Love Is Individual

Everyone needs to know he is loved, most especially your child. He knows to know. above else, that YOU love him. And not because of anything he does but simplty because he exists.

Your child is not a mind reader. You need to tell him, "I love you!" every single day--actually, many times every single day. No one can hear that phrase too may times so long as it is genuinely spoken. Your kid will know whether or not you mean it.

To let you know, each of us has our own definition of love. Maybe for your child, love is eating the breads you baked for him--his favorite kinds. And maybe it is spending time 1:1 at bedtime or being read to. Ask your child what makes him feel and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you love him. Guessing may lead you to thinking you are doing everything you possibly can for an ungrateful child who accepts what you do but feels unloved, not cared about at all.

How sad it is that this world is filled with people who are cherished but simply because they are not shown love according to thier definition of love think they must be unlovable.
Want to raise a child with high self esteem? Say, "I love you." And hug him.

What is love to you? What actions does a person need to do for you to know you are loved? Tell your partner, your family and your friends. There is no such thing as, "If they really loved me they would know." People are not mind readers. We assume what makes us feel good also makes others feel good. Not so.

Living Consciously

You are your child’s role model—whether you know it or not, whether you want to be or not. Your child does what you do rather than what you say⎯or the exact opposite just to be different from you. Your young person probably acts without an awareness of how or why he does as he does.

Do you think knowing how you live your life, since you influence your child's life, could be powerful information to have? You can know by living consciously.

Most people go through life accepting what comes their way. They believe that life just happens. John Lennon spoke for many people with his lyric, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." Mighty disempowering thought.

The thing is, life is what you create it to be. Your belief system can be changed if you want to change it. The way to change your beliefs is to change your daily living patterns, i.e., your life style.

Creating happiness does not involve a "how-to" system as much as it involves a "wake up and live" a conscious life style. Everything that exists in the world starts as thought. Every invention was first an idea in someone's imagination. Every action you take or fail to take was first something you thought about.

Thought creates the world. Thought creates your world. Thought creates your child’s world. What you think about events determines how you respond to events. How your child interprets events determines how he responds to them.

Imagine how differently you would experience each day with the knowledge you have control over how you respond to life events. Do you think your child would be empowered by knowing he is in control of a world where he thinks he is helpless?

What happens happens. Interestingly, in Japan there is one word that means both crisis and opportunity. The same event is a disaster to one person and an opportunity to another.

How you choose to act or not act is up to you. Period. Life was never meant to be difficult. People, with their thoughts, make it hard or easy.

How do you see life? Do you know that struggle is optional? What are you teaching your youngster about experiencing life?

Pay attention to your thoughts. Stop and ask yourself what you were thinking when you experienced a certain emotion or reacted a certain way. You will uncover your unconscious way of life. The next time you experience the same kind of event make a conscious choice to act differently. Teach your child to do the same.

Ah! That is how simple it is to be in control and live on purpose. Life does not simply happen to us. Life happens to us exactly as we choose to experience it. Share the gift of that knowledge with your child.


Live in the truth that life is an adventure to be savored in every moment!

Behaviors Are Separate From People

Children are people. Behaviors are behaviors. Getting the two confused can lead to having your child see himself or herself as a good or bad person. In fact they are children who do good and bad things. Even when they do things that are terribklly wrong know they are still your child and deserve love.
I raised my children while being a La Leche Leader back in the 1970s. We had a saying, "You can have spoiled vegetables but not spoiled children." I raised my kids with that truth foremost in my mind. My children grew up with boundaries and learned appropriate behaviors from the earliest age. I didn't always like what they did or didn't do and I always loved them just because they existed. And I made sure to hug them lots and tell them, "I love you" lots and lots.
Back in the 1970s we had bumper stickers that reead, "Have you hugged your kid today." Well, have you? virginia Satir created the Family Therapy movement. She told the world, "People need 4 hugs a day to survive, 8 to get by and 12 to thrive."