A WOMAN approached me at the end of a lecture I was giving recently and said quite crossly: "How can you talk about rearing children when you have no children yourself?" A good question. My answer to her was that I had been a child myself and now knew what parenting my child did not get and furthermore that being a parent does not in any way guarantee knowing what parenting involves.
Indeed, most of the troubled children and adolescents I help come from two parent families where a lack of loving has led to deep emotional insecurity in their offspring. I also added that in having gone through therapy on the vulnerabilities that arose from my own childhood and in helping the many distressed children, adults and families over the past twenty years, I feel I have acquired deep insights into what creates the unhappy and happy family.
However, my most important answer to her very legitimate question was that parenting has nothing to do with having children. Parenting has everything to do with parenting the hurt and neglected child that is within each of us and the parenting of ourselves as adults. The child within us is the vulnerable part of ourselves that is revealed through protective behaviour such as shyness, passivity, fear, timidity, dependence, rushing, racing, panicking, aggression, dominating, controlling, addictions, possessiveness, loneliness, isolation and fears of failure and rejection.
The task of each of us as adults is to redeem the child within us by parenting that child in ways which were not present in the parenting which the child received in his or her home of origin. Do you listen to love, embrace, cherish, affirm, encourage, soothe, heal the hurts of this vulnerable child within you? Do you allow this child opportunities to express needs and to weep and rage - over hurts, humiliations and rejections. In responding in these way to the child within you, your are truly learning the art of parenting.
Parenting self also means looking after the adult you. In the past hundred years psychology has discovered that the three most important aspects of developing psychological and social well being are love self, love others and love life.
Progressive medicine is now discovering that the three foundations to physical health are love self, love others, love life. Two thousand years ago Christ told us that the way to spirituality was to love God with all your heart and love your neighbour as yourself. The "as yourself" was the best kept secret within the Catholic Church.
Christianity is based on people seeing the wonder of themselves, radiating from that love of self to seeing the worth of others and transcending these love relationships to a love of God. When you see the wonder of self you are empowered to be there for yourself others and life.
The love of self embraces all the characteristics of effective parenting: unconditional love, kindness, gentleness, understanding, compassion, responsible living, positive firmness, nurturing, listening, valuing, encouragement of efforts to grow and learn and the fostering of independence of performance and others opinions of you. It also included a healthy and balanced lifestyle that is designed to meet the full range of your needs as a human being emotional, social, sexual, intellectual, sensual, behavioural (skills development), spiritual, physical and occupational.
A great indication of poor parenting of your adult self is an imbalanced lifestyle where there is an over emphasis on one area of activity (for example, work or perfectionism in the home) to the neglect of other vital areas of need, particularly, relationships.
All parenting begins with the parenting of the child within yourself and your adult self. How you are in these two vital inner relationships determines how you will be in all outer relationships whether these be with partner, spouse, children, friends or work colleagues.
It is now well documented that parents with high self esteem make the most effective parents and foster a high sense of self in their children. The contrary is also true. High self esteem in adults is the product of their experiences as children but even more so arises from their own championing of their own inner child and the celebration and caring of themselves as adults.
Whether we are parents, partners, therapists, teachers we can only give children what we have within ourselves. We can only bring children to the level of personal development we have attained within ourselves. It is not possible to bring them beyond that point because we have not charted that territory and because it would be threatening to our own present sense of self.
Cary Grant, the film actor, made a telling comment when he said: "It came as a great surprise to me that I needed to take responsibility for my own life". Such responsible caring is the basis of all parenting.
