Awareness is Your Best Friend

Yesterday, I wrote about the still, small voice.  It is important to listen to the Spirit whenever He speaks, but never more so than in our role as parents and grandparents.

When I was working in the schools, I served as a trainer and facilitator for the Parent-to-Parent program (P2P for short.)  It was developed by Bill Oliver who was, during the 1980s, the director of one of the largest drug addiction rehabilitation programs in the United States. Bill realized that what they were doing in treatment wasn't, as he put it, "rocket science. We were just teaching kids how to be kids and parents how to be parents."  He reasoned that if he could take what they were teaching in the program and make it accessible to parents before their children had problems, they might help many families avoid the heartache that is drug addiction.

P2P was designed to help parents recognize and intervene early when they notice their son or daughter moving in potential dangerous directions.  On of the skills they taught was called Awareness is Your Best Friend.  The basic precept is for parents to pay attention to their children.  Even those who don't often pray or seek the Spirit can receive warnings regarding their children if they will listen for them and not rationalize them away.  If, as a parent, you feel that there is something not quite right with your child, it is usually because there is something not quite right.  Connect with that child instantly!

 

Here are some suggestions for connecting:

• Listen.  Make eye contact.  Don't interrupt.  Listen to what they are saying and what they are not saying. 
• Look.  How are they dressing?  Wearing their hair?  Jewelry? Make-up?  What kinds of posters are one their bedroom walls?  Books on their shelves? Video games on the phones, computers, etc.
• Affirm and Encourage.  According to developmental psychologist, Rudoph Dreikers, children who act out in self-destructive ways are discouraged children.  We love our children.  They just don't always know it.  We need to say it often and we need to show it more.
• Teach family values by both precept and example.  Children will not not learn.  You cannot say one thing and do another and expect your children to listen.  "Do as I say, not as I do" doesn't fly with kids, nor should it.
• Intervene, when necessary, immediately. 

I'm going to close with one of my favorite scriptures. It was written specifically for Church leaders, but I have shared it with dozens if not hundreds of parents over the years.  I find it very applicable guidance for parents:

 

• No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, [here, read parents] only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned*;
• By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile**—
• Reproving betimes*** with sharpness****, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;
• That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death. (Doctrine and Covenants 121: 41-44)

Good advice for us all.

 

* unfeigned means genuine, sincere, not phony or put-on

** without guile means without duplicity or cunning

*** betimes is on old word meaning speedily, immediately, in the moment, not later

**** in this context, shapness means with clarity and perception (not severe or harsh)

 

Text copyright Gebara Education, January 2013