A Parent's Best Weapon
By Carlynn McCormick

Is there a sure-fire way to help your child develop a sunny disposition and build strong moral fiber? Yes indeed!

Validate the good and ignore the bad!

The best method I have ever encountered to bring such a result is to validate the good and ignore the bad. What an art it is moving a child's attentin off the negative and onto the positive. Taking a glass doll from a shelf and letting your child hold and admire it while sitting next to you on a stuffed sofa is a far cry from shouting, "Put that down! Don't touch it; you'll break it!"

I called it an art, and an art it is. It takes thought and deliberation to encourage and validate only good qualities in a child -- qualities such as love, kindness, honesty, friendliness, compassion, respect, politeness and tolerance. It takes just as much thought and deliberation to ignore hate, meanness, lies, selfishness, and rudeness. To move attention from negative to positive, however, takes true contemplation and a touch of wizardry. As an aside, I've never met a person who doesn't have a deep reservoir of magic to tap into -- it's just that sometimes we need reminding.

We all know in our heart of hearts that if we were to demonstrate good traits exclusively to our own children, they would show them to us in turn without fail. Ignore a child's occasional bad temperament and you will seldom see it.

Many cultures disseminated this truth.

Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, made an analogy between nourishing children and nourishing seedlings. He called it "selective watering" and said, "water only the good seeds and refrain from watering the bad seeds." When you "water" good traits only, you will grow beautiful flowers without any weeds.

Included in this truism is the way adults act toward children. Therefore, to ensure our children blossom, perhaps the first thing we must do is take stock of our own actions. Are we setting the best example we can? Below is a parent questionnaire used by my mother and passed on to me when I had my first child.

Parent Questionnaire:

• Do I have good manners toward my child?
• Am I as courteous to my child as I demand that he shall be to me?
• Do I refrain from interrupting my child, contradicting him or talking back to him?
• Do I let him be right and refrain from always having to have the last word?
• Am I a good sport?
• Am I as polite to my child as I am to my adult friends?
• Do I make my child feel that what he says and does and find of greatest interest is worthy of my notice?
• Do I share my child's joys and sorrows with him?
• Do I allow my child to wait upon himself, make his own decisions and learn independence?
• Do I have the courage to deny my child's wishes when I feel their fulfillment would do him harm?
• Do I think and plan ahead and stand by what I know is best for my child?
• Does my child know I really care for him?
• Does he know how much I love him?

[Suggestion: To keep good parenting skills at the forefront, carry this questionnaire in your wallet to refer to periodically or post it on your refrigerator.]

Carlynn McCormick, freelance writer and textbook author, is an educational consultant and the executive director of California Ranch School and HomeGrad of America.