Parent-Child Relationships

by Marty Grossberg

Overview

Learn to create a loving, healthy, thriving relationship with your children, your parents, and especially yourself. Understand how to tap into your inner guidance system and guide your children by example to do the same.

Read a first-hand account of a childs perspective on divorce and remarriage.

Empower your children to become confident, insightful, and skillful decision-makers.

Understand that

- your child is not your responsibility;

- children know best; and

- being happy is an inside job.

See how your attitudes from childhood affect you today and how important it is to let go of the past. Look at forgiveness and whether or not it is necessary in your life. Finally, learn some tools and practices you can use every day to create the future you desire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504335737
Publisher:	Balboa Press
Publication date:	07/02/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	114
File size:	146 KB

About the Author

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Marty Grossberg overcame addictions to alcohol, gambling, cannabis, cigarettes, overspending, and the need to control through rehab, meditation, journaling, and intensive self-examination and change. Marty’s remarkable journey from struggle to success, especially in his relationship with his son, precipitated the writing of this book.

Marty lives in Lakewood, Colorado, with his dog, Spirit. He has a wonderful relationship with his son and ex-wife, and the three of them frequently spend time together. Marty loves playing racquetball and chess with his son. He plays bridge twice a week and he meditates twice a day. He is a very happy and healthy person who enjoys his life.

Read an Excerpt

Parent-Child Relationships

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By Marty Grossberg

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2015 Marty Grossberg
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5043-3572-0

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In my role as a parenting coach, I work with people to help them improve their relationships with their children, offering parenting tips that guide them to become better parents. For most of my clients though, there is an essential step they are missing. It is the most critical step in changing how they parent, and that is to make peace within themselves in their relationships with their own parents.

Why is it important to address our relationships with our parents? Because if we don't identify our own issues with our parents, we will never be able to identify the issues we have with our children. And if we can't identify the issues we have with our children and why we have them (hint: it's us, not them), we can never make the changes necessary to improve the relationships.

My dad and me: For most of my young life, I felt stupid, ugly and worthless. This was the message my father gave to me every day through his words and actions. It wasn't until I had done much study as an adult that I realized I was not actually stupid, ugly or worthless, that I could learn anything I was inspired to learn, do anything I wanted to do, be anything I wanted to be. I suddenly understood that my dad had actually been projecting his feelings about himself onto me, but the more important epiphany was that it wasn't my dad's fault. After all, I didn't come with an instruction manual. He was doing the best he knew how to do and it was how he felt about himself.

This realization was the turning point for me in becoming the parent I wanted to be. At the time, my son Michael was about 10 years old and we had a rocky relationship at best, but that all began to change once I made peace with my father and myself in my own mind. I was choosing to feel good, the most important thing we can do, and it was immediately and profoundly felt by my son.

I made one mistake in this process, which was to confront my father about everything he had done wrong. At the time, I apparently felt this was necessary, however, I now know that it's not. In fact, it can be downright destructive. Remember, this is about your inner peace and you must recognize you're never going to change your parents. This is about accepting them, as they are, flaws and all, moving on, and feeling good.

A mother and her mom: I want to offer a real-life example of this critical exercise at work. I was working with my client, let's call her Jane, and she was seeking new parenting techniques to use with her six-year-old little boy. Jane wanted positive parenting solutions, but first she needed to make peace in her relationship with her own mom. She couldn't move into changing her own parenting until she did that.

It turned out that Jane grew up under a critical, fear-based, controlling mother who invaded her space, violated her privacy and suffocated her, and Jane was still harboring resentment. It became clear that Jane needed to better understand her mother, accept her and the way she parented (just as my dad did, Jane's mom did the best she could with the knowledge and experience she had), and at an internal level, make peace with her. That was the only way Jane could identify her own feelings, and see her own actions as a parent clearly.

As we worked through this, Jane recognized that her experience was causing her to be the opposite of her mother. She was being too hands off with her son and giving him so much space that he was feeling neglected and left alone. Jane is working to balance that now and is already seeing results in her son.

How to make your personal peace: If you need to make peace with your parents so you can become a better parent yourself, spend 20-30 minutes doing this exercise. Answer the following questions in writing:

1. How am I the same as my mother? My father?

2. How am I different from my mother? My father?

3. What did I like about how my mother and father parented me?

4. What am I doing that's the same? What am I doing that's different?

5. What is my vision of who and how I want to be?

You will find that the answers to these questions will open your eyes, help you make your own peace and begin to see a new path for yourself in your parenting.

CHAPTER 2

Your child is not your responsibility

One of the most common feelings we have as parents is that of responsibility — intense, all-consuming responsibility for the well being of our children. If you think about it, that's a whole lot of pressure. After all, our children's well being includes their safety, health, education, happiness, success; the list goes on and on. As parents, when we feel this tremendous level of pressure, we experience one overriding, overwhelming feeling. Fear. And what do we do when we feel fear? We try to take back control. Yet control is one of the primary deterrents to parenting in a healthy way.

What if I told you that letting go of responsibility for your child is one of the biggest keys to becoming a happier, better parent, and cultivating an amazing relationship with the little human being that is your child? If you do this one thing, you give your children what I firmly believe is the greatest gift in the world, the ability to make decisions today and for the rest of their lives. The decisions they make for themselves are the best possible decisions for them, and those decisions produce the most success on every level.

Only your child knows what's in his or her best interest. When we feel responsible for our children, we try to handle them. We tell them what to do, what not to, how to dress, what to eat, when to sleep. Don't get me wrong. This is a natural response, and it's very common. However, there's a big problem with it. When we do this, we are really pretending to know what's in our child's best interest, when in fact all we can possibly know is what's in our best interest.

It's the same with your children! They know, deep down, what's in their best interest, and the only way they will make good choices is if they are given the freedom to tap into their own feelings. You see, children are born with their own inner guidance, just as we are. This inner guidance is driven by feelings. And it's feelings, not words and commands, which drive healthy decision-making.

If you think about it, when something feels good, it usually is good. The same goes for bad feelings. Those typically indicate something bad. Don't believe me? Think about it this way. Imagine you steal something from a store or a friend. If you really pay attention to the feelings associated with stealing, you will notice right away that they are negative feelings. On the other hand, if you hone in on the feelings generated when you reach out and help someone in need, you'll recognize them as warm, fulfilling feelings. It is these inner feelings that will drive your child's behavior if you let them. Trust your child.

Many of us, myself included, were not trusted by our parents to make our own decisions. We were robbed of the ability to tap into our own inner guidance, and were instead told, and shown, what to do by parents who tried to protect us through control. What happens when children are controlled is that they end up making decisions based on factors other than feelings. Take my situation. My father, who grew up during the Great Depression, was cheap. My reaction to this was that every day of my life, I overspent. In the end, it took me 60 years to learn to spend less than I earned, a tough lesson indeed.

Allow your children to begin walking their path. I know this is an uncomfortable concept at first, but trust me, once you test this theory with your child, you'll be truly amazed at the change in how you feel, and in how your child responds to every situation in life. It's critical to good parenting that you give your children responsibility for themselves. Let them make their own decisions as early in life as possible. By doing this, you will ensure that in both their present and their future, they will know how to make decisions that really serve them, versus allowing others to lead them down paths that may not.

CHAPTER 3

Listening is the greatest gift

When I was growing up, my father didn't listen to me. In fact, he didn't know how to listen to me. His focus was on making me be what he wanted me to be, rather than on finding out what I wanted to, and could, become.

As a result, when I became a father some 38 years ago, I didn't know how to listen, either. And it was many years before I finally learned that ever-important skill and began to apply it to my own parenting. But when I did, it changed everything.

Fix it dad and listen to me mom: It's tempting as parents to talk, talk, talk to our children rather than listen to them. Many fathers tend toward the fix it mentality, attempting to repair things, while mothers frequently approach conversation with listen to me. In both scenarios, children are left without a voice, and are not being trusted to think for themselves or express their thoughts, feelings and needs.

When we talk at our children rather than listen to them, it makes them feel almost paralyzed, which renders them unable to make decisions. This leaves them knowing not how to lead, but only how to follow.

Unsolicited advice is subtle attack: When parents choose not to listen to their children, but instead to tell them what to do at every turn, they are offering unwelcome instruction and as Maryann Williamson states, "unsolicited advice is subtle attack." I totally agree. When we tell our children what to do, how to do it and when to do it, I believe we are disempowering them, plain and simple. What we could be doing is giving them a listening ear and then allowing them to choose how to handle whatever it is they are dealing with.

When our children feel attacked, they in turn take on a feeling of powerlessness and this powerlessness produces some very unpleasant natural reactions. One key response for example, is to rebel and do the exact opposite of what we ask of them; another is to blindly do what is asked out of fear and obedience. This causes resentment, without ever having an understanding of why they're doing what they're doing. Unfortunately, regardless of the response within your individual child, when children feel powerless, it almost always leads to an unhappy life.

Keys to listening: Listening to our children sends them the message that what they have to say and what they feel are important. Through listening, we are honoring our children while also learning invaluable information that can make us much better parents and vastly improve our relationships with our children.

The main keys to listening to our children are:

* When you see your child after being apart (school, camp, overnight, etc.) spend five minutes not asking questions or making demands. Give your child the space and airtime to just be or to talk.

* When you are with your child, focus on being with your child. Don't multi-task, don't bark orders, and don't think beyond the current moment. Show your children that they are more important than work or money or anything else.

* Don't try to fix your child. Your child is perfect; so learn to love both yourself and your child unconditionally. Instead of attempting to change our children, we must learn more about who they are, give them a voice, and remind them that they are perfect, just as they are.

* Listen without giving advice, unless you're asked for it.

* Be real! Children know when we're being phony.

* Allow your children to express their feelings freely, and do not judge them. Feelings are natural, and they are completely separate from information. In other words, there are no facts in feelings. Respect and honor your child's feelings at all times.

* Be present. We hear this all the time, which may be because it's so essentially important. When you are with your children, be in the moment. Don't be thinking about fixing dinner, work demands, the messy house. Be in the moment, just you and your children ... and enjoy it!

I assure you that if you want to be a better parent, you can be instantly if you focus on just one thing, listening. You'll be amazed at the new world it will open up for your children and yourself.

CHAPTER 4

Children know best

As parents, it's easy to become control freaks. This is somewhat natural considering that we feel hugely responsible for every single thing that happens, or doesn't happen, to these tiny people who seem completely helpless and totally unable to make decisions.

Well, what if I told you that children, even very young ones, do know how to make decisions? And that children themselves are the best possible people to make those decisions? That's right. I'm suggesting that instead of making decisions for your children, you let them make decisions for themselves.

Why we make decisions for our children: Why is it that we are so compelled to make decisions for our children? The reason we commonly give ourselves is that it's because those decisions are made in their best interest. But are they really?

If you think about it, how do you know what's in your child's best interest? You don't. You only know what's in your best interest. The truth is that when you make decisions in your child's best interest, you're actually making the decision based on your own needs and situation. For example, if you're trying to get your child to be on time to soccer practice, are you doing that because it's in his best interest, or yours? After all, you need to get to the bank, the dog groomer and the grocery store. I mean, if he's late, what's the worst that could happen in his world? Most likely he'll face a consequence, it won't feel good to him, and he won't be late again. Is that really so bad?

Humans know what is best for them ... if they know how to find their inner guidance: All human beings — adults, babies, teenagers and toddlers — have inner guidance, and what I'm suggesting is that you let your children find, and follow, theirs because if they know how to use their inner guidance to make decisions rather than resorting to following someone else's lead, they will make much better decisions, period.

When we tell our children what to do, we are denying them the ability to learn to tap into their inner guidance, which, once understood, will lead them to make better decisions throughout their lives. They soon will find out that most of the time what feels good is good, and what feels bad is bad. And, by basing decisions on feelings of good and bad, they are essentially learning to decide what is best for them.

Feelings, not facts: I mentioned this in the last chapter, but it's so essential that it needs repeating. There are no facts in feelings. We need to be focused on what our children are feeling, not on feeding them information on how to think. You see, if we feed children facts, that will create a belief, which will drive a thought, and a thought will drive a feeling. Thus the feeling didn't come from within, it came from without. This is backwards, because it doesn't teach children to rely on themselves, but rather on the information they're getting, which is subjective to the source it's coming from. Instead, they should learn to rely on their own deep-down feelings, not facts that come from the outside.

I know this is scary: I'm well aware this concept can be uncomfortable at first. This is not a traditional or widely practiced method of deciding what to let your children do or not do. But here's the thing. It's not about doing. It's about thinking, allowing your children to think deeply, to connect with the inner guide that tells them what feels good and what feels bad, and to let those feelings drive their decisions. I promise that if you try this, and give it some time, you will open up for your child, and yourself, to a whole new world, both now and in the future.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Parent-Child Relationships by Marty Grossberg. Copyright © 2015 Marty Grossberg. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgement, ix,
1. Introduction, 1,
2. Your child is not your responsibility, 5,
3. Listening is the greatest gift, 9,
4. Children know best, 13,
5. What's best for you is best for your children, 17,
6. The highest level of achievement, 21,
7. You're human ... and your children know it, 25,
8. Children and divorce: a child's perspective, 29,
9. Remarriage – a child's perspective, 33,
10. Your fear is contagious, 37,
11. We choose how we feel and, 41,
12. Making decisions, 45,
13. You can heal your body, 47,
14. The law of attraction, 49,
15. Self love: unconditional acceptance, 51,
16. Live and let live, 53,
17. How our attitudes from childhood affect us today, 57,
18. A revelation at 71 years of age, 61,
19. Money, our relationship to it, and addictions, 65,
20. Being happy is an inside job, 67,
21. Workaholics, addictions and self-love, 69,
22. Our feelings, thoughts and weight, 73,
23. Letting go of the past, 77,
24. Creating the future we desire, 79,
25. Is forgiveness necessary?, 81,
26. Forgiving, 83,
27. The empty nest, 85,
28. Worry is negative goal setting, 89,
29. Truth and shame, 93,
30. Tools and practices, 95,
Message from the author, 99,
About the author, 101,