Beyond Good and Evil pt2

So no I don't believe our choices make us good or bad people. But now for the part where I kind of do.

As children we are all blank slates. We start out from nothing with no knowledge of good or bad with no record of past successes or failures. We are filled with love for all people and all things. We have only one desire, one hope, one craving, to be loved back. And this is where most parents screw up.

When we yell at our children, we are voicing our disapproval with them. To them, when we do so, we are holding back our love or making it conditional on their behavior. Unless we are very careful and very specific we may unknowingly cause permanent harm to both their ego and their future lives.

A typical response to not liking something that a child is doing is to say that they are being bad. The problem with this is that even though you may realize that what you mean is the child is taking an action that you do not approve of, what they hear is that they ARE bad. Everyone knows that good people are loved and bad people are not. So when you tell the child that they are being bad, you are both declaring that they are a bad person and that you do not love them.

Now remember the whole blank slate concept? While an adult is free to decide for themselves what they think based on the input from others, a child has no such freedom. When children are young they have no concept of self other than what we give to them. So when we tell them that they are bad we are telling them that we don't love them and that they aren't worth loving.

An adult can just shrug that off. And to some degree, if it is just something that happens once a child may as well. But with repeated instances of the same type of thing, over time, eventually, the child will agree with you, even if it is just subconsciously.

Once that happens that person's whole life has been messed up. Because they see themselves as a bad person not worthy of love they will, without ever consciously thinking about it, make choices that support that theory. They will say and do things that cause other people to agree that they are bad and not worth loving. This leads to such fun things as drug abuse, other criminal activities, depression and suicide.

All that just from yelling at our kids? Should we let them just run rampant and do whatever they want? No that is really not an option either. So? What to do?

Well, as i said earlier you need to be very careful with what you say and how you go about it. Telling your child that they are bad or being bad is not the way. Comparing their actions with someone that is bad is often a better choice. While it may seem the same to you, it is not the same to them.

Explain to them that the action that they are taking is not a good action and that a person that wants to be good would not take that action. Reason it out and give them the choice of whether they want to be like a good person or like a bad person. Remember children are not idiots. They are simply younger less experienced versions of adults. Good, to them means loved. Bad, to them means unloved and unlovable. Most of the time, if  shown proper love and understanding and given the opportunity, they will make the right choice.

So to sum up, our good or bad choices do not make us good or bad people, unless we believe that they do. And that belief is harmful to us because it locks us into the framework of our routines. We are all just making our way through life making the best choices we can, some better than others. Very few people, if any are the maniacally cackling reveling in their badness kind of evil.

It makes for a good story though.