Raising Children Who Think for Themselves

Introduction

The book to be reviewed is titledRaising Children Who Think for Themselves by Elisa Medhus. The book is about parenthood and the manner in which parents continually teach their children how to avoid and fight off negative occurrences such as violence, alcohol, and drugs. This book teaches parents how to encourage their children to be self-directed individuals right from the time when they were born. Among the critical issues are internal dialogues that help children in decision making. These traits coupled with high esteem will boost a child’s ability to make decisions when faced with a problem.

The motivation behind this book

The author`s motivation behind writing this book was the insincere ways of guiding a child into adulthood. Fear, sheltering and threats are the insincere ways that parents use to guide their children but the children end up being misled since the parents did not lead by example. The author says that the book spoke to her childhood and provided her with concrete perspectives on how she could better the parenting of her own offspring (Medhus, 2001). The author believes that rules should only prevent children from harming themselves, their surroundings and others but any other rules are presently determined by the parents to only control the thoughts and actions of their children. Parents should lead and guide their children and then step aside for the children to guide themselves by the knowledge instilled by their parents. Punishment is not applicable when teaching or guiding children as this will lead to children not being open to the parents. Parents must know that consequences reasonably come from the child`s choice and for the children to behave they should be given the right reasons.

Five Essential qualities of Self Directed Children

There are five qualities that self-directed children possess. Self- worth and self-confidence is one of the qualities that self-directed children possess and this is because these children have been raised in an environment that is wealthy in approval and love. These children can wisely carry themselves in such a way that permits self-growth as opposed to breaking them apart and this enables them to feel superior about themselves (Browne, 2009). The second quality that self-directed children possess is competence. When children are raised in an environment where they are motivated to do new things and explore their abilities without fear and ridicule, disapproval or disgrace at the time when they drop, these children are even eager to take more risks and discover their logical and bodily boundaries simply because disappointment is not viewed as something bad but as a learning experience.

Independence is the third quality that self-directed children possess. These children depend on their abilities to shape internally derived decisions. These children use their knowledge and become independent thinkers as they try to solve their difficulties and this enables them to oppose outward influences when making decisions. The forth quality that self-directed children possess is high moral character (Cline & Fay, 2006). These children make decisions for the right reasons and these decisions do not necessarily depend on other prospects or endorsement. The decisions these children make honor own decent principles and agree with their sense of self-esteem. The fifth quality that self-directed children possess is the asset within a group. These children are usually motivated and always require the group`s support, sacrificing their own image in order to be acknowledged (Medhus, 2001). Motivated children get their own task within the group as they contribute in a way that is significant to them. Motivated children are easily managed by parents simply because they have urbanized their location based on their personal principles

Three behaviors parents can eliminate that promote Externally Direction

The three behaviors parent can eliminate that promote external direction are: modeling externally directed behavior, being conditional with the children, and not having faith in the children. The most damaging of these behaviors is being conditional with the children. When a parent has such a behavior, the children will never know how to make their own decisions because they will be afraid of making mistakes that will lead to scrutiny by their parents. Parents are supposed to encourage their children in everything they do whether in career choices or any other discipline. Parents should not love their children when they behave according to their requirements because  this damages the child mentally and physically and makes the child dependent on the parent even when he or she grows up (Medhus, 2001). If you tell a child that, you love him because he only does some things right, that is rationing your love and making it conditional to the child. When parents use conditional love towards their children this means that their love has strings attached and that the children need to earn it.

How Parents Encourage Introspection

Introspection is the assessment of one`s own thoughts, impressions, and feeling for a given period of time. It can also be for a long period. Parents can encourage introspection through asking their children questions. When a parent asks a child a question it simply means that the child needs to act and this is important because the child will most probably replicate various answers and if he or she is stuck the parent can use some guiding principles. Introspection is important because it enables one to look into himself first and one needs to make it a habit (Browne, 2009). Parents should look for what is good in their children and what is not to enable children to act with integrity in a way that they can lead. Parents should encourage their children to look inside themselves so that they can bring out the best of what is inside of them.

Inner Influences over External Influences

Self-directed children have a strong sense of self and a tough craving to be an essential and significant part of the group, this enables them to become skilled in their inner influence and can express themselves from within themselves. Parents can only guide self-directed children but not control them in order to avoid colliding ways (Medhus, 2001). For children to have inner influence there should be a strong sense of connection and children should know that they are unconditionally loved by their parents. Parents should teach their children how to appreciate their own exceptional strengths, turn them into significant roles and live according to their own thoughts as opposed to the thoughts of others. Parents have the power to decide the path their children should follow, this enables the parents to make their children self-directed. For children to acquire inner influences parents should get rid of elements that encourage external influences at any given time.

Ways to Derail Unhealthy Internal Dialogue

Parents need to check the behaviors of their children. They have the responsibility to ensure that their children are disciplined. For this reason, they ought to teach their children to take responsibility for their actions. Parents should avoid taking excuses from their children when they do wrong (Adams, 2012). When children do something wrong that catches the attention of the parent, it is the parent’s duty to ensure that their children are disciplined. By taking excuses from the children, parents deny their children the opportunity to learn. Most of the time, parents take excuses from their children, so that they do not seem harsh to their children. This may look good at the beginning but if the behavior is condoned, then it leads to the child not having the ability to have a good internal dialogue.

To avoid such pitfalls, parents need to correct their children in a manner that does not portray them as being their children’s’ enemies (Puckette, 2008). This is possible by first pointing the problem to the child then correcting it. In doing so, a parent will ensure that the child will not do the same even when there is no grown up around.

Natural Intuition

Intuition is the ability to know something without physical proof. Intuition is a natural feeling that one experiences of something convincing with no proof. Intuition is important to human beings because, helps in judging whether something is wrong or good (Adams, 2012). Natural intuition is applicable in someone’s daily life if internal dialogue is strengthened. With this, one will be able to decipher good from bad. Intuition can help a person evade a potential problem or solve critical decisions.

How Children Can Be Taught Empathy

It is important for children to be taught about empathy. Empathy is putting oneself in the predicament of another person. Empathy has three tenets, namely cognitive, emotional and compassionate. Cognitive empathy is having the idea of how people are feeling and what they might be thinking (Browne, 2009). The other one is emotional empathy, which is understanding the other person’s emotions and trying to relate to them. The last one is compassionate empathy that encompasses all aspects of feelings and on top of that, one is usually compelled to help the other person.

Benevolent Selfishness

A child who is properly taught internal dialogue will be able to know what to say, how to say and when to say it. This is determined by the analysis of the environment that the child is in. benevolent selfishness takes into account words and actions that may affect the other person. Selfishness on the other hand is being concerned with one’s own interests disregarding those of others.

Techniques That Encourage Self-Direction

Self-direction is the ability to determine the course of action when one is faced with a problem. To improve self-direction, one needs to apply various techniques. Believing in oneself will help an individual reach certain goals even when faced with a challenge or distraction (Medhus, 2001). Another technique is having a strong sense of internal dialogue that will help someone in doing what is right. Self-esteem is another trait that is crucial in encourages self-direction. 

Summary and Conclusion

The book is comfortable in reading and easy to comprehend. The author of the book sheds light on the ideology on the premises of treating children with respect. The concept also implies that children should be allowed to explore the world with fairness though they should also understand their boundaries. The concept was also clear and made sense in terms of understanding parenting especially in the modern society. The book indicates that the parents should be able to teach their children by example. The idea of refraining from threatening and instilling fear to then children is practical to the society. The children should be pampered since fear makes them become rebellious in the future. On the other hand, the book talks of the things that I am familiar with as children should be guided into adulthood through care and understanding. The concept makes them become real and honest. It is also essential to ensure that the children are taught to acknowledge the ideology of reason and knowledge for them to re-evaluate everything being taught. From the book, one would realize that the child should not learn or attain information without the help of the parents as they would find their parents not to be trustworthy with claims that they had hidden information from them. This might be the truth as I once experienced my neighbor refraining from talking to her mother with claims that the parent does not tell her the required information in time.

The experience of reading the book enabled me to understand the concept of training and raising children to have the ability to think for themselves. The concept explains that children have to grow establishing a better communication channel with the parents. The book also assisted in answering questions required for this report. The report also impacted my feelings towards raising children and making them understand what is required of them.

References

Adams, J. (2012). A Complete Guide for Single Moms: Everything You Need to Know about Raising Healthy, Happy Children On Your Own. Atlantic Publishing Group Inc.,           

Browne, M. A. (2009). Raising thinking children and teens: Guiding mental and moral development. Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger/ABC-CLIO.

Cline, F., & Fay, J. (2006). Parenting with love and logic: Teaching children responsibility. Colorado Springs, CO: Piñon Press.

Medhus, E. (2001). Raising children who think for themselves. Hillsboro, Or: Beyond Words Pub.

Puckette, M. (2008). Raising troubled kids: Help for parents of children with mental illness or emotional disorders. Place of publication not identified: Booksurge.com.