Remember that the inherent nature of children is that they are exceedingly intelligent, zestful, loving, and cooperative.
--John Breeding

The Colt of a Booklet

REMEMBRANCE

Remember to Relax

Let go of any sense of urgency, crisis and pressure. Remember that any urgency and pressure is about adult fear, and adult needs to avoid upsetting feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and loss of control. The atmosphere of urgency results from adult distress; it is not about your child.

Remember that you have all the time in the world. You are committed and involved with your child for the long haul. Remember the big picture even as you sometimes struggle to make it through one day at a time: You and your child, working it out together, forever.

Remember also that these DBD’s are "funny diseases." They often disappear at the end of a school day or a school year. Present with one teacher, they mysteriously go into remission with another teacher. You have many years to watch growth and change as your child develops and matures.

Remember the True Nature of Your Child

Children are neither small adults nor untrained animals needing to be disciplined and shaped. They are young human beings with enormous dependency needs. Completely dependent on adults for survival and proper development, children need abiding protection, nurturance and encouragement. Remember that the inherent nature of children is that they are exceedingly intelligent, zestful, loving, and cooperative. Children are born with an expectation that caring adults will respond to their needs in a good loving thoughtful way. Please do not allow this trust to be violated!

Remember the Importance of Movement and Physical Activity

Remember the importance of movement and physical activity to your developing child. This is such an integral aspect of your child’s true nature that it deserves a section of its own. Our bodies are meant to move; this is especially important with children. Physiological and neurological development requires incredibly high levels of physical activity: from the infant’s needs to be carried in arms to the babies crawling, the toddler’s exploring and all the way through our development. Preschoolers and early school age children need to move, a lot.
I believe the facts are that movement and physical activity are vastly more important than academic and "so-called" intellectual development for children in the 4-8 year old age group. I say "so-called" intellectual development because I think it is absurd to correlate intellect with academics, to reduce the concept of intelligence to the "mental" domain of life. I really agree with Joseph Chilton Pearce (The Magical Child) that tasks involving abstract intellectual activity (the use of symbols as in academia) are meant to come in a bit later, after age 8 on the average, in terms of cognitive development. The task of 4-8 year olds is to fully develop their relationships with their bodies; and with the earth, with the natural world. Pearce describes the task as a transfer from the matrix of "mother" to that of "Earth." We are meant to experience ourselves as fully connected to the natural world. This connection is established by long uninterrupted experience of active physical interaction with the natural world. The alternative, so common in urban existence as to be the norm, is to go through life feeling like "strangers in a world we never made."

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our education system is that we have instilled a sense of failure, and a self-image as failure, in extremely large numbers of children. In reality, these children are "canaries in the coal mine," indicators of a leaky poisonous gas that is affecting all of us. To violate the nature of children by forcing standards and behavior that are not suited to their developmental needs is cruel; to saddle them with blame and shame for the results is a tragedy.

Remember again to relax. Trust that your children are completely equipped to develop in astounding, wonderful ways. Give them the incredible gift of a relaxed, confident, unpressured environment in which to explore and grow. The result will be a young person who is relaxed, confident, and at ease, completely connected with you and with the world.

Remember That the Intention of Biopsychiatry is to Drug Your Child

The effect of this so-called treatment is to absolve the adults on whom your child depends from responsibility. Once your child is labeled as defective and placed on drugs, then a STOP sign is placed on the need to figure out what might really be going on. The problem is defined as a sick child needing medicine; no need to look further.

Remember to Never Give Up

Labeling and drugging your child is a clear signal that adults have given up. Perhaps the most important thing you can ever do for a young person is to demonstrate again and again and again that you will never give up on him or her.

Remember to Keep Thinking

Related to never give up is to never stop thinking about the needs of your child; a parent’s job never ends. Another of the most important things for young people to know is that you care enough to keep thinking as well about them as you possibly can. Mistakes are inevitable. Children have no need for perfect parents; they need really good imperfect parents who keep thinking and never give up.

Remember to View Your Child Through the Eyes of Delight

To see your child through the Eyes of Delight is the greatest gift in the world you can give to your child and to yourself. As with the feeling of urgency and pressure, viewing a child with anything other than delight really says more about the viewer than the child. Obviously children do experience distress and they do act this out; it means they need good attention to work something out. They are still inherently delightful. Adult responses of judgment and shame are not about the child; these responses are projections of feelings the adult carries inside him or herself.

Remember NOT to trust the thinking of anyone who sees your child through anything other than the eyes of delight. There really are no "bad" children. Your child is completely good and delightful.

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John Breeding · 5306 Fort Clark Dr., Austin, TX 78745 · 512-799-3610 voice
e-mail the webweaver: japarker@mail.utexas.edu or Dr. Breeding at: john@wildestcolts.com