Wayne W. Dyer - What Do You Really Want for Your Children?

T here are many provocative quotations about the raising of children, none of which has ever struck me with more force than the words of John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester back in the seventeenth century. Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories. There is a powerful amount of truth in that statement. Nothing renders us less all-knowing than having the responsibility of raising children on a daily basis. It is with these words in mind that I have written the book you hold in your hand. I have no theories for you. I offer you my own common-sense applications, which have come from my experiences with children, from my contact with thousands of skillful parents, from being around children all my life, and from my great love for them.

When I was teaching at St. Johns University in New York many years ago, and my daughter was only three years old, her friends would knock on the door and ask politely of my wife, Can Wayne come out and play? Please? There I was, a thirty-year-old college professor, playing horsey and chasing the little ones around the block. At parties when all of the adults would congregate in a smoke-filled room, drinking cocktails, I was often off playing games with the children. I have been blessed with beautiful children and stepchildren of my own. I can honestly say that I have often preferred the company of children to adults, that I love to wrestle, tease, play, and be around, children of all ages.

When I was traveling in Europe, I once played soccer with a group of non-English-speaking children in a mountain village in Switzerland. I spent several exhausting hours in the company of twenty young children, and though we could not communicate with words, there was a mutual sharing and love, a respect and perfect enjoyment that transcended the need for a verbal language. The laughter, the determination, the wondrous excitement for living that unspoiled children share is a universal trait.

In the crowded train stations of Japan and Hong Kong I played with Oriental children, getting them to laugh and squeal with delight over a game of finger wrestling, or who can make the funniest face. In Germany, I taught an entire neighborhood of tiny tykes, all screeching in delight, how to catch and throw an American Frisbee. When you have a love affair with children, it matters little what language they speak. The language of love is so powerful that the words become unnecessary. In writing this book I have been able to strongly identify with the words of Carl Jung, a brilliant contributor to the field of human awareness, when he said:

From the beginning I had a sense of destiny, as though my life was assigned to me by fate and had to be fulfilled. This gave me an inner security, and, though I could never prove it to myself, it proved itself to me. I did not have this certainty, it had me.

My strong love and affection for young people has owned me all of my life; it was only a matter of time before I decided to write about this wonderful love affair with the children of the world.

My books have all been a part of this participatory destiny that I allude to in the previous paragraph. Your Erroneous Zones was my effort to teach everyone the common sense of managing ones own emotions, and Pulling Your Own Strings was a natural follow-up on how to deal more effectively with others who would attempt to victimize you in any way. The Skys the Limit was an extension of these principles. It offered ideas for going beyond simply managing ones own emotions and dealing more effectively with others, into the area of no-limit livingthat is, living the highest functioning life possible for a human being based upon the ability to choose ones own greatness. In Gifts from Eykis , I wrote my parable for our time, a story of one woman from another world who gives us the reality-only wisdom and simple truths to apply to our own personal lives, and to the healing of our planet. It was inevitable that I write What Do You Really Want for Your Children? It is the natural way to go for me. This book offers the same basic no-nonsense approach to the most important task facing all of us: the raising of children in such a way as to leave our world in the hands of people who can not only manage it and themselves effectively, but who can finally make this world a place of peace and love forever.

As I wrote this book I persistently kept my mind focused on being helpful and practical instead of theoretical. I want you to be able to apply today what you are reading in these pages. As a professional counselor I always knew precisely what formula it took to get people to change. First, I would get people to identify what it was that they were doing which could be labeled self-defeating, to simply identify the behaviors that were not working for them. Second, I would attempt to get them to see the payoffs, or the neurotic dividends, for these self-destructive behaviors. Finally, we would attempt to come up with intelligent, practical, and implementable new behaviors to help them to change. That is the essence of effective counseling, and it is the formula that I have used in writing this book. First, identify what it is that you may be doing in a given area of child rearing. Then look at your payoffs for continuing to treat your children this way. Finally, find out how to use new techniques that just might bring about your desired result.

I have not written a standard book about the raising of children. All of the concepts, ideas, strategies, techniques, or whatever you choose to call them apply to all ages and all situations involving children. They are universal to the helping of young people to become independent, no-limit people.

Throughout the pages of this book I will be presenting the specific skill areas of no-limit living. These areas fall almost exclusively in the how you feel domain. I will emphasize those that will carry you and your children through any troublesome situation. If you cannot figure out how to adjust your carburetor, at least you can look it up or take it to a carburetor expert. But, if you find yourself immobilized by your out-of-control anger, or your child is hopelessly nervous, there is no instruction manual on anger control, nor is there a nervous system repair garage available. The answers must come from within you and within your child. The key to being a no-limit person has very little to do with mastering a set of cognitive skills. Instead, it has almost everything to do with knowing how to be at the controls of your own emotions. You and your children become to your own life as a great painter is to his masterpiece, shaping, shading, designing as you choose.

I have written this book to help you out now . You will not find neat little categories for what to do at every stage of development, because your child is unique now , and therefore resists compartmentalization. I want to help you now to get started on turning the direction from many limits to no limits. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, teacher, neighbor, caretaker, stepparent, friend, minister, counselor, social worker, or any other caring person who wants to help young people, I want you to be able to use this book now. I wrote it believing that you can pick it up today, regardless of whether you are expecting your first child, or are parents of six teenagers, or anyplace in between. I never intended to write a book about starting from the beginning, because today is the only day you have, and your children are precisely the age they are, and you must deal with that particular reality. I do not believe that you must start them out in a certain way, and if you do not, then it is too late once they pass through a particular developmental stage. I know that it is possible to change at any given moment, regardless of ones previous history. I am convinced that you can begin right now on a course of no-limit parenting, and change your childs life beginning right now. I have changed self-defeating behavior patterns in myself by simply making the decision to do so, and by exercising the will and self-determination to make the decision stick. So, too, can you apply any of the principles in this book and make them work, if you have the will to work with children in a new light.