THE NEED TO BELONG

"Children desperately want to belong. If they feel accepted, they maintain their courage and present few problems. They do what the situation requires and gets a sense of belonging through there usefulness and participation." - Floy Pepper

When children's belonging needs are met they are cooperative, well behaved, eager to learn and adventurous. On the other hand, when their belonging needs go unmet, children are troublesome, discouraged and mischievous. Their mischief and troublemaking is aimed at getting the attention they need but were unable to get through cooperative behavior.

COURAGE TO SEE

"To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage." -- Henri Matisse

While the famous impressionist artist, Matisse, was talking about seeing the world around him in a new and different light, the same thing in true of parents and their children. Sometimes it takes courage to see our children as unique, individual persons, and not merely extensions of ourselves.

Perfectionism

"You don't have to be all things to your kids. And your kids don't want you to be either. It's a lot easier for them if they don't have to live up to someone who aspires to be God." -- Alex Packer

Perfectionism is a curse. God's love for us is not dependent on our past, our performance or our perfectionism. None of us can be a perfect parent, or perfect anything else. We must all practice the courage to be imperfect. Perfectionism is a burden that robs ones life of joy in spontaneity.

Putting Your Thoughts Into Action

"Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Why is this so? Action requires a different level of commitment than does thinking. It is easy to think of a good idea, imagine a result, envision a completed project. In our imagination, there is no penalty for failure, no evaluation of outcomes, no report card. When we take decisive action to turn our thoughts and dreams into action, everything changes. We must take risks in the real world, expend more energy, burn more calories, exert more effort, acquire resources, solve problems, enlist the help of others and expose ourselves and our ideas to the evaluation and criticism of others. This takes much more courage than thinking.