Tuesday, March 3, 2015
How will you measure your life?
Wake up each morning thinking how lucky you are to be able to spend the day doing what you love.
Even when you know what your true priorities are, you'll have to fight to uphold them in your mind every day. Emergent and deliberate opportunities and strategies.
The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg
The time when its most important to invest in building strong families and close friendships is when it appears on the surface as if it's not necessary.
Investing for future happiness
Invest in relationships before you need their returns. Do the work to maintain friendships.
Doing what we want vs what they need from the friendship
The clock of building a good relationship is ticking from the start
What job are you being hired to do (in family and friendships) "high yield" friend
Find someone you want to make happy
Help your children learn how to do difficult things; how to handle set backs and high stress.
We take different "life lessons" classes
Resources (Lucy/ appearance of perfection vs processes (Lynn/ life's lessons)
As parents, reverse engineer the right life experiences they will need.
If you're not occasionally failing you're not aiming high enough. Celebrate failure when it's you're child striving for an out of reach goal.
What lessons do my kids need?
Unvarnished feedback
Deliberate plans for family culture and priorities vs emergent opportunities and challenges that occur in life.
Upfront costs.
It's hard to see the costs of not investing. Eventually pay the price. Invest in future.
Extraordinarily clear sense of purpose/ the person I want to become: deliberately conceived, chosen, managed
1) likeness (vision/goals). Who do I truly want to become?
2) commitment/ conversion to likeness. Convert your life to living it.
3) metric (measurable) How many individuals have I helped 1:1? Seek opportunities to help people tailored to their ind circumstances.
Focus on resolving other's challenges.
Clarity of purpose trumps awards, grades, etc.
Don't cross the line "just this once" bc Life is just one unending stream of extenuating circumstances.
Ezra Taft benson
"One of the joys of working with boys is the fact that you do get your pay as you go along. You have an opportunity to observe the results of your leadership daily as you work with them through the years and watch them grow into stalwart manhood, accepting eagerly its challenges and responsibilities. Such satisfaction cannot be purchased at any price; it must be earned through service and devotion. What a glorious thing it is to have even a small part in helping to build boys into men, real men.”
"I prayed and fasted for the Lord to help me know how I could help him be of greatest service to his fellowmen..."
“I am going to do all within my power to help him be known and felt for good, not only in this little community but for the entire world to know him.” -Flora
"She has always shown more faith in me than I have myself."
"If I had it to do over again, I would follow very much the same course"
"The Book of Mormon has not been, nor is it yet, the center of our personal study, family teaching, preaching, and missionary work. Of this we must repent."
"There is a power in the book.. which will begin to flow into your lives the moment you begin a serious study of the book.” ...“flood the earth and lives with the Book of Mormon.”
The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it.
When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities.
The price of privilege
Motivation needs to come from the inside. Let them set their own bar high.
Who's needs are these? Mine or parents?
A sense of lovability is the core of a healthy self-development.
Loved and valued for mere existence as well as for particular endowments
"Outstanding" children are those who have developed a self that is authentic, capable, loving, creative, in control of itself, and moral.
Self-efficacy: personal capability
Focus on and praise effort, not the end result
Self- management: self control, frustration management, impulse control, delay gratification= Maturity
Our primary responsibility as parents is not to gratify our children, but to make certain that they develop skills that will help them meet life's challenges and disappointments.
Affluent kids haven't had enough bad things happen to them
"Any child that has not been bandaged has not been well parented." Dr. Spock
Children need a mother who is sensitive to both the internal and external feelings and experiences of her child. She reflects interest and the delight in her child's very existence, helping the child to define himself as someone worthy of interest, appreciation, and love.
Zestful and involved motherly interaction
Generosity of spirit: consumerism vs philanthropy
Healthy "internal homes" put at ease internally and in the world. Built from warm and loving parent- child relationships that send the message: "you're worth caring about. I value you and how I feel about you does not rest on your performance or ability to please others"
Tyler resented his over-achieving parents who couldn't love and accept his authentic quiet, kind, loving, and cooperative real self. So what if James wants to be a fireman and Dan wants to be a farmer? Both of those are respectable, honorable, and fulfilling professions and lives. Mike and I both had our calm, slow, not showy childhoods, maybe that's what our boys will choose for adulthood.
Age 0-8: mirror= mother
Avoid criticism, generalizations, and labeling/ name calling
Once a child forms a negative impression of himself, it is very difficult to change
Be interested in whatever excites your child, even if that's trucks instead of math and reading.
Be kind to your child. Your child is eager to please you.
8-12: "There's nobody nicer than a ten year old" -Ames
Maintain perspective and don't cut off interests prematurely
Children need to see that we value their character first, their effort second, and then their grades
Allow children to explore, learn, and create without the pressure of scrutiny and constant evaluation
Age 12-14: Mirror=peers
Help them feel loved and worthwhile at a time when they are generally feeling insecure and vulnerable.
Teens are still very dependent on parents-- not a time to back off. Amidst protest and rejection, work to maintain connected
When a parent can tolerate some criticism from their teens, they are teaching them that one does not have to be perfect to be okay
Age 15-17) "who is the real me?"
Moodiness occurs as level of self worth swings back and forth.
Letting go of reassuring childhood dependency it is hard for us and harder for her children.
When we mitigate natural consequences, we deprive our children out of one of life's most important lessons: that we are held accountable for actions.
Development is aided by understanding the parents. We all yearn to be loved for who we are, not just for what we do.
Autonomy: independent & capable
Importance of finding a balance between connection (warmth) and discipline (control)= connecting with our kids and providing boundaries
The one thing we have control over is how we parent-- at the same time, we need to retain compassion for ourselves as we still stumble upon some of our less desirable strategies
-authoritarian parents are more demanding of their children than they are responsive to their needs
-permissive parents are warm friends who are afraid to show enforce boundaries
-authoritative parents are warm and excepting, yet set clearly defined limits and expectations. They are demanding and responsive. Support rather than criticism or punishment encourages children to meet expectations.
Value: cooperation, responsibility, self-regulation, achievement, self-motivation, independence, connection
Warm, but capable of appropriate discipline. Committed to supporting a high degree of autonomy.
Acceptance: In spite of inevitable disappointments, the essence of your child remains dear to you.
Understanding: take the time to really listen
Investment: Child will not be emotionally abandoned in times of fear or distress.
Know and value the idiosyncratic, unique child who stands in front of us.
Make sure your child knows that, if given a choice of all the children in the world, he is the one you would choose.
Praise for ethical behavior and sincere effort needs to be balanced with expressions of disappointment and correction for hurtful behavior and lazy effort.
Praise is not warmth and is usually manipulative and controlling. It gives the wrong message to a child. What the kid needs to know is that we love them and care about them regardless of actions or performance
Accept our children as the unique creatures that they are, even while we're working to help them cultivate interests and talents and become good, responsible, productive people.
Criticism, our difficulty tolerating imperfection: attacks the child's value; the unique individual standing in front of us. This feeds feelings of self-hatred.
How is my own inner talk? Am I critical or do I treat myself kindly
Kids want and need limits.
The likelihood of showing restraint is increased by our attachment to a loving parent or partner.
Behavioral vs psychological control
Separate their needs for mine
Perfectionism: precursor of depression
While lapses (yelling, belittling,) are inevitable, making amends and taking responsibility is essential
Value: relationships, downtime, freedom to think creativity, lack of self-consciousness
Vs. Notion of "not good enough"
Absolute best versus personal best
Perfectionism is driven by a need to avoid failure to appear flawless-- to hide feelings of insecurity and vulnerability.
Art of living: take pleasure from efforts and successes and tolerate limitations
We need our eyes open to the people standing in front of us with varying degrees of talent, ambition, capacity, and desire.
Bullying feeds off indifference of community
A happy child begins with a mother who has her basic needs met.
We need to be compassionate and more charitable with ourselves.
A father's greatest impact is his ability to nurture his wife.
Internal resources: friends, interests, support, clear priorities, and clarity about her own life story.
As we are able to feel generally loved, valued, and connected, so will our children.
Happier women make happier mothers and wives.
Being open about struggles and challenges help model resilience, active approaches to problem-solving, and compassion for oneself.
Children are exquisitely tuned to their mothers state of mind p208
Take advantage of opportunities to teach that while life isn't always fair, pain is always used by love and connection
There will be times when we need to sit down, look a person in the eye and say out loud that something is wrong and we want to help.
The healthy sense of self that we want so desperately for children must first exist in ourselves.
Warmth protects child development
The "good enough mother"
Children thrive best when their mothers take care of themselves as well as their children
The best gift you can give your children is a good marriage
There is no perfect parent. We will always carry around disappointments from our own childhood.
Parent with warmth and acceptance instead of pressure and criticism
Commit to nurturing them with warmth, clear limits, firm consequences and a delight in their potential and uniqueness
We all yearn to be loved for who we are, not just for what we do
Let us truly see, truly appreciate, and truly love the child who stands in front of us
The most influential people in my life are the ones that know me and still like me and believe in me. Grampy, woodruff, Maureen,
Parenting: being a gracious recipient of the precious spirit you have been called to care for.
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