Hearing Families

This sentence is probably the parenting message that goes through my mind the most often! I am not sure why my children do not ever seem to pick up their dirty clothes without me nagging and I am not sure why it drives me so absolutely crazy. But they don’t and it does.

While preparing to teach my psychology course, I was reminded of the message of a famous psychologist named Carl Rogers. As a leader in the humanistic school of psychology, he had a great impact on the treatment of psychological problems in the United States and around the world. He also had an incredibly important idea for parents and educators who encounter children: He said that children need parents to give them

UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD

Here is what it means:

Regard = what I think about you

Positive = good

So far – we are supposed to treat our children with positive thoughts – ok, most of us are thinking that we already do that!

The UNCONDITIONAL part is the challenge:

Unconditional = no matter what, doesn’t depend on anything, no strings attached.

This is the area that is so hard for parents who want their children to continue learning and improving. I need to rework my mantra sentence to say something like: “I love you so much because you are wonderful.”

Not “I love you so much but you need to spend more time on your homework”

Not “I love you so much but you need to keep track of your things better”

Not “I love you so much but…. Anything.

That’s the unconditional part.

Rogers clarified that this does not mean that parents ought to accept their child’s behavior unconditionally. Oh no – parents should and must discipline their children and teach them what sort of behavior is not acceptable and how also how they should behave. But he thought that if parents communicate the message to children that they love their child so much just because their child is fantastic – the child will grow up to develop a sense of unconditional positive regard for him or herself.

When a person feels unconditional positive regard for herself – then setbacks and failures are not viewed as confirming her being an unsuccessful person. Her sense of her self-worth as a person in unconditional. She might have had a setback or a real failure. But she will interpret it as just that: a setback, a failure, which happens to everyone sometimes, and she will still feel sure that she is a great person.

This is perhaps the key to the most important goal parents have for their children. We all want to see our children learn, grow, accomplish all that they can. We especially want our children with hearing loss to catch up to their peers in speech, language, literacy, and succeed in school. But precisely because the stakes are so high and our goals for our children are so important for them – we need to accompany our push for their achievement with unconditional positive regard, giving them our commitment that we love them no matter what because they are so wonderful. We need to make sure that they know that they are so worthy of love and esteem regardless of anything they accomplish or achieve.

This focus also changes us and our perspective on ourselves and others. It makes us less unfairly hard on ourselves, after all, we deserve unconditional positive regard no less than our children. And if it’s a bad day, or made a mistake, it doesn’t hurt as badly. It makes us pause and refocus on what is unconditionally positive in our spouses, parents, siblings, and everyone else. We can appreciate all of them more and feel happier.

One last point: WE NEED TO SAY IT TO OUR CHILDREN – OVER AND OVER AGAIN. If you asked many parents they would say that they do love their children – unconditionally even. But do the things we say express this? I know my messages are a lot more conditional-sounding than I mean them to be. And we need to say it repeatedly, as often as we can without sounding weird, because it can be a hard world out there sometimes, and we want this message of unconditional positive regard to be what rings in our children’s minds stronger than any sense of adversity or failure.

So my goal for 2011 is to articulate my message of unconditional positive regard loudly and clearly. Will you join me? (Truth be told – I really would not mind if they figured out the picking up the dirty clothes thing this year too…)

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Tags: children, cochlear implant, deaf, hearing loss, parenting, positive outlook, self-esteem, social and emotional development, talking to your child, unconditional positive regard