Takeaways from reading the book:
What can children do to take responsibility for themselves?
- Page 96: Because children continuously challenge beliefs, boundaries, values and emotions of people, they naturally help everyone around them to learn / grow.
- Page 107: A child is responsible herself / himself for what she or he senses. For example, a child is responsible for what she or he thinks tastes / smells / sounds / looks good or bad.
- Page 107: A child is responsible for emotions, which he or she feels.
- Page 107: When children grow older, they will take responsibility for more and more areas of their life, for example what clothes they want to wear, what they do in their spare time and what they want to study.
- Page 107: A child is responsible for her or his needs. For example, a child is responsible for expressing whether he or she is hungry or not, or whether he or she is tired or not.
- Page 154: It is the responsibility of children, who are older than five years, to wake themselves up in the morning. A mother or a father can offer to help the child get up in the morning.
- Page 158: It is the responsibility of children themselves to do their homework.
What do children need their parents to do?
- Page 44: Children know what they want. However, they do not know what they need. When parents are afraid of being authoritarian, children get too much of what they want and too little of what they need.
- Page 52: Instead of blaming children, adults need to accept responsibility for mistakes adults make themselves.
- Page 68: When a child does something, which is fun and also a little risky, establish eye contact with the child and say "hi". Thereby, the child knows that you have seen the child's experience. This satisfies the child's need to feel loved.
- Page 71: If a child is having problems with her or his homework, ask, for example: Do you need help with your homework? Then the child will feel that she / he has been seen.
- Page 72: To strengthen a child's self-esteem, acknowledge / recognize the child. Example: If a child gives his or her mother or father a drawing, the parent can acknowledge the gift by saying "Thank you Larry, I am happy to have this drawing." Acknowledgement / recognition originates from the German word "Anerkennung."
- Page 75: The more we allow children to give us, the healthier their self esteem becomes.
- Page 118: When a mother and/or a father has / have an important issue to discuss with her / his / their child, she / he / they need to agree on a time and place to have a conversation with the child about that issue.
- Page 160: Children need to feel safe to express their emotions when communicating with their parents.
- Page 168: Parents can define and communicate their personal limits, which they think will make lives of their children better. Examples: "I want you to clean up your room before you go to bed."
- Page 175: When a child asks for permission to stay over at a friend's place tonight, ask back: What do you think? Thereby, children learn to consult themselves instead of focusing all their attention on their parents. Accordingly, their self esteem and self responsibility grow. The same applies to decisions about other social activities of the children.
- Page 178: When children express their emotions, for example when they are upset about something, do not interrupt them. Meet them with sympathetic silence.
- Page 180: To create a family, in which all members thrive and develop in healthy ways, focus on dialogue - not on getting and giving permission.
- Page 183: Children need parents who support the attempts of children to discover who they are.
- Page 193: Parents need to negotiate household chores with their children. For example, a mother or a father can say: Your mother / father and I want you to take responsibility for one or more household chores. What chores do you prefer? What do you think about, for example, taking responsibility for taking out the garbage, when that is needed? Or would you rather do chores related to buying groceries, cooking, cleaning or washing clothes?
- Page 198: During their transformation to adults, some teenagers start to do destructive and self-destructive things. When parents take an active, personal share of the responsibility, teenagers can slowly begin to rebuild their self-esteem. And ultimately, they will treat themselves better.
- Page 203: The more determined parents are to develop aspects of their own personalities, the less self destructive their children will become.
- Page 213: To be as valuable to children as parents want to be, listen to children, recognize them as competent and learn from them.
What are examples of emotions children may feel in different situations?
- Page 23: When children stop cooperating, it is either because they have cooperated too much for too long, or because they feel that their integrity has been harmed. It is never because they are uncooperative.
- Page 29: Before expressing themselves, children watch facial expressions of their parents to learn about emotions they feel. The children then adapt their behavior. Example: If a child sees that his or her mother is nervous about having guests, the child will start to cry or turn his or her face away from the visitors.
- Page 40: When parents disagree and become angry with each other, it makes children afraid and unhappy.
- Page 136: Children feel guilty, when their parents have personal or marital problems or when parents treat them badly.
- Page 142: When children spend the first 5, 10 or 13 years of their lives giving priority to their parents' needs and feelings, children will feel over responsible, as over-responsibility has become a central part of their identity and the only way they have learned how to be of value to other people.
- Page 172: The more parents criticize children, the more children feel they are wrong. The more children feel they are wrong, the more difficult it will be for children to do something right.
Other research from the book:
- Page 4: Some adults behave in unloving ways towards their children, because they have learned to regard unloving acts as loving - and regard loving acts as irresponsible. Example: At a bus stop, a grandmother and her two grandchildren are waiting for the bus. The boy says to the grandmother that he has to go to the toilet. The grandmother responds, "You can't go now. We have got to get home. Look at your big sister how big and sensible she is."
- Page 25: When children have to choose between preserving their integrity and cooperating, they choose cooperating 9 times out of 10.
- Pages 30 - 33: Children copy their parents. Examples: A child, who is cared for, cares about others. A child, who is criticized, criticizes others or himself/herself. Children, who are brought up in non-expressive families, become either silent or talkative.
- Page 100: A generation ago, we needed to "behave" ourselves as precisely as actors delivering monologues. Who we were and what we felt about ourselves were not important. The goal of raising children was to make them conform to an external ideal.