Successful Parenting
Subjects That Will be Discussed in This Course
Why Parents Need This Course
All most all parents have never been instructed how to raise their children, It is so interesting that people who want to drive a car have to take a driver’s test both written and driving with an instructor. Any man and woman can have a child but do they know how to raise that child? There is no requirement for parents to take courses to be able to raise children properly, especially Godly children. There should be but there isn’t. That is why Kevin Hickman who has a Masters in Psychology and Pastor Frank Lewis who has been studying human behavior for over 20 years, put together Successful Parenting to provide the tools to raise successful Godly children. This course will help you know how to have a amazing relationship with your child or children. Parents what you learn in this class will help you give your child the tools they need to have successful relationships and a great relationship with God.
Introduction to the Course
This course has been designed to help parents understand what behavioral scientists, psychologists, the Bible and experience tell us are the necessary things that all children need and what the goals for parents are who want to raise successful Godly children. Once parents understand what their child or children were supposed to receive, then in the first section we show them very clearly what happens to their children when their children don’t get what they need. Children need bonding and attachment as building blocks for all their future relationships. If they don’t get what they need children will live very unsatisfying lives and have problems in all of their relationships. The second section provides the solution for parents who want to help their children get what they didn’t get in earlier years. This section of the course details the plan we call Re-Parenting. Understanding the Re-Parenting process will certainly help you give your children what they need and didn’t get. It will also help you with all of your other relationships.
What Can go Wrong
When we talk about raising children so many things can go wrong especially when parents do not know what their child or children really need and the best way to raise them. This course will show parents what happens when children do not get properly bonded to their parents. It will also help parents understand what happens when they do not have a strong attachment with their children. When there is little or no emotional attachment their child or children will live for the rest of their lives with attachment pain. The lack of attachment with their parents will not only cause attachment pain but all of their future relationships will not work well. This is not the result that you want for your children but this will absolutely happen without parents knowing what to do to bond and attach to their children. This course will help parents to not only know what to do to better bond and attach to their children it will also guide them in knowing what to do to help their child even when so many things went wrong.
Part 1: The problem
What is Bonding & Attachment and Why is it So Important?
Behavioral scientists tell us that if a child has not bonded well to their parents they will have a very difficult time attaching to them. This is due to the fact that bonding builds trust with parents and it is the foundation for building a strong attachment with your child. Creating an emotional attachment with your child, is your child experiencing you being glad to be with them. As you tune in to their emotions, then reflect back to them what they have just told you, then you can make an emotional connection with them.
Bonding
Bonding is the process God has planned for a mother and father to develop trust with their newborn. Bonding takes place when parents are able to meet the physical needs of their baby and infant in a timely manner over and over again. When a baby experiences their needs being met consistently, this gives their child a sense of security and builds trust with their parents. How trust is developed is so important for parents to understand because proper bonding or lack thereof will affect your child for the rest of their lives.
Attachment
An attachment is created when the parent is able to intentionally listen to their child and allow them to express all of their emotions. An emotional connection will form between the parent and child when the parent has begun to really hear the child, and is able to emotionally tune into the child’s feelings through the appropriate tone of voice and positive facial expressions. This emotional connection is so important because if there is not an emotional connection between the parent and the child, the child will carry emotional pain for the rest of their life.
What is Attachment Pain?
When parents are not emotionally available for their child for whatever reason, the child will not only have to experience strong emotions and feelings on their own, but they will also feel the pain from not having their parent be there with them in their emotions. This pain behavioral scientists tell us is called attachment pain. God created us for relationship. When we are not in an emotionally connected relationship, we will all feel attachment pain. It can be the most painful emotional and even physical pain a human being can feel. If you have ever lost a loved one or someone close to you, you understand this feeling. It is this pain that causes us not to enjoy being alone too long. Because attachment pain can be so intense, children and adults will do everything in their power to avoid feeling this pain.
Unresolved Emotional Pain
When a parent has unresolved emotional attachment pain because of what they experienced in their childhood, this parent will have a very difficult time trying to tune into or synchronize with their child’s emotions and feelings. The reason is that the parent will feel the emotion of their child and the feeling in their own heart will be too painful. In order to not feel this pain, parents will stop their child from feeling their own emotions. As a result of pain-filled emotions, parents will not be able to emotionally connect with their child which will affect their child for the rest of their lives.
Giving Your Child Choices
God created human beings to have free will. He put two trees in the Garden and told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or there would be serious consequences. God sent Jesus to the earth in order that our free will choice would be restored. God gives every human being the choice to accept Jesus as Lord or not to. The consequences of our choices are eternal in this case. Parents are responsible for providing their children the opportunity to make choices as Godly parents. If parents make choices for their children, then their children will grow up and not be able to make good choices. They will live in fear of making choices wrong or right. Parents must encourage their children to make choices by asking them whether they want to do this or that. When the child gets to be about 2 years old they will say no a lot. Parents must be able to tolerate their children’s no. When children say no they are learning to express what they want and don’t want as they build a core self. A wise parent will help their child learn to make good choices and let them experience consequences of making poor choices.
Loving Discipline
Loving Discipline is the opposite of angry discipline. Angry discipline is what a parent does who is emotionally upset because they have unresolved emotional issues that the child has triggered that caused the parent to be upset and angry. We all need discipline in order to feel loved. Hebrews 12 tells us that God disciplines us because he loves us. To not be disciplined or to be disciplined in anger tells the child that they are not loved. That is why it is so important for parents to know how to properly discipline their children. The example of how to discipline a child is the shepherd who has a rod and staff to deal with the sheep he has responsibility for keeping safe and secure. A good shepherd doesn’t yell at the sheep and beat them when they make a mistake. He really loves his sheep so he guides them. He sets boundaries for their protection. When they go astray he uses the staff to gently move them in the right way. He uses the rod to protect the sheep from animals that could hurt them. Psalm 23 tells parents that they are to be like Christ and bring comfort to their children even when they are disciplining them.
Protecting Your Child’s Heart
When your child is young they have a very innocent heart. That is why I believe that Jesus said in Mt 18:3 that we must become like little children, if we are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Little children are humble, they trust more and they are quick to forgive. Parents, you have been given by God the responsibility to nurture, cultivate and protect your child’s heart. The reason this is so important is that the Bible tells us in Prov 4:23 that we are to guard (protect) our heart above all else for it determines the course of your life. Your child cannot protect their own heart but you can.
Part 2: The Solution
Emotions, Feelings and Thoughts
Emotions are positive or negative physical sensations that are felt in our body. A feeling is an expression or definition of the emotion we are feeling. A thought is conceived in the mind as a product of mental activity. Thoughts can cause emotions and feelings but for the most part thoughts, are independent of emotions and feelings. When we experience an emotion we can describe how it makes us feel in the present moment. Whatever emotion we are feeling must be described in the present, not in the past or the future.
Encouraging Your Child to Feel
It is very important for parents to understand that your child’s feelings define who they are in the moment, in the right now. We cannot divide our feelings from our state of being. When I tell you that I am sad this describes my emotional state in the moment. It is Godly wisdom for parents to understand the value and importance of emotions and feelings, because it is emotions expressed as feelings that are the cement and glue which bonds a parent and child together.
Intentional Listening
When your child experiences you listening intently to him or her, they feel more valuable and more important. In fact, studies have shown that when children are listened to by their parents they have a much better self-image, they do better in school and do better in life. Intentional listening requires a specific set of skills. It requires that you look them in the eye and you don’t immediately offer suggestions. It also requires that you don’t cut them off or try to fix them when they are talking. You show them that you are glad to be with them as they are expressing all of their emotions and feelings.
Mirroring & Reflecting Back
When you mirror or reflect back and tune into your child’s emotions you are showing them experientially that you are glad to be with them when they are expressing their emotions and feelings. When you match your child’s emotional tone you are synchronizing your own emotions to your child’s emotions. It is the synchronizing of emotions and the fact that you are there with your child in their feelings that creates an emotional connection. Your child will know by experience that he or she can open up their heart as they express their feelings and you won’t crush their heart by not listening, being out of sync with their emotions or telling them what to do.
Validation
Validation is the acceptance of all of your child’s feelings whether they are positive or negative. Your child’s feelings are who they are in that moment so you are really accepting the real them. When you are able to accept their emotions and feelings without trying to stop them from feeling their emotions or tell them what to do, you are loving your child for who they are, unconditionally just like God does.
Summary of the Course
God created us all for relationship with Him and with each other. God told Adam and
Eve to multiply, so it is God’s plan for us to have children. God has a plan for parents to bond and attach to their children. Most parents don’t know how to bond and attach to their children so we have put together the Successful Parenting classes to help parents know how to make up for the lack of knowledge they have had in raising their children.