Confident Children: Help children feel good about themselves. Gael Lindenfield

your own dreams and desires

      ‘Those who lose dreaming are lost.’

      Proverb

       Exercise: Sabotaging behaviours of my inner child

      This exercise will help you to identify your own specific sabotage habits so that you can be more on your guard, bring them into your consciousness and therefore have more control over them.

      This exercise will take at the very least an hour and a half; if you can spare longer you will benefit even more from doing it. Find somewhere to sit where you can be sure of having uninterrupted peace. You will need some photos of your childhood or any significant memorabilia such as toys or books and, if possible, some relaxing music.

      

       Spend 5 to 10 minutes looking through your photos or at your objects.

       Put on the music you have chosen and spend two or three minutes making a conscious effort simply to relax. Once you feel relaxed allow your mind to ‘wander through’ some of the memories of your childhood. After a while, spend 20 minutes focusing your mind on some of the disappointments, hurts and losses you can either remember feeling or can imagine you must have felt. Remember that you may not be searching for major traumas, but rather a series of smaller incidents, because these together can often add up to a significant wound. If you find specific memories hard to recall, reflect quite generally on your relationships and the lifestyle or ethos of your family or school. You can make a note of these as you remember each.

       Now try to make a link between these early experiences (i.e. your inner-child’s wounds) and possible difficulties you could (or indeed do) have in parenting your child in the way you would like to do. Use the list I gave on page 32 as a guide, but remember that it is not an exhaustive list, so add some of your own.

       Make your own list. It might include points like these:

       ‘I may be too bullying because I resented my father’s strictness.’

       ‘I could over-compensate with too much generosity because my parents were mean.’

       ‘I am possibly over-protective because no one protected me from being hurt.’

       ‘I could resent my children’s freedom to have adventures because we had such a quiet, sheltered upbringing and I felt totally unprepared for the knocks and challenges you can get in life.’

       ‘I might get over-anxious about academic achievements because my school failed to help me realize my potential.’

       ‘Perhaps I’m trying to imitate my parents too much by not letting the children “fight it out” because we were never allowed to argue at home.’

       ‘I could over-react when the children criticize me because I was rarely allowed to speak my mind.’

       Discuss these with your partner, a trusted friend and even your children if they are old enough. Ask them to give you feedback if ever they think you are dampening your child’s confidence with one of these behaviours.

      Another not-so-obvious way in which children’s confidence gets damaged is through their parents’ abandonment of their own dreams. When this has happened children have very often picked up either a direct or indirect message which, in effect, says ‘All I really have left in life is you and my hopes for your future.’

      Children who feel they have this kind of responsibility for their parents’ happiness are almost guaranteed to feel a continuous sense of

       It is all too easy to find ourselves literally‘living through’ our children

      failure – because however brilliant their exam results may be, however beautiful or strong they make themselves, however obedient or helpful they are, however ‘nice’ their friends may be, or however hard they try to smooth any troubled waters – the reality, almost inevitably, will be that Mum and/or Dad will still find life disappointing. (After all, vicarious pleasure is rarely as good as the ‘real stuff’!)

      Very few parents would, of course, intentionally ‘set-up’ their children for such failure, but nevertheless their self-neglect or self-sacrificing behaviour conveys the same message. I am sure you can think of at least two or three examples of happy, ambitious, talented,

       Exercise: Recovering my dreams

       Spend some time getting yourself into a relaxed state in a peaceful setting.

       Close your eyes and, for at least a full five minutes, try to picture yourself in 10 years’ time – leading what for you would be an ideal life. Answering the following questions might help you to get the picture.

      – where are you living and what does the house look like?

      – whom are you living with?

      – what job are you doing and what do you enjoy about it?

      – what kind of social life do you have? Any new friends?

      – what have you achieved in the last 10 years?

      – what are your plans for the next 10 years?

      • Share this dream with your partner, if you have one (if not use a close friend) and then listen to his or her dream.

      • ‘Rewrite’ your dream into one or more achievable but ambitious goals.

      • Note down the obstacles in relation to your children which you think are standing in the way of you living your dreams. For example:

      – unreliable child care support

      – not being able to afford the fees for the course as well as paying for the children’s swimming/music lessons

      – ‘the kids sap every ounce of my spare energy.’

      – ‘I couldn’t apply for promotion because that might mean moving the children to another area and they never settle at a new school.’

      – ‘I believe that it’s parents’ sacred duty to always put their children’s needs first and I would never forgive myself if I didn’t always do that.’

      – ‘when I think what my parents gave up for me, postponing the start of my degree pales into insignificance.’

       Using the help of your partner or a friend, critically challenge each of the obstacles you have written down. Ask yourself whether these really are immovable obstacles or whether you are, perhaps, subconsciously using the children as an ‘honourable’ excuse for not facing the challenge of living up to your full potential.