Respect is Earned

Healthy Parenting: Respect is Earned

by Arsiei Darksbane

(An article from my unpublished blog at www.healthyparentingway.com)

What is respect?
How can we gain our children's respect? How does respect make our lives easier? Respect among all members of a household equals harmony in the home. So realizing that respect can never be demanded, only earned, is a vital step in acquiring harmony in the household.

Parents: Get over yourselves.
One of the first things I had to do as a parent was learn to get over myself. What does this mean? We as parents can sometimes take ourselves too seriously. We forget what we are and who we are and where we came from and let the power of control over another person take us in the wrong direction. We don't mean to do this. It is a natural human tendency. However with proper education and a bit of self-control, we can learn to be a leader in our home rather than a dictator.  The first thing you have to do is remember being a child, how you were treated, how you reacted to it and what would have made it better. Remember the people in your life at your child's age, and remember which ones you liked and did not like. Did you obey the ones you liked better? Did you feel happier and more peaceful with the people you respected?

Don't let self-importance tear you down. You are a beautiful person to your child. If you want to remain beautiful in their hearts and minds, you must never let yourself feel more important than them. Their wishes, their hopes, their desires are every bit as important as yours. This means that their wishes, hopes and desires are also every bit as important as your work, your phone calls, your busy schedules! Never let yourself feel that you are greater than your child. You have strengths they do not yet have: Wisdom, experience, knowledge. They also have strengths that you do not have anymore: innocence, imagination, freedom. If you're lucky, you haven't lost these traits entirely, but if you look deeply you will realize your child has a wisdom you have lost to some degree. Being carefree and dreaming big is a power all of its own.
So first, respect your child for who and what they are. They are a beautiful individual, full of lessons for you as well. So respect them and guide them and love them. Now the next step...

Be Respectable
Be careful when you go to define that word. "Respectable" picked up a social standard in and around the Renaissance and it gained force through the Victorian age and onward. People have taken a set of social statistics and deemed that "Respectable" and those types of terms tend to stick in our minds... However don't be fooled. What is respectable to your children?
For me it was a grandfather. He was kind, peaceful, patient and funny. Most of all of the things that made him respectable however was this: He treated me like a person of equal worth. I remember this man as the one I respected more than anyone in my childhood years because of his actions. He talked softly to me, listened intently, cared about the content of my thoughts, remembered what I'd said, acted upon his promises, and taught me the joy of making other people happy. I never respected anyone as much as my grandfather in my childhood. So when I became a parent, my first promise to myself was this: I will train myself to raise my child like my grandfather raised me. I wanted to be respected by my child like my grandfather was respected by me, but mostly I wanted my child to be as happy with me and as enchanted by me as I was by my grandfather.

When my parents or my grandmother wanted to punish me, they'd yell, spank me, set me in a corner, take something away or ground me. I remember their punishments making me angry. I remember hating their actions and feeling they were not such great people at the time. It didn't discourage me from doing what I'd done wrong. It discouraged me from showing them my actions, from trusting them.
When my grandfather saw me acting out, he would never yell or spank me or take things away. He would look at me with sad eyes, acknowledge what I just did by telling me gently that what I did was wrong, and then shake his head in disappointment and walk away, leaving me to think. I respected him deeply... and so his disappointment was devastating to me. I would cry. I would break down and cry because I knew what I had done was wrong. Then I would think about what I had done, ask myself what I could do better, go and talk with my grandfather and get his help in understanding... In the end, I would know better than to repeat this misdeed. I would avoid it because I truly did not want to be a bad person, and I wanted my grandfather to respect me. I trusted that he could teach me to be a good person, where I did not trust my parents or my grandmother. Respect is key to a harmonious relationship with a child. Respect will allow you to guide a child gently and they will love you for being who you are.

Never Try to Force It
The worst mistakes my father always made in trying to make me behave were losing his temper and trying to force respect. He would demand it verbally. He would insist that I respect him because he was the parent and I was the child and that meant I had to respect him. This made me hate him. He was trying to force my emotions. He was trying to make me believe in something I did not believe in. He was hurting me. While he never understood that, he was forcing me to respect him less, not more. Be careful never to make the mistake of demanding respect from your children. You'll find that whether you try to demand respect or not, the respect you actually get will  never depend upon your empty threats or ill-tempered demands, but rather upon your performance as a parent. This is parenting discipline at its most basic, but it is a fundamental element in healthy parenting in general.
Good luck.


Arsh out.