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Self Respect
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In our article “Respect for Parents” we identified the meaning of respect to mean to ‘to hold in esteem or honour’ ‘to show esteem, regard of consideration for’. The same holds true for a child to have self respect, the child must hold themselves in esteem or honour. For your child to do this the child must have self esteem and a healthy level of self worth. A Child can only obtain a healthy level of self esteem and self worth if you treat the child with kindness and acknowledge and praise the child. It is important when disciplining your child that you ensure that you address the behaviour and not embarrass and humiliate the child. Unfortunately some parents believe that to teach the child what is right and what is wrong they need to punish wrong doing by criticizing, lecturing, shaming ridiculing, threatening and hitting. Nothing can be further from the truth. This type of teaching results in the child shutting down their thinking, they don’t identify with what the parent is intending to teach them, they don’t understand what to do and what not to do. What they do record is what is being modelled. Don’t make the mistake if thinking that since your child is smaller than you are and has less information and less experience than you do that he/she don’t have all the same feelings as you do. Because children want so much to please and have their parents’ approval they are very sensitive and their feelings are hurt very easily when the parent scolds them by criticizing, shaming and ridiculing them. When a child experiences this type of discipline from the parents the child’s self esteem and self worth is damaged. After all, the child reasons, if mum and dad say that I am bad then I must be bad. The more a child believes this of themselves the more trouble they have with developing self respect. Children learn respect or disrespect from how you treat them and how you treat each other. If children live with disrespect they learn disrespect. You can teach respect only by modelling, treating each other with respect and by giving your child the same respect you expect. Growing up you may have had parents who reacted to your wrong doing by screaming and hurling abuse at you, if you did, then remember how hurt you felt. You may even now find that when your child presses your hot button you scream and hurl abuse at them saying the very things that were said to you as a child. Unfortunately these disrespectful responses are so automatic. Why? Because as a child you recorded what your parents were modelling. Now it’s time to change your automatic behaviour. Yes, it will require a change of heart that can only come from a major shift in consciousness of how you view your child and how you define respect. Humans are born with human dignity. To treat a person with respect is to acknowledge and preserve their human dignity. To treat a person with disrespect is to attack their human dignity. If you treat your child with disrespect it is not better than using physical punishment as discipline, actually in some instances it is worse because the emotional scars never heal. This type of punishment is not only not effective it is destructive and it will only appear to work as long as you are bigger than your child. When grown up your child will resent the disrespect that they have suffered and unfortunately not being equipped with the know how to deal with it, your child will model your behaviour and treat themselves and others including you with disrespect. The following paragraph is worth repeating over and over again……. For a child to have self respect they must hold themselves in esteem. The only way a child can value themselves is if the people they love the most, their parents and family, demonstrate to them how valuable they are.
Tell a Friend
In our article “Respect for Parents” we identified the meaning of respect to mean to ‘to hold in esteem or honour’ ‘to show esteem, regard of consideration for’. The same holds true for a child to have self respect, the child must hold themselves in esteem or honour. For your child to do this the child must have self esteem and a healthy level of self worth. A Child can only obtain a healthy level of self esteem and self worth if you treat the child with kindness and acknowledge and praise the child. It is important when disciplining your child that you ensure that you address the behaviour and not embarrass and humiliate the child. Unfortunately some parents believe that to teach the child what is right and what is wrong they need to punish wrong doing by criticizing, lecturing, shaming ridiculing, threatening and hitting. Nothing can be further from the truth. This type of teaching results in the child shutting down their thinking, they don’t identify with what the parent is intending to teach them, they don’t understand what to do and what not to do. What they do record is what is being modelled. Don’t make the mistake if thinking that since your child is smaller than you are and has less information and less experience than you do that he/she don’t have all the same feelings as you do. Because children want so much to please and have their parents’ approval they are very sensitive and their feelings are hurt very easily when the parent scolds them by criticizing, shaming and ridiculing them. When a child experiences this type of discipline from the parents the child’s self esteem and self worth is damaged. After all, the child reasons, if mum and dad say that I am bad then I must be bad. The more a child believes this of themselves the more trouble they have with developing self respect. Children learn respect or disrespect from how you treat them and how you treat each other. If children live with disrespect they learn disrespect. You can teach respect only by modelling, treating each other with respect and by giving your child the same respect you expect. Growing up you may have had parents who reacted to your wrong doing by screaming and hurling abuse at you, if you did, then remember how hurt you felt. You may even now find that when your child presses your hot button you scream and hurl abuse at them saying the very things that were said to you as a child. Unfortunately these disrespectful responses are so automatic. Why? Because as a child you recorded what your parents were modelling. Now it’s time to change your automatic behaviour. Yes, it will require a change of heart that can only come from a major shift in consciousness of how you view your child and how you define respect. Humans are born with human dignity. To treat a person with respect is to acknowledge and preserve their human dignity. To treat a person with disrespect is to attack their human dignity. If you treat your child with disrespect it is not better than using physical punishment as discipline, actually in some instances it is worse because the emotional scars never heal. This type of punishment is not only not effective it is destructive and it will only appear to work as long as you are bigger than your child. When grown up your child will resent the disrespect that they have suffered and unfortunately not being equipped with the know how to deal with it, your child will model your behaviour and treat themselves and others including you with disrespect. The following paragraph is worth repeating over and over again……. For a child to have self respect they must hold themselves in esteem. The only way a child can value themselves is if the people they love the most, their parents and family, demonstrate to them how valuable they are.