the “positive thing” that so many parents do. They say, for example, “Oh, you can do anything you put your mind to. You can be whatever you want.” NO. That is actually completely wrong and leads to disappointment and wasted efforts and your children not trusting you. And do not point out gifts you HOPE they have, like when a child struggles to play even a scale correctly, parents say things like, “You can do this. You have such a musical gift.” Wrong again. Listen to the Spirit and point out only what is true, or you become discredited as a source of reliable information.

Summary of GIFTS

Every child—every person—has innate gifts. They’re all good, but they’re destroyed by pain and fear. With pain and fear, in fact, gifts become destructive and influence how our protecting behaviors are demonstrated.

One reason we LOVE our children is so they can feel safe enough to recognize their gifts. We remove the pain and fear, like removing black paint covering a mural.

One reason we TEACH our children is so they can recognize their gifts and use them more effectively—also so they can recognize how their gifts can be destructive.

Another example of teaching gifts:

One day I saw my granddaughter, then age 8-9, being kind and considerate toward somebody else. I told her that she has gift for being sensitive, insightful, caring. She smiled and said, “I know.” It’s lovely that she knew, but in telling her, I confirmed what she knew, so she would have even more confidence to use her gifts regularly and creatively.

Another grandchild one day described something outside in an unusually beautiful way.

I said, “You’re a poet.”

Child: “What does that mean?

Me: “You have an ability to express ideas and things in words and other ways that lift people’s souls and reach deeply into their hearts.

Child: Yeah, I guess I do.

Because of my identifying this gift, this child was morely likely to remember that she has a GIFT instead of believing people who might be inclined to describe her language only as strange.

Another example of giving a child information, not praise, which we’ve talked about in this and other chapters.

Years ago my grandson Brad, who was nine, spent a week with us, and several times he worked with me out in the yard. We shoveled gravel, hauled dirt, spread grass seed and fertilizer, and more. I was reminded that children really do have an innate desire to work, to be responsible. It often appears that they don’t primarily because we adults don’t make work a rewarding experience. But as long as kids can work with an adult who loves them, they prove that WORK is not the problem. One day, all day, Brad and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves as we talked and joked and worked.

At the end of this long day of labor, I sighed in satisfaction at what we had done and said, “Nice work.”

Brad put his arm around my waist and said, “You too.”

I smiled as I realized that Brad understood my comment perfectly. I was not superficially praising him. I was not trying to make him feel good about himself. I wasn’t talking down to him. He knew that I was just voicing an assessment of what we had done and noting that he’d made a significant contribution to that effort—that he had worked like a man. And I confirmed his gift that he’s a diligent worker.

When praise is a form of Imitation Love, it’s an appraisal of the other person—of their value, as we have discussed—and often a manipulation intended to encourage repetition of a particular behavior. People tend to become attached to that kind of praise. They need more and more. Their sense of worth inflates in a way that is rarely healthy.

But Brad did none of that. He simply nodded in acknowledgement of what I’d said, and in a moment of maturity that I didn’t begin to approach until I was forty years older than he was, he recognized that I had made a contribution too. In fact, he added, “That really was a lot of work. Imagine how long it would have taken me if you hadn’t helped.” He believed that I had helped HIM. That’s confidence.

Information Again

We do not need praise. We need to be loved and taught. Sometimes we need outside evaluation of our efforts, not as traditional praise but as information we can use to guide future efforts. Once again, I was schooled by a child, a lesson that could benefit us all.

Many minutes ago I said that “Teaching is NOT praise OR criticism.” We’ve talked about praise, and how it interferes with teaching our children to be happy. The effects of criticism should be obvious. One word of criticism delivered with irritation erases many, many words of encouragement—and most of us regularly criticize or modify what our children do or say.

We start this criticism very early.

One of my daughters had to stop taking her children to play dates with other children, because the mothers were constantly saying things like:

“No, don’t . . .”

“Stop . . .”

“Slow down.”

“Be careful not to . . .”

“Get down from there.”

All day most of us tell small children what they should not be doing. Oh, we mean well, but we crush their little souls with all the DON’Ts and Nos.

How can we do this differently? LoveandTEACH. One day I walked into the kitchen and found that a three-year-old grandchild had crawled on top of the refrigerator. It was a perilous position that would have caused a shriek of concern from nearly every parent (certainly the mothers).

“That’s pretty high,” I said. “I’m impressed. How will you get down from there?”

The child held out his arms for me to lift him down, but I said, “If you got up there, I’ll bet you can get down. Can I watch?”

Sure enough, that clever kid figured out a way down that I would not have anticipated. Both creativity and confidence were enhanced, along with a bit of fun.

Children like guidance, not bossing. They like to take risks in making choices, and in measured steps, we need to make that possible. They rarely need rescuing.

Years ago, I took my 10-year-old. granddaughter outside to work with me, and we were cutting big oak trees into fireplace logs. We were using a large chainsaw. I was right next to her, ensuring that she would not be injured. Whe was learning a lot by herself, but she could sense that her motions were sloppy and looked to me for guidance. I never said NO, or “Not,” just HOW. So I said,

Good correction is done like some GPS devices do. Years ago when I took the wrong turn in the car, the device I had spoke and said, “Recalculating.” It never said, “WRONG!” or “You’re an idiot who can’t tell directions.” Now the new device just changes the directions it’s giving, much like we need to do with children.

See how this guidance applies to EVERY form of behavior you might see in a child?

Correction simply creates CHOICES a child did not see, which is the purpose of teaching. As another example, if you see something a child has done, but could be done better, you might say: “This is nicely done. Now, see which you prefer: A (what child did) or B (your modification).

OR

Eliminate “nicely done.” Just say, “Which of these two choices looks more effective to you?” (Theirs, yours, something from the Internet)

They make their choice, and you say, “You’ve learned something” (if they chose a better way). Or you might suggest they try a different way, to see if they like it, but not because you expect it or insist on it.

If they are taught lovingly, they will tend to choose the better way, instead of fighting to be right.

AND

If the child just really blew it—did it wrong—don’t say, “This is nicely done.” Don’t lie. You could say, “Take a look at what you’ve done, and tell me what you think about it.”

Give THEM a chance to see it. If they don’t, you could point to a particular part of it, and ask, “Do you see what might not work with this?” (Perhaps the task was not clean, something they made was of insufficient strength, there is an obvious lack of symmetry in something they created, there is a high likelihood of a spill or other mess, whatever)

Another way of saying everything we’ve been talking about so far in this training:

Raising children effectively is not complicated, which is not to say that it’s easy:

• love them.
• teach them (tell them the truth about them, about you, about life, about Christ).
• have faith—in them and in the power of loving and in the truth

Trust your children. When they feel loved, they make right decisions better than with any other influence. They FEEL the flow of the universe, the flow of the light and pure love of Christ everywhere, and they WANT to choose well and be happy. Trust the power of the truth and love. Love and truth do NOT always work—they do not always produce the desired results in any given moment—but they do work better than everything else you’ll ever try.

And let’s add one element to the simplicity of what we just said about raising children effectively:

• love them.
• teach them (tell them the truth).
• have faith. (In them and in the power of loving and the truth)
• sometimes impose consequences.

We talked a lot about consequences in Chapters Six and Eight. Often, we learn best through examples of the application of a principle. Let’s try that with consequences, after all we’ve said about the principle:

Bedtime

One of the first questions I ask parents who are having troubles in their marriage OR with their children is this: What time do your kids go to bed?

Most common answer? “Well . . .”

I always smile at that. “Well . . .” means that the kid goes to bed whenever he wants to. Here are the COMMON bedtime problems:

First problem with usual bedtimes: Variable

Children need order. To them, order is safety. It means the world is predictable, which is important when your little brain is forming all those associations between events and judgments and feelings. If they are allowed to choose whatever bedtime suits them, they raise themselves in an atmosphere of chaos. They have no leadership, no parents. They wander around in the darkness looking for a light to guide them. Oh sure, they’ll SAY they want to stay up later, but what they WANT is not the same as what they NEED, as we’ve said repeatedly. Variable bedtimes is a form of parental neglect. It teaches them that the WORLD has no order, and no, I’m not exaggerating.

Second problem with usual bedtimes: Too late

Kids who go to bed late are tired in the morning—this is a law of physiology—and guaranteed to be grouchy as they get ready for school. Parents complain endlessly about how their kids are difficult as they get ready for school, but it’s the parents who guarantee that the children will be tired and difficult.

AND—very importantly—if children go to bed late, the parents get no personal time together. There is nothing that stresses a marriage more than children who are difficult (which is related to the circus of bedtime) and parents who get no personal time together in the evening (which is directly related to bedtime).

Third problem with usual bedtimes: Illness

Children who don’t get enough sleep tend to become physically and mentally ill. Established fact. American Academy of Pediatrics. Not guessing here. Life is hard enough without causing illness in your kids.

Fourth problem: School performance

Tired kids don’t do well in school. Another fact established by multiple studies. Then parents have to nag, which comes across as unloving, and then kids behave worse. All is a cycle beginning with no fixed, sensible bedtime. Disaster, preventable.

Fifth Problem: Parental exhaustion

Studies have now proven that lack of sleep in adults is as dangerous to their mental and physical health as smoking.

Bedtime again

Irregular bedtimes and insufficient sleep are not small matters to children or parents. Bedtime is no joking matter, but most parents treat it that way. MOST, by quite a bit.

Let’s take the case of three-year-old Timmy and his mother, Martha.

I ask Martha, “What time do you put Timmy to bed?”

“Well . . .” (Meaning that it’s entirely up to Timmy because Mom cannot face Timmy’s disapproval and tantrums and other manipulations when she tries to put him to bed)

I pressed a bit for an approximate time, and she said, “Like 9, or 10, sometimes midnight or 1."

I asked, “How old is Timmy?”

Three

“Does he stay in bed?” It turns out that even when he goes to bed, he’s up and down, in her room, in bed with her, her husband hates it, she goes out of the bedroom with him, gets him a drink of water, he goes to the bathroom. And on and on, for hours. All the usual. And, if anything, it’s all getting worse.

And what are the results of all this?

1. Chaos, as we’ve mentioned. No order. In the absence of a leader—a real PARENT—kids take over. Nature abhors a vacuum. The child thinks—unconsciously—“There’s no direction here, so I’ll take over.” So Timmy takes over. He’s increasingly demanding and entitled. (Of course, this is not limited just to bedtime. Once kids have it figured out that you’re weak, you’re DONE being the parent. All this at age THREE)

Remember the problem behaviors?

Want to know where your child learned these behaviors? Age 3 or earlier. With ... not kidding here ... bedtime, whining, anger—all stuff that appeared to be “no big deal” at the time but was shaping this child’s mind and world.

A child learns VERY early to manipulate parents with demands and expectations.

Why? Because they get no love or attention WITHOUT the demands and expectations. So, in the absence of Real Love, the child settles for protecting Behaviors and imitations of love, and the long list of attention-getting problem behaviors we’ve reviewed many times.

Let’s continue with Timmy. What happened as a result of no regular and reasonable bedtime?

1. Chaos—which we’ve just discussed—and THEN
2. The child was exhausted and cranky all the next day.
3. Mother was exhausted. Couldn’t do her work, couldn’t be kind to Timmy. Got angry, which only made Timmy crankier. Horrible feedback loop.

Martha asked me, “What can I do?”

I say that a lot because parents SAY they’ll do anything, but what they really mean—as proven by their behavior—that they’ll do anything except the stuff that works. Loving and teaching takes faith and courage. Parents tend to back away from their responsibilities as soon as they face the disapproval of their children.

What can we do here?

Now, bedtime. Bedtime comes at exactly the same time every day. 7 pm (12 hrs+) for 3-year-old.

Then we must understand that bedtime is the END of all the bedtime preparations—it’s the deadline, the finale. Put another way, if bedtime is 7:00, you don’t START getting ready for bed at 7, or you’re already late, and the preparations can go on and on.

If bedtime is 7:00, the preparations begin—at the latest—by 6:15. Bedtime is a celebration. There’s brushing teeth, which is much more fun if he brushes yours.

Two nights later, Mom begins the new bedtime routine. Of course, Timmy fights going to bed, ends up in bed about 9:00, and still gets up in the middle of the night to wake up Mom and Dad. Kind of a disaster.

Intentionally, I didn’t follow up in this case, so after a few months, I learned that Mom has been getting up 3-4 times per night for months. She’s exhausted and calling me for help.

I said, “So, you’ve done a pretty terrible job of it all. You didn’t have the courage to face your 3-year-old’s disapproval.” I had NO criticism or tone of disapproval here, just an emphasis that she had not done as instructed, and I had told her, “We’ll see” when she said she had the courage to implement what I had told her would work.

She had not sought out little Timmy to love him during the day; there had been no preparation and celebration before bed, no staying in bed. She did everything the old way. Yuck.

She stumbled around for several more days, Timmy still kicking and screaming, out of bed and coming to her in the middle of the night. Old habits die hard. But all it takes is absolute consistency from a parent, and then the habit usually dies in like 2 days. Really

Know why? Because most 14-year-olds ARE behaving like a 3-year-old. So pay attention here.

With increased age, only the challenges and consequences vary greatly. The basic principles are the same.

I’ve been doing this long enough to see what happens 30 years after a parent neglects to apply principles when the child is very young. I talked to a mother about her three-year-old. daughter, Tandy. Mom did not do the bedtime routine I suggested and wrote about, and did not love and teach. She just hoped the behavioral problems would turn out. Mom called me to say that now-14-year-old Tandy got pregnant, had an abortion, had been thrown out of school, had stolen a car, and much more. It all started at age THREE when very basic principles could easily have been used.

Parents tell me every day that loving and teaching is hard. Compared to addictions, pregnancy, unwanted children, a lifetime of anger, and much more? No, lovingandteaching is much, much easier. The Savior Himself told us this when he said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) What kind of rest? Rest from all work? NO, but certainly rest from fear, anger, confusion, and an endless procession of protecting behaviors. It’s all those things that truly burden us.

First step: If your child is fighting you after you’ve tried loving and teaching, clearly your child doesn’t respect you as a parent. You have to do something that indicates that you’re not a joke. Most parents are terrified of this step, but it’s essential. God has NEVER hesitated to communicate to us that he’s not joking. He said, “This is a day of warning, and not a day of many words. For I, the Lord, am not to be mocked in the last days.” (D&C 63:58) We’re IN the last days, and God will not be taken lightly, nor are His servants—including us as parents—to be dismissed, which our children tend to do routinely.

In the time of the prophet Alma, son of Alma, the Lord allowed the afflictions of the Nephites to become “so great that every soul had reason to mourn, and they believed it was the judgments of God sent upon them because of their wickedness, so they were awakened to remember their duty.” Only after the people experienced these consequences for their behavior, which included great suffering and death, did they pay attention to what God had been saying all along. Only then did they repent, such that there was “continual peace all that year.” (Alma 4:1-5) And we talked more in Chapter Eight about the severe consequences God has long allowed us to suffer in order for us to learn eternal principles.

Back to bedtime with Martha and her son, Timmy. To Mom I said, “Put a dead bolt or simple latch on the bedroom door, such that it can be locked only from the outside, keeping a child inside. Yes, I know. Locking the kid in his room? Oh no! Horrors! Fire hazards, lifelong claustrophobia. Wrong. Relax, there will be a safe and happy ending, FAR safer and happier than NOT communicating to your child that breaking the rules has consequences.”

Now, put him in bed at 7 pm. Preferably, you will have done all the preparations long before this, but if he resists and doesn’t complete the bedtime routine, you put him in bed at 7 anyway. If he twitches from that bed, you walk out and lock the door from the outside. And you tell him you’re locking it.

At this point, there are lots of ways to do this. We’re not talking about locking him away for life without parole. You lock the door for maybe 30-60 seconds, which will almost certainly involve some pounding and screaming from Timmy. You’re standing right there outside the door. All is well. You open the door and say, “Do you want the door unlocked?” Your tone must be absolutely light-hearted, not even stern, certainly not angry.

Timmy will sob and say, “Yes.”

You say, “Great, I would love to leave your door unlocked, but only if you are in BED.”

Then you wait for him to get in bed and remind him that you’ll lock the door if he gets out of bed again. You can’t make him sleep, but you CAN make him stay in bed.

You are right there for as long as it takes to learn this, no fire hazard. No claustrophobia.

Just as the universe has laws, just as physics has laws, so does happiness. The LAWS of HAPPINESS state that you must feel loved, be loving, and be responsible if you want to be happy. In the process, there will be moments of some discomfort. If you’re not willing to endure a little pain now, you’ll get a LOT of pain later.

Solution? (summary and additional information)

1. Pre-bed preparation and celebration
2. You tell him or her that he’ll be staying in bed, and if he cries out or comes out, he’ll have to go back to bed with the door locked, much as I just described (he won’t understand in the beginning). He can get up in the morning when the alarm goes off (one for kids with the sun on it). Children must not disturb parents’ sleep in the morning any more than they do at night. Same principle.
3. In bed at 7 or later for older children.
4. You leave.
5. If he cries out for something, you remind him door will be locked if not in bed. If he keeps crying, you stop responding and just wait until he goes to bed. This is a natural consequence of his choice not to cooperate. No anger. The child is motivated by hating it that the door is locked (it removes choice, which they hate).
6. If he gets out of his room, you return him to the room and lock the dead bolt. You open in 30 seconds (crying), and ask, “Would you like the door open?” You’ll leave it open if he stays in bed. Otherwise, lock until he sleeps. Up in the middle of the night? Back to bed, NO talking, lock until sleep.

Consequence is what teaches, motivates.

I got a report from Martha three days later. She did exactly what I had suggested. Results? NO problems. Sleeps without trouble.

How does all this change with older children, say 8 and above? You simply give them their bedtime, read the clock. Have to be IN bed by XX:00 if age 8-10. If they want reading, singing, etc, they have to be in bed BEFORE bedtime to make the other stuff possible.

Past age 10, they just have to be in their room, no light. (Not in bed)

If 4 y.o. not in bed on time, pick them up and put them in bed. Lock the door and do the routine we’ve discussed.

Past 6-8, consequences differ. You can’t drag 8-year-old to bed.

If they’re late, you have them go to bed 15 minutes earlier the next day. (doesn’t work well)

OR

Start removing privileges RIGHT THEN while they’re late to bed. Take iPad, describe the loss of screen time, cancel events with friends, lock up their bicycles, and be creative. All entirely calm. God doesn’t hesitate to allow consequences. Why do we? We’ve talked about consequences, which are simply unpleasant enough to motivate a child to make wiser choices.

About consequences in general, not just bedtime.

Carefully explain that they can live with the consequence first imposed, or the consequences will be amped up or increased. Two illustrations:

1. You take a child’s phone because of their attitude or not completing a chore. But then the child finds where you put the phone and they take it back. Now, instead of losing a phone for a day, it becomes a week. That’s amping it up.
2. You take the phone for the rest of day for whatever reason. Child gives you attitude—ANYTHING other than cheerful cooperation. You explain what you’re doing first. You say, “The consequence of your behavior is losing the phone for the rest of the day. But you just gave me an attitude about that learning opportunity, so now the consequence will be losing your phone for the rest of the day and all of tomorrow. That’s two days (holding up two fingers). (TONE non-threatening) I can count much higher. You want to go somewhere to adjust your attitude and come back, or would you like to keep going? Then you keep holding up fingers, and, if necessary, keep the phone for the foreseeable future, as something that might be earned back someday.

Increasing consequences—or ramping up consequences—is nicely illustrated in an old oil filter commercial. Fram: Pay me now or later.

We love our children and we teach them by example, with words, and with consequences.

Notice, there is NO BRIBING of children. Many parents routinely bribe their children to do their chores at home, their homework, and more. You don’t pay a child to get good grades or do routine work around the house. Grades, for example, are just the natural product of ability and responsibility. And responsibility is just part of life. It is required for happiness. You don’t bribe a child to breathe air, nor do you bribe them to be responsible.

The reward for being responsible is happiness, accomplishment, and confidence.

But with consequences, you CAN remove privileges to encourage a child to make wiser choices.

The Lord God Himself doesn’t bribe us to be good. In fact, He clearly states our reward for doing the right thing: “Learn that he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come.” (D&C 59:23) God tells us that making loving and responsible choices has its natural reward. We enjoy the peace that comes from being in the natural flow of all that is good in the universe (see Support Subject, “Flow”) and the natural extension of that way of living into all eternity, infinitely supplemented and activated by the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

In next chapter, we’ll discuss ramping up the consequences in greater detail, which could also be called creative consequences. There’s always more to learn.

I hope you’re noticing something.

With children, it’s all about lovingandteaching. Always.

Also notice AGAIN that the idea of treating:

as individual problems is almost always ridiculous. These are all expressions of PAIN. How important is that to understand? Critically important.

Recently, I spoke with a 30-year-old man who could not stop drinking alcohol. He had been raised in the gospel and taught all about the Atonement, the restoration, the priesthood, repentance, and more. But he was miserable to the point of chronic, nearly suicidal, depression.

I asked what seemed to him like an obvious question: “WHY are you an alcoholic? What is the cause?” He looked stunned by the question, despite having attended inpatient treatment, outpatient therapy, and many, many support groups. He had no idea, although his mouth was moving as he used therapeutic terms that had no meaning. I interrupted to say, “Pain.” He looked confused, so I repeated the word and explained to him how he had been raised, even though I did not know his parents—nor had we discussed his childhood.

I showed him what it feels like to be loved, and he began to feel it. It changed everything for him. We cannot heal from all these “problems” in life until we understand that they are united by the emotional pain of not being loved. It’s our children’s PAIN that needs healing, not the symptoms.

And how do we heal their pain? We love them by doing what we’ve discussed:

We help them heal their pain—and connect them to the healing power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ by doing all these things

All the time

All the time WHILE they’re behaving badly or unproductively

All the time when they’re NOT behaving badly or unproductively

We love them no matter what, and THAT is how they heal. That is how the pain stops, and then these behaviors just naturally tend to STOP. They tend to. Sometimes specific approaches are required, and we’ll talk more about that, as we have already.

Our children are drowning. Without meaning to, we threw them in the water. We are drowning with them.

Now, (1) we can try to control their thrashing—their behaviors, the SYMPTOMS of their drowning—in which case they will still drown, and so will we.

OR

(2) We can get into a boat—find Real Love for ourselves—and learn how to reach out and save our children.

Which will you choose to do?

The Effects of Loving Can Be Fast

Parents often lament—even complain—that learning to love their children is SO hard, which is really a way of saying that it’s unfamiliar, and the PARENTS don’t want to learn to do something completely different. Who does? I get it.

Recently, I talked to a mother, Andrea, on Skype. She said that her FIVE-year-old daughter, Julia, was already demonstrating “attitude” consistently—the negative kind. She didn’t want to talk, withdrew physically from Andrea, and refused to answer questions about school or friends or how she felt. She was sullen and obviously unhappy. Andrea felt helpless and ashamed that she couldn’t reach her own daughter. All this at age FIVE. Imagine this kid at 13, eh?

I heard all this on Skype on what we’ll call Day One. Mostly I listened to Andrea. Listening almost always comes first in loving. I understood her thoroughly and described her pain to her, which she had not understood well at all. I also talked about the pain of her daughter. I described what unconditional love feels like. I told her, “Put your hand on your heart (and I showed her how) and imagine that I’m loving you exactly like that, just like your own father almost certainly never did. Take your time until you feel it.” She did, and eventually she wept. It’s a very touching thing to see someone feel loved for the first time. Sacred, really.

Then I instructed her how to be that kind of loving with her daughter—listening, looking, touching, being kind, connecting.

She did something crazy radical: she spent the rest of the day actually doing what I said and what I showed her.

Day Two (one day later)

Andrea wrote: “I've been listening to her, making eye contact and keeping it, holding her attention while giving her directions (instead of just barking orders), holding her and kissing her and loving on her. Being present with her.”

**Wow, eh?

She continued, “Last night and this morning my relationship with Julia was wayyyy different. She’s like a different person. She’s talking non-stop—about everything. She’s doing what I'm asking, and she’s staying close to me.”

Day Three (two days after our initial Skype call)

Mom: I put my hand on Julia's chest this morning, like you did with me. And put my ear on her chest and listened to her heartbeat. It was amazing for both of us. From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!

“Then we talked about everything while making breakfast, TOGETHER. We talked about bugs and wheelchairs, and I taught her about being grateful for food and legs to walk with and beds to sleep in. I can’t believe I didn’t know how to do any of this until now!!!

**What a miracle. And we can all learn to do that.