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| |  Parenting Pathfinders: Tools for Raising Responsible Children - Section
3
Parenting Pathfinders Principles
Personal Oriented Principles
Content:
1. Promote your own health
You need to make your own mental and physical health your top priority. You cannot
encourage your children to have healthy self-esteem and maturity if you are not healthy
yourself. If parents sacrifice their well being for their children, they place an
unhealthy burden on their children to pay them back for their personal sacrifices.
Designating their children as their life's number one priority, makes these parents
susceptible to being victims and martyrs, if their children do not recognize and
appreciate their sacrifices for them. Pathfinders take care of themselves first in order
to provide their children with a healthy role model of self-nurturing and healthy choice
making. Taking personal responsibility for one's own life is a hallmark of healthy
self-esteem. It is only in having their own self-esteem in a healthy place can Pathfinders
encourage their children's self-esteem.
2. Let go of fantasy children
You need to let go of the "fantasy" and/or "dreamed for" children
or family which you imagined when you were planning on having children or getting married.
When parents hold on too tightly to the image of the "fantasy family" or
"dreamed for" children there is a danger of becoming too over controlling to
make this become a reality even if it is impossible to make happen. Pathfinders accept
reality for what it is and therefore accept their children for who they are rather than
for who they would like them to be. The loss of the fantasy or dream takes a great deal of
emotional energy to fully grieve in order to let go of it. This involves going through the
full cycle of denial, bargaining, anger, despair, letting go and acceptance which are more
fully detailed in Tools for Handling Loss.
Parents need to recognize when they are still holding on to unrealistic expectations or
obligations for their children to fulfill. Pathfinders recognize the potential of their
children and set goals allowing children to become all that they are capable of becoming
with no parental pressure to fulfill an idealized picture.
3. Avoid being overprotective
You need to avoid being overprotective and afraid to expose your children to the
realities of the real world. The real world is not always nice to people and Pathfinders
teach their children early on. They encourage their children to go out and face the world
for what it is and do not paint unrealistic rose color pictures which ill prepare them to
face hard times. Parents encourage their children to experience life in and outside of the
house without the protective parental blanket under which they can hide if they do not
like what they see or experience. These parents do not hesitate to provide opportunities
by which their children see the harshness of life and the apparent unfairness of it for
many people. Their children are encouraged to feel the negative feelings which come from
facing life as not always safe, easy, and comfortable. They learn that in order to survive
in life they need to be fully prepared, trained and educated to face the challenges ahead.
Pathfinders prepare their children to survive and stay afloat by early preparation through
immersion into the sea of life.
4. Curb your temper
You need to keep your temper, anger, and rage from exploding on your children.
Pathfinders work hard at eliminating the negative impact of the many ways in which anger
can be shown to children. They recognize that if they have a short fuse that they need to
tend to it away from the children so as not to hurt them. Healthy anger work-out
strategies, as outlined in Tools for Anger Work-Out, help parents to release their anger and yet protect the emerging
self-esteem of their children. Parents also avoid the possibility of becoming verbally,
emotionally, and physically abusive when they handle their anger in a healthy way.
Children then are free of the intimidation, fear, and insecurity, which can come from
homes in which anger is displayed in unhealthy ways. Parental role-modeling of healthy
handling anger and curbing temper teaches children that they can do the same for
themselves. There is always the possibility for parents to get angry. It is normal to get
angry. How parents handle this anger is important in the development of an esteeming
environment. Parents who have explosive tempers which are shown freely in the family,
encourage in children the development of either the overly sensitive, fragile, and worried
or the pulling-in, invisibility seeking, numbing, and non-feeling behavioral patterns in
them. Parents who use healthy anger release and curb their tempers encourage openness,
relaxation, and calmness in their children.
5. Avoid cloning yourself
You need to allow your children to be free to be themselves and not your clones. If
parents as children lived a neglected or abused life there is a danger of trying to relive
their childhood through their own children. Pathfinders recognize that it is unhealthy for
children to feel responsible or obligated to please their parents by fulfilling some real
or perceived script for them in life. Pathfinders help their children to learn the value
of being a Pathfinder and encourage them to seek out their own path in life with no
pressure from others. Pathfinders rejoice in the uniqueness and difference they experience
in their children. They recognize that to create clones of themselves is to limit the
freedom of their children to think, feel, and act in a congruent and healthy way
complimentary to their unique personalities.
6. Let go of guilt over past parenting errors
You need to free yourself of guilt or shame for what your children have become in life
as long as you have been consistent and reasonable in your current pursuit of enhancing
and encouraging their self-esteem while healing your own. It is important for parents to
recognize that they are powerless to determine what their children will become or
accomplish in life. Parents need to eventually let go of the control they exercise in
their children's lives. There is only one person a Pathfinder can change and control and
that is one's own self. Pathfinders hand their children's future over to their Higher
Power. They work at living one day at a time. They learn to enjoy moment to moment. They
work at accepting this imperfect life as it is rather than chance their serenity in a
struggle to make reality be the way they want it to be. Pathfinders recognize that they
can only role model a healthy lifestyle and that their children are free to accept or
reject this way of life for themselves. Pathfinders free their children of the pressure to
reform or change themselves in order to please their parents. This enables Pathfinders to
live a life of greater peace and serenity by taking the responsibility for children's
choices off their backs. This principal is covered in more detail in Section 12:
Releasing Ourselves of Shame and Guilt Through Self-Forgiveness on this
site.
7. Forgive yourself for past parental errors
You need to forgive yourself for doing the best you could do knowing what you knew at
the time when you were raising your children prior to your own personal recovery from low
self-esteem. Parents who have only recently recognized that they were suffering from low
self-esteem and made a conscientious effort to correct this have probably made significant
mistakes in the rearing of their children. This does not prevent them from changing their
direction with their children. In order to change direction, parents first need to forgive
themselves for past mistakes in their parenting. It is human nature to not want to look at
past mistakes due to guilt and shame which this creates. If a Pathfinder is on the road to
healthy self-esteem then self-forgiveness is an attitude which will clear up the past hurt
and shame over neglect or abuse which was tendered the children by rigid, inflexible, and
inconsistent parenting. The consequence of altering parenting style will often be the
negative reaction by the children. Pathfinders free themselves from the manipulation
through guilt by children who react strongly to new consistent, non-controlling, detached,
and unconditional accepting parenting. Pathfinders cannot change the past and there is
nothing they can do to correct the mistakes made then. All they can do is to live from
this day forward making sure they are consistent in their efforts at personal recovery and
role-modeling for their children a healthy lifestyle. This principal is covered in more
detail in Section 12: Releasing Ourselves of Shame and
Guilt Through Self-Forgiveness on this site.
8. Avoid over-compensating
You need to avoid over compensating in your treatment of your children. Over
compensation can come from the real or perceived guilt from past parental errors with
them. It can also come from making a commitment that children will never experience the
negative parenting which their parents received in their youth. This commitment can then
result in parents striving to be 180 degrees different from their own parents.
Over-indulging, lack of consistency and follow-through, and over-protection often results.
The children then receive the wrong messages of entitlement, dependency, and learned
helplessness which can debilitate their growth into responsible adulthood. Pathfinders who
have let go of guilt and forgiven themselves for their past parental errors make it a
point to avoid the extremes of over-indulgence, spoiling, and other forms of
over-compensation. They also strive to work for the middle ground in the execution of
their parental responsibilities. This avoids the black and white alternative of being the
complete opposite with their children than their own parents were with them. Pathfinders
feel good about themselves and do not over-compensate with their children to make up for
anything in the past.
9. Use detachment
You need to use detachment so as not to get hooked by your children's behaviors or
other manipulative ploys to fall back into your old unhealthy ways of parenting. Healthy
behaviors in an unhealthy environment are often seen as unhealthy. In other words, healthy
actions in a sick setting are viewed as sick. If children were used to an unhealthy way of
parenting prior to their parents' enlightenment, then they most probably will view any
change in approach to them as drastic, unhealthy, sick, and unacceptable. They will have a
difficult time adjusting to the changes in reactions, behaviors, and attitudes and will
try to regain a homeostasis or stability in the family system. They will try to drag their
parents back into their old ways of parenting by tugging at their sense of fairness,
rightness, and parental responsibility. They will use guilt; embarrassment; increased
dysfunctional behaviors; troubles in their personal functioning at school; work; family;
and in the community. They will literally get worse before they get better. This
deterioration of behavior is a ploy to get parents to reconsider their attempts to change
parenting style. If they are successful, parents will question themselves. Parents will
doubt if they can consistently be Pathfinders. They will question the rationality of
letting go of control over their children. They will feel tempted to return to their old
tried and true ways of dealing with their children. Pathfinders do not let these behaviors
hook them into giving up. They hang in there and commit themselves to self-esteeming
recovery procedures of self-affirmations and stress reduction. They seek support from
fellow Pathfinders in their support networks. They utilize the SEA's systems of recovery
as listed in Self-Esteem Seekers Anonymous, The SEA'S Program Manual. If parents begin to act indecisive, anxious, uncertain, and
worried as a result of their response to their Pathfinder strategies, their children will
be encouraged to continue to act up and keep them in disarray. Pathfinders try hard to be
consistent in their new behaviors and stand firm in their beliefs that by being
Pathfinders both their children and they will benefit in the long run.
10. Admit your mistakes
You need to openly admit to your children if and when you have made a mistake or
experienced a failure. Pathfinders help their children accept their own frailty in life by
openly confessing when they have made a mistake in dealing with their children. They also
assist their children to develop a healthy perspective on life when they share past
experiences or examples when the parents experienced failure, made major errors of
judgment or experienced a lack of success. This helps children to recognize that not all
things in life, which are worthwhile, come easy. This also opens them to the reality that
their parents are not perfect beings and that there is no need to suffer great shame for
being imperfect and fallible. Parents handling past errors, mistakes, and failures without
shame and guilt, help children to eradicate their own shame and guilt for not living up to
a perceived ideal or goal to be perfect for their parents. Parents who hide their own
failings from their children open themselves up to be seen as hypocrites, if these past
behaviors ever come to light unexpectedly. Children can be sadly disillusioned if their
parents who have been put on a pedestal should someday fall off from there
unintentionally. Pathfinders help their children take them off the pedestal so that they
can have an authentic, realistic, and healthy perspective as to who are their parents.
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