Summer/Fall 2010
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Children & Families
by Bernie Siegel, MD
There is one thing that can provide for the well being of children no matter what happens to their families. It heals wounds, benefits the giver and receiver, enhances life and the will to live, costs nothing, provides immortality to those sharing it, is vital to the well being of all and yet is dispensed infrequently and inadequately by the majority of parents. What is this wonderful thing? It is called LOVE. Many studies have revealed the health benefits of feeling loved by your parents. How you care for yourself and the ability to avoid addictions comes from being loved.
Remember the opposite of love is not fear or hate, but indifference. Why does a young man make bombs? Because it gets him a lot of attention. Rule #1 is love your children. The difficult child needs to feel loved too. I did not say don’t discipline or speak up about what you don’t like but do not say, “There’s something wrong with you.” Say, “I don’t like what you did.”
From my experience of being the father of five, remember to let the angels know you love them. Our angel son said, “Dad, I don’t get 20% of your time.” I said, “Your brother gets 40% because he is driving us crazy.” The angel felt I didn’t love him as much because I spent less time with him and his bedroom was at the end of the hall. Of course it was, because I didn’t have to worry about what he was doing when the door was closed. On the other hand, his brother, at times had his bedroom door removed.
If you know someone who wasn’t loved by their parents become their CD (Chosen Dad) or CM (Chosen Mom) and re-parent them. No matter what they do, keep loving them until they are convinced they are worth loving and a child of God too. I was born an ugly duckling. My parents hid me in a carriage behind our house and wrapped my head in a kerchief so no one would see what I looked like. How did I make it? I had a grandmother who had no problem seeing me with the eyes of love and making me feel like a swan. Rule #2 is to let your eyes be the mirrors which reflect for your family how beautiful and loved they are.
Love makes you immortal. The body is impermanent but love is not. It stays forever in the messages and mottoes you teach your family. Many of us are dying because of our parents destructive, authoritarian, hypnotic messages such as “Remember when something makes you laugh, there will always be something that will make you cry.” What if you grew up instead with these words from my parents. When difficulties came upon me, I heard, “It was meant to be. God is redirecting you. Something good will come of this.”
When I had an important decision to make, I asked my parents what to do. They said, “What will make you happy?“ It wasn’t about what they thought or what would impress the neighbors or earn more money. It was “how does it feel to do this.” When money was involved, my father (his father died when he was a child) taught us that money was to be used to “make life easier” for people. Rule #3 is to give your children survival messages and mottoes they can live by and not die by.
Rule #4 is to embarrass your children when they are growing up. It saves a lot of money when five children refuse to go out to dinner with their parents because their father is so silly. He orders Chinese food in an Italian restaurant. When the waiter says, “How’s everything?” He says, “Why are you upsetting us while we are eating? If you read the paper, you know everything is not good.”
Why are these same children grateful today? Because now when they do something out of line or a bit bizarre, who do you think gets blamed? “Do you know who his or her father is?” So it is my fault and they are grateful that they are not seen as the problem.
Rule #5 is to have pets and truly care for and love them. It will teach your children a reverence for life and give them love when no one else is able. We had hundreds of creatures of every species in and around our house. It taught us to love and care for them and how to deal with loss too.
Rule #6 is to prepare your family for the difficulties and losses that are a part of life. Life is not unfair but it is difficult. What I have learned from our Creator is that life is a series of beginnings. When you finish reading this article you will begin to use what you have learned. Its effect will not end when you are done reading. When you graduate from school, it is not called a termination but a commencement. So teach your children that when they have losses, life is a series of new beginnings, not endings.
Remember that love is what a life is built upon… it is the foundation, but laughter is the mortar that binds the bricks together. Childlike, non-destructive humor allows a family to see life in a different way. So live like a child and see the world through a child’s eyes no matter what age you are.
If you persist in loving the unlovable and forgiving the unforgivable, you will be free to heal your family. I have saved recordings on our answering machine left by one of our sons criticizing his parents vehemently. We have a wonderful relationship today. I told him recently I still have the recordings. He said, “I think you can get rid of them now.” I said, “No. You have a son and one day when he breaks your heart, I’ll play these tapes and you’ll realize that love can heal the wounds a family sustains and creates.” Thank God love has one side effect that some people don’t understand. Love makes you blind. Blind to the faults of others and therefore, able to heal relationships.
So whenever you want to drive family members crazy, just keep saying, “I love you” every day and then, after a few months, skip a day. They will call you to say, “You forgot something. You didn’t say ‘I love you’ today.” And then healing will begin...
“If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself. If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, he learns to find love in the world.”
- excerpt from Children Learn what They Live by Dorothy Law Nolte.
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