Self-Reliance and Potential

4. Self-Reliance and Potential

Individuality. Awareness and development of gifts and uniqueness. Taking responsibility for own actions. Overcoming the tendency to blame others for difficulties. Commitment to personal excellence.

Jekyll and Hyde? So many adolescents are. The challenge for parents is to encourage the Jekyll and help it win over the long run.
There are two separate but closely related principles involved here. The first is the self-reliance of accepting the responsibility for and the consequences of one’s own actions and performance, rather than blaming luck or circumstances or someone else. The second is trying to be one’s best self and asking the best from oneself – the conscious pursuit of individuality and potential – and the conscious rejection of avoidable mediocrity.
“Self-reliance and potential,” as we have called it, is a powerful value. Those who have it help others by accepting responsibility and doing their best in the world. Those who don’t have it hurt others by blaming them and by failing to develop the gifts and talents that could serve or enlighten or benefit other people. One who reaches his potential helps others in many ways as he develops himself. One who never seeks his full potential indirectly hurts others but not doing the good or setting the example he is capable of.
This value is about trying to know ourselves, to do our best, and to accept the consequences both of who we are and of what we do.
One way to think of self-reliance and potential is as two sides of the same coin. Self-reliance has a lot to do with taking the blame or the responsibility for negative things that happen. Potential has a lot to do with taking a little credit and taking the right kind of pride in what we are able to accomplish.
When we take blame and responsibility, we resolve and grow and improve. When we don’t we become bitter, jealous, and defensive. When we take positive pride in what we’re doing with ourselves and our gifts, we feel the growth of individuality and self-esteem. When we don’t, we tend to become followers or plodders in the standard ruts of life.

General Guidelines

Use yourself as the model and example. Show your shildren that you “value this value” and that you work for it. Take every opportunity to show your children how you are trying to improve. Talk about the things you think you’re good at and working to be better at.
Show pleasure in things you do well. Also, be obvious about taking the blame for mistakes you make. Say, “You know, that was my fault. Here’s what I could have done differently…”
Let your children see that you can accept responsibility and blame and let them see that you take pride in who you are and that you are working to be better.
Watch your children. Try to recognize their gifts and help them develop their unique individuality. We must know potential before we can reach it. Children are not interchangeable “lumps of clay” that can be molded into whatever we please. Rather, they are “seedlings” that have their own separate and distinct gifts and potentials. We can never change an oak into a pear tree. But we can watch and recognize as early as possible who they are – and then nourish and encourage them to be the best of whatever they are. As parents we must consciously commit ourselves to finding out who our children truly and deeply are rather than trying to conform them to who and what we wish they were or to extensions of our own egos.
It is tragic that, despite our professing that our children are our highest priority, the average parent spends only seven minutes per day with an individual child.
Praise. Reinforce your children’s self – image and individuality and build their self-reliance. Like flowers under rain and sunshine, children blossom and bloom under recognition and praise. “Catch them doing something good” and when you do, give effusive praise! When they make mistakes of fall short, help them accept responsibility for it and then praise that acceptance to the point that their pride in their self-reliance outshines their concern over the shortcoming.

Methods for Preschoolers

The “Repenting Bench” Revisited

This method helps small children take responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming others. The “repenting bench” (form month 3, “Peaceability”) is a technique to correct any form of fighting (from physical to verbal). It involves sitting the two “opponents” on an uncomfortable bench and allowing a child to get off only when he can tell you what he (not the other child) did wrong. In addition to being a way to end fights, this is also an exercise in self-reliance and in accepting responsibility rather than blaming others.

Natural-Consequence Punishments and Rewards

These can help preschoolers understand that their actions produce good and bad consequences. Try to set up a system in your family that fosters self-reliance by relating rewards and punishments directly to performance. The example that follows may not fit for you, but it may help you adopt a system that works in your family.
Set up your own family system for responsibility. Keep in mind that the simpler your system is, the better it will work. Be conscious of helping children to see that it is their actions that determine both the “good” and the “bad” that happens to them.

Give Your Children Opportunities to Do and Decide Things for Themselves

This will help small children gain the beginning sprouts of self-reliance and self-confidence. As much and as early as possible, let children dress themselves, do small household jobs, decide which shirt to wear or which color of juice to drink, get themselves in and out of cars, highchairs, and so on, and help you even when it would be easier without their help. As they accomplish even the smallest things, praise them and emphasize their ability to do things for themselves and by themselves.

Keeping “Records”

This is a good way to help young children feel the joy of improving on their own. Competitive instincts generally begin to run high in four- and five-year-olds. If these drives are too focused on winning over or beating others, lots of insecurity as well as intolerance can result. Help children learn the concept of competing with themselves by setting up some simple “personal records” (anything from how fast they can get ready for bed to how far they can throw a ball). Let them try to beat their own record – not to compare themselves with others. In this type of activity you will find many opportunities to talk about doing one’s best, practicing, trying, improving, and so on. With older preschoolers you can even introduce the term potential and help them understand that the word means looking for our own best.

Praise Creativity and Emphasize Individuality and Originality

Help your children to like their own unique selves. Just as small children need to hear the sound of letters over and over and over again before they learn to read, so also they need to hear their own unique abilities praised time after time before they actually believe in themselves and increase how much they like who they are. Simple as it sounds, the key “connection” of this chapter is that children who like themselves become capable of relying on themselves, of accepting responsibility, and of reaching for their full potential. Praise every effort you see them making – from drawing a picture to trying to tie their show. Look constantly for new things they learn to do or for any sort of aptitude at which they seem particularly good.
Help a child see that he is unique by making up an “I am special” book with a front cover tracing his silhouette, and with his height, weight, eye color, favorite food, most fun activity, best skills, and so on written inside. Help him understand that there is no one, anywhere, who is exactly like him.
Help children to learn to say, when they face something they can’t do, “I can’t do ––––, but I can do––––.” This will help them later on to accept their weak points with their strengths.

“The Good-Sport Game”
This game helps teach small children the principles of sportsmanship and of not blaming others. To set up this simple game, you will need a pair of dice – actually one die will do; a kitchen pan with either a bean bag or some other soft object to throw into it, and any game-board with markers that move around it from start to finish. (A Monopoly board will work, or you can make up a simple board on cardboard or paper that has about fifty spaces from start to finish.)
Each child on his first turn tosses the die and moves his marker the number of spaces (from one to six) that comes up. On his second turn a child tries to toss the beanbag into the pan from a few feet away. If it goes in, he moves his marker six spaces. If it hits the pan, but doesn’t go in, he moves four. And if it comes close, he moves tow. On his third turn he rolls the die again; on his fourth he tosses the beanbag again and so forth.