How to Raise Healthy Children

Recently, I came across a post on X offering parenting advice. It’s not too bad. However, it does what every other voice on these topics seems to do - which is to put on a great show of understanding, yet go only halfway with reasoning and never follow through to the insights that matter most. This results in advice that seems smart, but is in reality lacking of substance and value, ultimately.

Let me show you the post I saw and then let’s discuss it:

Children watch everything you do. Not what you say in those ‘teaching moments’, but what you do when: You're stuck in traffic. Dinner gets burned. Work [ticks] you off. Things don't go your way. They're learning how to handle life's problems by watching YOU handle them. You can lecture them about patience, respect, and self-control all day. But if you're losing your temper over small stuff? That's what they'll copy. Want to raise emotionally strong kids? Start by modeling emotional strength yourself. The best parenting advice isn't a technique. It's looking in the mirror and asking: "Would I want my kids to act like me?"

Not bad, right? So why do I say it goes only halfway, leaves out the most important insights, and is therefore worthless?

Because your natural behaviors don’t just spontaneously happen, and we as people can’t just decide to behave differently from one day to the next. No person on earth is powerful enough of will to, say - dislike screaming when they get angry - and to then just stop that behavior. Nobody.

No - for such a behavior to be eliminated in any genuine way, there is a thing that must necessarily happen first that cannot be skipped over. Do you know what that thing is?

The thinking (beliefs, attitudes, perspectives) which are allowing for the screaming must first be identified and corrected.

It all comes down to your thinking - the underlying attitudes and perspectives you live with. This is the origin point for every single one of your natural, consistent behaviors. Did you know that? Fortunately, your attitudes and perspectives (your thinking) are things you have complete control over to shape, to mold, and to change.

For example, if it is your perspective that external things are able to make you mad (generate the feelings you experience within yourself), what your children will see is you lashing out at external things whenever you are angry: Other people or animals, for example, or even at inanimate objects - like chairs or walls.

However, if your perspective is that only you can generate the feelings you’re experiencing, what your children will see instead when you get mad is you taking personal responsibility for your anger, measured reflection, and taking time to reason on situations before deciding on measured responses. This is the only possible type of naturally-occurring behavior born from those perspectives.

This is just one example of how this works: Your natural behaviors are directly and proportionally determined by whatever the attitudes and perspectives are that you are walking around with - from the biggest things in life, all the way down to the littlest things.

There is no such thing as believing something, but naturally and consistently behaving in ways that completely contradict that belief. But there is such a thing as lying to ourselves about what it is we believe. This is called Denial.

Unhealthy people will often behave in ways that point to only one attitude or perspective as a possibility for what could give birth to such behaviors, but then vigorously deny - even to their own selves - that they live with those attitudes or perspectives (beliefs) at all. I witness this nearly every day.

The reason for this is that the unhealthy person views those attitudes or perspectives as something frowned upon by others that will leave others with a negative impression of the unhealthy person. The unhealthy person’s Shame response therefore kicks in, and it is this Shame response that activates Denial - Denial being the resulting blindness to the real attitudes and perspectives the unhealthy person truthfully lives with.

For example, a man who treats his children in ways that demonstrate a lack of value for their feelings, or for their inherent dignity, may claim that he “loves” his children, and that they are really important to him. But these two things - his behaviors (which are directly born from whatever his true underlying attitudes are) and the beliefs he claims to live with, are completely contradictory. Impossible to reconcile, in other words.

It is literally impossible for the perspective he claims to live with to coexist with the regular behavior of failing to demonstrate respect for his children’s feelings and dignity.

So what is actually happening?

What is actually happening is that the behaviors don’t lie. It is impossible for them to lie. The man doesn’t love his children. He thinks he loves his children, he may like the idea of loving his children, he may be ashamed of what not loving his children means about him, but he for a certainty does not love his children in the true sense of genuine love.

The man is lying to himself about what his true perspectives and attitudes are, because of what those perspectives and attitudes indicate about the sort of person this means he is. The truth makes him too uncomfortable to look in the face.

Genuine Love, and a lack of respect for one’s feelings and dignity cannot coexist. To suggest otherwise is as absurd as suggesting that something dead can be alive simultaneously.

If the man would simply accept the ugliness of himself, he could then work to address that ugliness, correct the underlying thinking giving birth to it, and become a better person. But most unhealthy people never emerge from their cowardice to achieve this.

If the man did what was needed - accepted the ugliness of himself and worked to correct it - his children would begin to observe new thinking (attitudes and perspectives) replace the old. It would be obvious by his naturally-evolving behaviors. Then the children would also begin to adopt the new, healthy thinking instead of the old, unhealthy thinking. They would grow up with the same healthy attitudes and perspectives leading to tranquility and peace with life.

Also, consider this: What attitudes do you suppose they would adopt with regards to self honesty, humility, courage, and willingness to face unpleasant truths about ourselves? There’s no question about it, parents who fail to do this difficult work are unjustly passing on a sort of damage to their children that is almost unforgivable, because it is a putrid gift that will keep on giving, throughout the children’s entire lives, and to their eternal torture.

So while the X post quoted at the beginning here is completely true, it stops halfway by only telling you half of the story. You can’t just “turn off” your behaviors simply by telling yourself you should behave differently. More is involved. The underlying thinking (attitudes and perspectives) must be honestly dealt with first. One cannot address behaviors independently of the underlying thinking from which those behaviors are directly born.

Furthermore, it isn’t your ‘behaviors’ your children are absorbing and adopting. Instead, it is your attitudes and perspectives towards everything in life. This is what determines behaviors - from large things to small things. Your children simply use your behaviors as the method for subconsciously deducing what your underlying attitudes and perspectives are, for the purpose of adopting those same attitudes and perspectives themselves.

Remember, the real injustice has nothing to do with unhealthy parents teaching their children unhealthy behaviors. No! The real injustice is unhealthy parents passing on unhealthy attitudes to their children, since it is our attitudes from which all behaviors will be born.