The basics of how good parenting makes their children happy by demonstrating love
ByPeople can endure almost any catastrophe if they know they are lovable and if they are able to show love to others.
Love is not just warm feelings; love is action. Parents who love a child intensely take care of its body mind and spirit and encourage the child to treat them with respect. Good parents love so deeply that they willingly sacrifice time and energy because of love. To parents who believe that love is action, not just warm feelings, caring for their children is not resented but is always a high priority Thus, when the child has an important need or want, the loving parent rearranges priorities to deal with it. This is especially important when the child is young and requires intense involvement.
Later in life, the one-to-one intensity needs to be transformed so that the child can learn to love more extensively. Many people talk of loving everything and everybody, yet they may not show it. Others only love themselves and one or two others. Between the extremes can be a healthy balance. In self-reparenting, a new Parent needs to know that every person is important—that love is not a scarce commodity, and there is enough love to go around.
Love in action may be brief, as when someone briefly risks his or her own life for another and doesn’t wait for thanks. Or, love may be a lifelong relationship, as in some marriages or friendships. Good parents make this permanent commitment to their children as persons, even though they may not agree with some of their values or lifestyles. In self-reparenting, a person’s new Parent must have a similar orientation, which is to stay active, never to desert the inner Child, and always to show love—no matter what.
Adequacy of parental love can be measured in two ways: loving involvement and parenting skills. Some parents who love their children and are emotionally involved with them do not have adequate parenting skills. For example, they may be overly indulgent of inappropriate behavior or overly indulgent by trying to give their children ”everything.” As a result, their children often become spoiled, act irresponsibly with possessions, or manipulate others dishonestly to get more. Most of this behavior occurs because the parents are inadequate in parenting skills and unwise in gift-giving.
Another inadequacy in parental care occurs when parents do not love their children and are emotionally distant, even though they may have parenting skills. They do not enjoy the positive emotional involvement with their children that comes about while learning and working, playing and loving together. They do their parenting out of a sense of duty, or so they will look good in the eyes of the neighbors.
Whether parents love and uninformed, or informed and unloving, the result is similar because the parenting is inadequate. In developing your new Parent, you will need to decide to love your inner Child just because the Child is important and to love this Child to a degree such that the Child becomes free to love others. Your own Child needs to be loved permanently and unconditionally, regardless of mistakes and imperfections. And, your inner Child needs the wisdom of loving concern combined with firmness. When people are loved, they can learn to love themselves and the rest of the world and experience liberty and happiness at the deepest levels. They can become friends with the universe.
The root of the word friend means “free”—not in bondage. The Old English word Freon means to love, and the word friend becomes the modern English word friend. In the process of self-reparenting, the new Parent does not hold the Child in bondage. Instead, the Parent respects the nobility and the mobility of the Child and rejoices over its emerging independence. The two of them become friends.
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