What's Your Goal?

Imagine—as unbelievably perfect as it sounds—that there existed a tidy, effectively regulated home environment. Unkind words and yelling weren’t allowed; the children were expected to do as they were told, and by all appearances it was a fairly perfect home. The family went on outings together; they didn’t suffer through poverty, divorce, abuse, or chronic illness. But as each child moved out, they struggled under the pressures of adulthood. A few years after the initial departure of the eldest child, the family has come to a conclusion that they didn’t really expect: there wasn’t much sincere expression of feeling at home, and the children didn’t feel listened to while they were growing up.

I’m centering this scenario on a real family I’m familiar with, and it took me a long time to figure out why such a minute detail would have massive consequences. Unmanaged or repressed feelings appear to result in an ineffectively-controlled adulthood. So why was this home so perfect right until the children all left? The parents were pretty amazing people. They studied parenting and actually made a point of listening to the children after school every day. The biggest issue here was the parenting goal.

The parenting goal guides how a parent raises their children; even if a parent’s theoretical ideals deviate from their real desires, their parenting will come out in the end aiming towards their overall parenting goal. The typical, temporary, primary goal of parents—whether or not they are conscious of it—tends to be compliance and ease in raising their children. The goal is to have children that won’t question them and will obey them. It makes life a lot easier to have children that will simply do what adults tell them, and it makes sending them out into the world a lot less terrifying when parents believe that their children are perfectly responsible and capable of acting as adults.

Dr. Haim Ginott explained the most effective goal of parenting in this way: “It’s to help a child grow up to be a decent human being … a person with compassion, commitment, and caring” (Ginott, 2003, p. 192). As counterintuitive as it sounds, children can’t become committed and caring adults if all they do with their time is obey and wait for commands. In order to have the capacity to care for other people, children need to become adults with teeth and strength of their own: along with these traits that Ginott described, children need the independence and responsibility to exercise them.

That’s a lot of weight to put on a parent, ensuring that their children not only live comfortably while at home, but also learn how to perfectly balance obedience and independence, agreeableness and stalwart defense of truth. Ginott gave a number of methods for helping children to attain a balance of attributes, but I want to focus on one in particular.

“Parents want to know if the methods advocated in this book are strict or permissive regarding how they relate to discipline,” Ginott wrote. “They are strict when dealing with children’s misbehavior. But all feelings, wishes, desires, and fantasies are permissible, be they positive, negative, or ambivalent” (Ginott, 2003, p. 196). Accepted misbehavior—after the nature of misbehavior has been thoroughly explained and understood—prevents children from understanding entirely how rules work. Children naturally push and poke at boundaries to test them; that is part of the learning process. If rules and responsibilities collapse to this pushing and poking, children determine that they can have whatever they desire if they push hard enough. This leaves parents being pushed from place to place.

On the opposite end, feelings that are strictly caged and controlled cause internal strife. Part of parenting is teaching children how to deal with their feelings. If children are instructed to ignore or alter what they truly feel—and are punished for not doing so—their hearts become hidden and their relationships struggle. This occurred in the family I was referencing earlier: because of the ostensible perfection of their home environment, there was a lot of pressure for things to be positive or non-hurtful all the time. In fear of offending or troubling their parents, the children hid their feelings and considered perfect behavior to take priority over their real desires—until the children hit adulthood.

It’s terrifying for parents to imagine that children should be allowed to think whatever they like, particularly since parents have broader perspective and more experience behind them. But I have already seen a peculiar phenomenon happening in my life, even though I’m not that old: I’m forgetting what it’s like to not have an independent adult’s perspective on the world. It’s easy to forget that children need to go through similar experiences that adults did when they were young; we hope to let them learn everything the easy way, by simply listening. But that isn’t the goal of parenting—sometimes we just need to let them learn by experience so that they can become wise, responsible adults themselves.

References

Ginott, H. G., Goddard, H. W., & Ginott, A. (2003). Between Parent and Child: Revised and        Updated: The Bestselling Classic That Revolutionized Parent-Child Communication, 192, 196. New York: Harmony. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-  com.byui.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=724916&site=eds-live

The True Prize

On occasion when I did something pleasant or good when I was young, my dad would say, “This makes me want to give you a raise,” or “Now I want to give you things that you want, like take you to Wendy’s.” While we didn’t have allowances and he would have taken me to Wendy’s regardless of whether or not I behaved perfectly, hearing him say things like that always made me feel that my decision to be a good person had made him happy.

My mother didn’t have the same approach, but she definitely had ways of showing she cared. She called to me one day when I was young: “Sev, there’s someone on the couch that needs a friend!” I thought she was saying that our dog was lonely and trying to distract her from her work, so I came in to comfort him and found a stuffed unicorn where I had been expecting to see the dog. Other such little prizes appeared for no rhyme or reason.

Perhaps these stories seem a little disconnected, but behind both of them was a principle that contributed to the greatness of my parents: they didn’t use bribery to get good behavior out of their children, but they still used small, spontaneous rewards to show us that we were appreciated.

I couldn’t have explained this principle when I was a child, mostly because I just felt that they were rewarding us for our behavior. But as I’ve been exploring the academic findings on parenting over the last year or so, I’ve realized that their system of rewards and the standard parenting practice of bribery are opposite in nature and effect. At first when I was introduced to the idea of rewards as negative for children, I was skeptical: I love rewards. The charm of them hasn’t died for me, and I haven’t felt the worse for receiving them; I love giving them to show appreciation as my parents did for me.

The problem isn’t so much with rewards as the common nature of them. Most parents use rewards to talk their children into starting or stopping a behavior. Dr. Hain Ginott in his book Between Parent and Child discussed the problem with rewards used incorrectly: “[Bribery] may occasionally spur the child toward an immediate goal. But it seldom, if ever, inspires [him or] her toward continual efforts” (Ginott, Goddard, & Ginott, 2003).

Ginott goes on to explain three more major issues with the idea of bribery. First, the bribery concept of “if-then”—“If you accomplish this task, then you will receive a reward”—implies that a parent expresses a lack of confidence. There’s a big “if” to start out that idea. Second, children will misbehave intentionally to goad their parents into prescribing rewards against bad deeds if that becomes the pattern. Third, children begin to associate their parents and doing good things with gifts and prizes. “[Parents] are greeted by the children not with, ‘Hello,’ but with a ‘What-did-you-bring-me?’” (Ginott, Goddard, & Ginott, 2003)

Essentially parents that use rewards as a fall-back cause their children to believe that everything good they do should be rewarded. This doesn’t create a pattern of responsibility; this creates a different idea. “If I look good to other people, I’ll get rewarded. If I do what I want in secret, I can get rewards from my parents when I do something they like.”

Ginott does not necessarily recommend cutting out the idea of rewards altogether, though. He has some guidelines. “Rewards are most helpful and more enjoyable when they are announced in advance, when they come as a surprise, when they represent recognition and appreciation” (Ginott, Goddard, & Ginott, 2003). I had been reading negativity against rewards until I came across this quote, and now I realize the value in my parents’ method of reward: they didn’t reward me for specific instances of obedience. It was an overall effort—resulting in changes and positivity in my character—that caused them to reward me in the way they did.

Basically what it boils down to is this: using rewards to generate behavior in your children—especially when you have repeatedly promised payment for good behavior—accomplishes the opposite of its purpose. Rewards don’t train children to listen, much less to be responsible and make the right decisions for themselves. We can talk about how to help children learn responsibility later, but for now bribery is not the most effective way to get there. Rewards can be a sweet, simple gesture from parents to show children that they are loved and thought about. In a spontaneous moment, that may be exactly what a child needs to know.

References

Ginott, H. G., Goddard, H. W., & Ginott, A. (2003). Between Parent and Child: Revised and        Updated: The Bestselling Classic That Revolutionized Parent-Child Communication, 60.     New York: Harmony. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.byui.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=724916&site=eds-live

Snowflake

Having just given birth two months ago, I spend a lot of time on Google trying to figure out what behaviors my baby "should be" exhibiting and how I "should be" taking care of him. I've made a major discovery: Google is right less than 50% of the time in describing my parenting experience. As an example, articles discuss how babies typically nurse for 15-20 minutes per feeding; my baby usually goes over 100. This isn’t because everyone on the internet is wrong and doesn’t understand babies—rather, I believe this is because every child is a unique combination of traits.

A popular quip states, “I once had three theories about raising children. Now I have three children and no theories.” Sometimes I think we consider parenting a task or an art that we can learn in a way that will universally apply, but the more I watch my own son in comparison to other babies the more I realize that each child is an art, and they make themselves in a lot of ways.

My parents raised my older sister, my younger brother, and I at roughly the same time with similar rituals, disciplinary action, and understanding of parenting. In total, we were all clustered in a 3 and a half year period. None of us turned out remotely the same. While my sister and I had similar types of play and somewhat similar obedience patterns, our personalities are wildly different, and we tackle issues—particularly issues of independence—very differently. I like to think of children as indivdual like snowflakes. Snowflakes form distinctly and they have a unique path to the ground.

Dr. Laurence Steinberg, author of 10 Principles of Good Parenting, discussed the idea of unique children in this way: “First-time parents almost always are staunch believers in nurture. They’re confident that the experiences they’ve provided their child have made [him or] her who [he or] she is. … Having a second child is often awakening. Parents look at their two children’s personalities and realize that they are [as distinct as] night and day—even though they’ve been raised in exactly the same way” (Steinberg, 2010, p. 70).

But what’s the point of knowing that children are unique? That doesn’t do us any good but give us something to ponder and observe in the behavior of our own children. I suppose it gives us soemthing to prepare for: if your first child behaves a certain way, it’s likely that your second child will come with either a differing or opposing behavior. I think there’s something deeper about parenting in this idea.

Steinberg mentioned that parents typically raise their children using the same methods (Steinberg, 2010). I think one of the greater challenges of parenting is avoiding this use of similar methods. This is perhaps an unrealistic example, but I think it will illustrate my point: say the set condition for playing video games in a given household is getting your chores done first. One of the sons—the older one and the child this rule is based on—loves video games and will get his chores done quickly so he can play with whatever time he has. The other son couldn’t be bothered, and just wants to play guitar and read books all day. His chores don’t get done because he isn’t motivated. The set punishment for not getting chores done is also based on the older son: you will stay in your room until it is clean. The second son doesn’t mind this punishment and would rather be in his room than anywhere else.

Again, this example may be unlikely or rarely heard of, but it addresses this important issue: raising your children as though they were copies of each other can create emotional, physical, and disciplinary imbalances. One child might need an earlier curfew than another; one child may need more parental attention or more time to play with friends than the others. Some children will follow rigid schedules and others—like mine—are incredibly spontaneous and don’t stick to a time-frame very well.

While I am new to parenting, I hope I am able to effectively stick to this idea and provide my children with unique environments. I can’t imagine that it’s easy; children are good at seeking your time and energy. For those that already have multiple children, I commend you for caring for each of them. While having net punishments and ways of life may be all you can do, I encourage you to strive for a lifestyle where you can treat your children as individuals, as distinct as snowflakes.

References

Steinberg, L. D. (2005). The ten basic principles of good parenting, 70. Simon & Schuster            Paperbacks. Retrieved from https://content.byui.edu/file/4de04ca1-9da9-4b75-bfd2-     1a87b913a12a/1/Parenting.pdf

Preparation and Procrastination: The Ten Virgins

One of the most iconic elements of the Bible is the multitude of parables taught by Jesus Christ, occupying much of the doctrinal richness of the Four Gospels in the New Testament. I've been pondering one parable in particular, located in the first portion of Matthew 25: the parable of the ten virgins.

For those of you who aren't as familiar with the parable, I'll give a brief summary. It's a short, simple story about ten virgins who were invited to attend a wedding feast. In Jewish tradition, the groom--called the "bridegroom" historically--would get ready for the feast in his own home and then travel to the bride's home for the celebration, gathering the guests along the way.
The bridegroom didn't have a set time that he would arrive, so guests would line up along the pathway and wait. Expecting this, and perhaps other complications, five of the young women brought extra oil for their lamps. The other five didn't seem to anticipate that anything could go wrong.
The young women waited on the side of the road--primarily asleep--until the middle of the night, when a man came ahead of the bridegroom's party and announced that the bridegroom was coming. By this point, the oil of the five "foolish" virgins had burned entirely, and the five "wise" virgins had their spare oil to light their way to the feast. The five virgins who procrastinated asked for oil, but the wise virgins didn't have enough to spare; ultimately, the bridegroom didn't allow the foolish young women to enter the wedding feast.
Overall, the moral of the parable is well known: take time and thought to prepare for the coming of Christ, for none of us know when He will come. But I had a few more insights I wanted to go over.
First of all: why virgins? Why did Christ represent the entire believing-on-His-name population with young women? Well ... who is the most excited to attend a wedding? Young, unmarried women have incredible motivation and excitement when it comes to anyone's wedding. If the bridegroom or bride had been a close friend of these young women, that would have only allowed their excitement to escalate. Christ basically implied that we are already in a position to be excited about eternal life--all of us want to be happy, right? Everyone would rather go to a peaceful rest than a tormenting or dissatisfying one; we're excited to not be in pain anymore.
Second: how are we meant to gather oil? How do we know if we have enough spare oil? I think this question is answered largely as we become adults--specifically in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, our level of oil is measured by our lasting dedication. The idea is to keep your eye on the eternities, keep your motivation centered on what will matter most eternally and act accordingly. I hypothesize that the foolish virgins didn't bring spare oil because it seemed like an inconvenience; so really, do you treat the commandments of God like an inconvenience sometimes? That, to me, is the greatest question. If you can take God's commandments seriously, one day at a time, that will become the oil supply that you need to prove to the Lord that you have been waiting for Him.
Third: was it selfish of the wise virgins not to spare any of their oil? Sure, it is impossible to share righteous acts and motivations with someone, so we cannot share our oil. But had this hypothetical scenario taken place, should the wise virgins have shared their oil? Their response to the request from the foolish virgins was "Not so; lest there should not be enough for us and you." A few years ago, I would have pinned this as selfish, but it comes down to a principle often shared in the social sciences and in airplane safety policies: you can't help others if you can't be in a position of strength first. Families are found to crumble if the parents "sacrifice too much" for the children, giving their time and finances to their children and nothing else. Airplane safety states that you should put on your own oxygen mask before assisting those who can't help themselves. I think the wisdom of the prepared virgins applied in this instance as well: not only did this teach the foolish virgins not to procrastinate, but it echoed this principle of maintaining your own strength and ability to help before trying to help others.
I honestly had a lot of fun dissecting this parable, and I hope this helped some of you with questions, or at least helped you learn about the parable a little more. Have a great week!

The Meaning of Charity

Welcome!
Over the last week and a half, I've been pondering the idea of love, specifically in the context of charity, or the "pure love of Christ." I wrote an entry in my journal that I wanted to share--analyzing my feelings in the moment gave me the best results of expression.

I started with the basic definition of charity under Gospel Topics, and I got the Seminary answer: “Charity is the pure love of Christ.” Then the article elaborated and said that we have been commanded to have this love toward each other as people—that Christ loves us as humans in that way—and that it is the “highest, noblest, and strongest kind of love” that we can experience.

That same Gospel Topics section quoted Mormon’s letter to Moroni, describing the “fruits” of charity: long-suffering, kindness, lack of envy, lack of pride, seeking not one’s own, being uneasily provoked, thinking no evil, and rejoicing in truth rather than iniquity. Interesting that all of the traits we associate with the Savior spring from charity.

I want to look at why these traits emerge from charity. Long-suffering: He loves people so much that He understands the need to be patient, helping them to grow and feel loved. Kindness: why would He be angry and unkind if He loved someone? Lack of envy: Loving others restrains envious feelings, as He would rejoice in the successes of others or praise them for their capacities. Lack of pride: pride is enmity, the exact opposite of love. Seeking not His own: loving others would drive Him to look outside of Himself and seek to heal those who were willing to be healed. Being uneasily provoked: usually when we are provoked, it is by little things that don’t matter … things that ruin our relationships. By refusing to be easily provoked, He shows that the person matters more than His whims. Thinking no evil: evil, as defined by [psychology professor] Jordan Peterson, is the ability and decision to hurt other people. Charity, then, is the opposite of evil, while pride is its drive. Rejoicing in the truth: the truth has the capacity to heal and assist in growth while iniquity is a drug. If He truly loved someone, He would help them to find the truth, even if the truth hurt for a moment. “Discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

Before undergoing this analysis of charity, I didn't really understand it. I felt that charity was an undefinable, nebulous concept: in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we always define charity the same way, the way I mentioned in my entry ... because defining it in depth is such an immense undertaking. I feel like this entry was a minimal way of defining charity.
Charity truly is the lifestyle of Christ. Charity is the fundamental life pattern of seeking out only the best, of thinking about the benefit of others in conjunction with your own. I say in conjunction based on a quote from Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf: "Forget not the difference between a good sacrifice and a foolish sacrifice." The idea of charity is not to destroy your body and soul trying to lift as many people as possible: it is overcoming your innate desires and wants for real love, real love for yourself in equality with real love for others. Often we refer to charity as putting others first because that is the lesson most people need to learn, but part of charity is providing yourself with the spiritual, physical, and emotional health to assist other people in their journey. It's just that loving others is often the part we struggle with, and so it is emphasized.
What opportunities can you take over the next few days to strengthen your charity? I can't tell you, but someone can. Find prayer again, find God and ask Him how you can better love the people around you and have the strength to lift others.

Active Pursuit of Peace and Charity - Mark 3:5

I learned something fascinating about the nature of love this week that I'd like to share. Usually when I think about the expression of love, I think of visible actions: my mother shows love by listening to her children; my husband takes on responsibilities that are too difficult for me to handle; the Savior went about "doing good." But there is an important aspect to love that I think we all miss, and that is a crucial part in the development of charity in one's heart and the promotion of peace in the world around us.
That aspect is being loving in your internal reactions.
I mentioned the love of Jesus Christ a moment ago, and studying His life patterns is what caused me to think of this. At the beginning of Mark 3, Christ sees a man with a withered hand "in the synagogue" on the Sabbath. In a manifestation of external love, Christ heals the hand of the man--but not without some opposition from nearby scribes and Pharisees. They had hoped to accuse Him of healing on the Sabbath.
In Mark 3:4, Christ asks them whether He ought to work good or evil on the Sabbath, and they have no response. After recording His statement, Mark included the Savior's feelings: "[H]e looked round about on [the Pharisees] in anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts ..."
I'm sure anger is a natural response in us all in the face of unrighteous opposition--or any opposition, for many. I don't know how often we grieve for loved ones in the heat of a fight or during a period of time where we believe a close companion is to blame.
Think about the last time you fought your sibling, your spouse, your parent, your friend. What did you feel? How did you think of them, of their argumentative point? I'm going to take a wild guess and say you might not have felt sorry for them at the time. It is difficult to empathize or feel anything but anger and the desire to be right.
While Christ exhibited righteous anger, His focus was on the hearts of the Pharisees and His reaction to their state of being was sorrow. He didn't push the matter further either; they didn't respond to His question, and He didn't goad them on.
I think we could all take a very definite pattern of behavior from this short, 5-verse story: if you are struggling to love someone, look on the heart. Even if you find a lack of willingness to resolve in your loved one's heart, being Christlike will cause you to feel sorrow rather than rage, and subsequently avoid doing something you would regret.
My favorite example of this is a story told by a respected professor of mine. He was a therapist for many years prior to teaching, and he had a client who was adamantly against functional therapy methods. My professor tried everything with him, but during one session the client became furious and began swearing at my professor, saying that he didn't care about the client and only wanted to make money out of these useless sessions.
My professor had gotten fed up by this point and told the client to leave. But as the client approached the door, my professor began analyzing the conversation and said, "You're right." He coaxed the client back into the session and apologized for not being the therapist that the client needed, and treatments were more successful from that point onward.
The Savior was perfect and didn't have to admit any faults to the Pharisees, and perhaps once in a lifetime we will be faced with such an occasion where we are in the right and empathizing will not cause us to admit our faults. I imagine, though, that most cases of seeking to sorrow for an enemy or argumentative loved one will cause us to see faults in ourselves.
Thus I believe that not only does an expression of love based on internal focus cause us to love others more effectively in the moment, but it humbles us and enables us to love more capably in the future. A softened heart--and a desire to soften the hearts of others, not tear them down and prove them wrong--will provide our families and lives with peace and the charity of Christ.