Helping My Children Grow Up Right
From the day my wife found out she had conceived our first child, we decided that we were going to learn and apply all the information available from the writings of Mr. L. Ron Hubbard on the subject of raising children.
Mr. Hubbard wrote a tremendous amount of data pertaining to family. All very practical information. What struck me most about the teachings of Mr. Hubbard was the fact that what we all commonly believe in raising children, what we have seen and how our own parents have raised us––all of that was very different from what Mr. Hubbard was saying.
As an example: Mr. Hubbard says that when you give a toy to a child, or shoes or his own space (his or her room), then those belong to the child and the child has a right to do whatever he pleases with them. But how often do we see parents give a toy or clothes to the child and scold him for not taking care of them, telling the child to be careful not to muddy up his shoes, not to break his toys, to clean his room, etc.
Mr. Hubbard says, what is given to the child belongs to the child. That one datum only, although hard to swallow––for what parents can tolerate his child not caring for his own things––that one datum was immensely important.
My wife and I decided to follow that piece of advice to the letter. The room that our children occupied was theirs, entirely. They could even paint it black if they wanted to. They could trash their toys. They could not clean their room for ages. We wouldn't tell them that it was wrong. The only thing is that the rest of the house was common ground, meaning it belonged to all family members and each family member had to respect that by not leaving their belonging scattered all over.
Now what was the result of that? Most people would think that our children would have become sloppy, not caring about their possessions, not cleaning after themselves. But the result is that our children are very tidy; very clean.
We moved to a new house a few years ago and our daughters were the first to have their rooms in perfect order, well decorated.
For those who have not studied the teaching of Mr. Hubbard, it might be difficult to grasp how this is so. Well, it is very simple. Did you ever noticed that when you force your child to do something, he will resist and not want to do it? The trick is to let the child discover his or her space, his or her possessions. When the child realizes that those are HIS or HERS, he also realizes that he has control over them. When someone knows he has control over something without being forced to control it, then control becomes a good thing and the possessions are well taken care of.
This single datum has had a tremendous impact on the unity and happiness of our family.
Another important datum that we learned and applied is communication with the children.
You often hear in public messages against drugs, or tobacco that the parent must communicate to the child. The problem with that is no one is telling the parents how to communicate.
To tell a child that drugs are dangerous and that he will go to jail if he takes them is not communication. To scold a child and send him to his room because you told him not to smoke and you catch him smoking, is not communication.
Communication is a precise subject and I cannot explain all its aspects in a short article, best is to take a communication course at the Church of Scientology to really get it.
But the phenomenal difference that communication makes in relation to one's child cannot be overstressed. My children always saw me as a friend first, not as a parent––as a friend who was willing to listen to them, to understand what was going on but who was not constantly telling them what to do.
As a friend, I knew that the best advice I could give them was to give no advice. When my children would come to me with a problem, I would let them discuss it and all the aspects of it, then I would either tell them that they have to think of a way to solve it or I would help them by showing them data from the teachings of Mr. Hubbard.
For instance, there is a very large body of knowledge in the book Science of Survival from Mr. Hubbard that teaches one how to choose his friends. I would use that book in teaching my children what to look for in others to find out if their acquaintances would be good friends or not.
The result of being a friend to my children, someone who could listen and communicate, was nothing short of miraculous. For instance, when they became teenagers, I said "Well, you're teenagers now, what do you think of that?" They replied, "We don't want to be teenagers!" And I told them that it was perfectly fine, that they could jump from being children to being adults. They were quite happy with that.
Now imagine that: a teenager who doesn't want to be one, who would rather skip the whole teen period! And by the way, my children are now 24 and 22 years old and both are planning to build their own homes on my ranch so that we can all be together. They have never expressed any desire to leave home as most teenagers do when they are growing up. That tells a lot about the unity of our family.
My wife spent 10 years of her life teaching in a private school that uses the technology of L. Ron Hubbard so that our children could attend and get the best education. The duty of a mother is to raise her children, not to send them to a nursery while she is at work all day. It might seem old fashion, but if you want to raise children, that is the most important job you can have. And the most rewarding.
We are now grandparents. My daughter is doing a fantastic job with her baby and we are still a very happy family.
Marc