Does the tough love parenting method assist children with growing and evolving into mature, responsible balanced adults?
It is surely a way to work with children, but does it benefit children more so than simple love?
No, it does not. Then why do parents still use tough love parenting?
Every parent has used it to some degree. It is the process of approaching and raising children from the ego-perspective using force.
Tough love parenting forces children to be a certain way through, usually, verbal, emotional and sometimes physical abuse. Abuse is tough but not in a loving way.
Parents use tough love parenting to deal with situations because they have no other coping mechanisms to use. Parents call this abuse tough love because they want to be seen and feel as though they are good loving parents.
Parents who use the tough love parenting method want to feel it is actually good for their child’s development when in fact it is detrimental. Please remember that soul-based parenting includes allowing, observing, learning and understanding. Ego-based parenting relates to forcing, judging, proving and blaming.
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© 2015 Jason Nelson
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Thank you for all the comments! I’ve been speaking a lot about this subject on the radio lately for my new book, particularly the topic of soul-based discipline. I’ll talk a bit about it here but if you’d like to understand this more, please read my book or listen to some shows on my media page.
Soul-based discipline is the process of teaching from a neutral and hopefully loving place, versus the ego-based discipline which is the process of punishing from a reactive and usually angry place. Does this make sense?
Very important: parents are doing their best and children are doing their best, or both would do better. That being said, when parent reacts toward the child, it is not the child’s fault that their parent is emotional and even abusive. Each of us is responsible for our own emotions and thoughts, and especially actions. The tough truth with tough love is that it is attempting to match a child’s perceived misbehavior with misbehavior from the adult through punishing the child. Conflict doesn’t resolve with more conflict. It resolves with love and kindness. Suffering doesn’t resolve with more suffering. It resolves with acceptance and understanding. Pain doesn’t harmonize with more pain, it harmonizes with connection and listening.
Children who have parents reacting from ego, can remember it is not their responsibility to accept Mom and Dad’s story about the them. It is just a story, and the true story is that every child is a beautiful perfect creation.
Every step we take as adults to choose to come from the soul-based perspective and love our children, especially when it is the most challenging, we enable them to grow into loving adults too.
Instead try asking him why he is so angry; let him vent; get it out; try to be non-judgemental; tell him you understand. It might take a while and his anger may continue for a period. Gradually, when he sees you are trying to understand, he will change, heal, and you and he will begin to have a better relationship. You can't be angry with a child that is hurting inside.
One evening I was driving home and having a conversation with God and saying "how could my son ever survive, having had such nut cases for parents." It finally occurred to me that as long as I was seeing my son as a victim, I was helping to cripple him. I decided that perhaps my son, being a spiritual being also, was probably capable of taking is own spiritual path and that he was also that connection to God himself. Life has been so much easier, for both me and him, since I started seeing him as a powerful and mighty being.
I have been butting heads with this very parenting style for years, I always knew it just wasn't right but could not explain what it was about that I had such a problem with. This definition hit it right on the head for me. Until now all I could come up with was "You first need love and then it has to be tough" because it was my sense that this practice was far too easy for some people so it just makes perfect sense that it is EGO-BASED. Thank you!
Thanks for putting this explanation out there...there are far too many who need to know this and understand it!
Blessings,
Stella ;-) (ps- I'm a friend of Leah's)