the gifts we give our children when we take…
Page 116 the gifts we give our children when we take the highroad and really listen are incredible. we validate their feelings. How real can children feel if it seems that we never hear them? What message are they getting when responses to their statements go like this? I'm not hungry. Eat your dinner now! I'm not sleepy. Get into that bed and go to sleep. I don't like my brother. You've got to like him, he's your brother. It's the major complaint of people from dysfunctional families. They were never allowed to have feelings. They grew up, distressing, their own sense of the world and themselves. Their feelings and ideas were never OK. We enhance their self-esteem. When we truly listen, we are acknowledging that they have something important to say and that we value their opinion. We encourage their problem-solving skills as we hear out their solutions. We Foster Their creativity as we let them re-create a scene or embellish it with details.
— from Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting) · 10 greatest gifts I give my children by Steven W. Vannoy
In the book
And know that the most powerful gift to a child's self-esteem is to let them see your own: children watch a parent's unhappiness and quietly conclude it must somehow be their fault, so modeling a steady, healthy self-regard is itself an act of love. Above all, listen. When you truly stop and hear a child — without rushing, without judging, without leaping in to fix — you tell them that what they feel is real and that their voice matters; much of what a child needs is simply for you to stop racing through the day and be there. At the family table, your full attention is itself a form of hospitality. […] Do the three jobs. Teach, protect, and love — and aim always to raise the child into who they are, not who you wish they were. Love out loud. Fill the bucket with confidence, say plainly that you are proud, and listen so fully that they know their voice matters. Discipline as mercy, not anger. Be the real world's kind proxy; give them a few firm rules so they are welcome everywhere; and let them fail safely rather than smothering their competence. — Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting)