GOALS OF HEALTHY PARENTING
CARL IVEY, MD
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Campbell River BC, Canada
The primary goal of healthy parenting is not to raise "good", well-behaved children and teens. I have personally seen all too many "good", well-behaved children and teens who were at the same time suffering from varying degrees of anxiety, low self-worth and depression. This is because they were being "good" and well-behaved for the wrong reasons- namely to keep out of trouble, to avoid being punished but most importantly, to avoid the withholding of parental love. Psycho-dynamically, the behavior of these kids was primarily motivated by and driven by fear.
The primary goal of healthy parenting is to raise emotionally healthy and spiritually empowered children and teens. This is why I have been advocating for over 30 years that parents begin to discipline their kids without punishing them or threatening them. On the surface, this advice might sound contradictory and even radical. But I can assure you that this non-punitive discipline works with incredible benefits for both parents and their kids and absolutely no side-effects. There is no pharmaceutical drug that can even begin to match these results.
Copyright © 2006, Carl Ivey, MD, All Rights Reserved.
Healthy self-esteem is essential to being emotionally and psychologically healthy. Any person, child or adult, who lacks healthy amounts of positive self-esteem, no matter how hard they try and how "good" they are, is not truly emotionally healthy and spiritually empowered. All things being equal, to the extent that a child or adult lacks healthy self-esteem, that child or adult is emotionally unhealthy and dis-empowered. Ironically, the most emotionally unhealthy and spiritually disempowered parents are the very parents most likely to discipline with punishment and threats and to be involved in conflicted and unhappy relationships with their kids. Such parents are inadvertently damaging the self-esteem of their kids while at the same time preventing their own healing from the emotional wounds they (the parents) suffered from their own personal childhood dysfunction and abuse.
Healthy discipline, on the other hand, not only protects the self-esteem of the child but actually increases it. At the same time, healthy discipline increases the self-esteem of the parent or other adults involved with the child and accelerates emotional and spiritual healing in the parent and other adults. This should not be surprising since a law of the universe is that we get what we give. If we give out anger, fear and pain, we will receive anger, fear and pain. If we give out love, compassion and forgiveness, we will receive love, compassion and forgiveness.
Healthy parenting requires healthy discipline just as emotional health requires healthy self-esteem. Emotionally healthy and spiritually empowered kids, as well as emotionally healthy and spiritually empowered parents and adults, will be compelled to take good care of themselves and others, to respect and value themselves and others, and to use their unique, special, "one of a kind" talents to achieve their full human potentials. Such persons, regardless of age, will be creative, caring, confident, compassionate, courageous, happy, humble, enthusiastic, respectful, resilient, honest, grateful, non-violent, drug-free and, above all, productive members of society.
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