Promising Parenting Discoveries Revealed by Mental Health Practitioner
A mental health practitioner reveals promising discoveries about how parents can fully develop their love for their children, resulting in fulfilled parents and happy, respectful kids.
Colorado Springs, CO (PRWEB) January 4, 2010
Every parent’s 2010 New Year’s resolution is for their kid to be happy and respectful to others -- and it wouldn’t hurt for parents to feel happy about parenting once in a while, either.
That’s exactly what every parent can expect after reading the just-released Unleashing the Power of Parental Love (Lighthouse Love Productions, LLC, January 2010). Author Gary M. Unruh, MSW LCSW, and a child mental health practitioner for nearly forty years, has made promising discoveries about the oldest parenting source around, parental love. Midwest Book Review (http://www. midwestbookreview. com/sbw/dec_09.htm) says: “…Unleashing the Power of Parental Love is a top pick that should not be ignored by overwhelmed parents.”
But what can possibly be new about parental love? The first part of the answer comes from every one of the 2,500 kids Unruh has counseled. They all say they want to feel “good,” “lovable,” or “acceptable,” and they want to avoid being “bad.” Unruh adds, “Every one of the kids said, in one way or another, that this 'I'm good' (http://tinyurl. com/y89aebl) need was the most important thing in their lives -- way more than a 360 elite X-box.” When “I’m good” is established “for who I am on the inside,” the best kind of happiness occurs. And respect for others is a by-product. Feeling valued is the best learning experience for respecting others, the acquired ability to see and support the good in others.
But what does this “I’m good” business have to do with parental love? Everything. Unruh elaborates: “Buried under every parent’s love for their child, I found an uplifting second discovery. Parents could be trained to establish ‘I’m good’ within their child by continually focusing on and validating the good in their child, even during disciplining.” To Unruh’s pleasant surprise, “Parents acquired these fundamental unleashing-parental-love skills within three or four parenting sessions, and the overall number of sessions per counseling episode was shortened by 30 to 40 percent.
And there’s much more to Unruh’s book than the extensive tips and hints. Unruh backs up his examples by translating what every good therapist knows and does in the office into parent-friendly home-therapy skills. Parents can then literally do in their homes on an ongoing basis a lot of what a therapist does in the office. Not a bad idea for a country that’s trying to reduce health costs! Here’s a sampling of other discoveries parents will learn to implement with their children:
Establish and begin all parent/child interactions with the following foundational belief: Children are born fundamentally good. Put a child’s feelings first and behavior second in every parent/child interaction. Feelings represent the center of the child, where the good resides. Validating feelings equals valuing the child, which creates “I’m good.”
Engage in two kinds of must-do training exercises from birth on: (1)guilt training (http://tinyurl. com/ya8qekr): teaching your child what’s right and wrong; and (2) delayed-gratification training: “I’ll do it my way when I want to” will not fly. Always discipline (http://tinyurl. com/y8f77aq) with firm, consistent, respectful limits.
Beware of two natural parenting tendencies that don’t work: (1) parents thinking their child should automatically think, feel, and act just like the parent; and (2) parenting just like the parent was parented. And always fit what parents want for their child into who the child is -- where the child is developmentally and the child’s unique personality.
Follow the five-steps-of-change guidelines: moving from not willing to think, to willing to think, to planning, to acting, and then monitoring for continued success. Discipline is much more productive and easier using these change guidelines.
These principles give parents a taste of what Unruh means by unleashing parental love. Unruh enthusiastically concludes, “All parents love their children, but few parents have adequately tapped into the profound power of unleashed parental love. With the release of Unleashing the Power of Parental Love, the rewarding results I’ve seen in thousands of my clients are now available to families everywhere -- happy parents and happy and respectful kids.”
###
