You're Having a Wonderful Childhood: The Stressed Parents Guide to Raising Great Children

You’re Having

A Wonderful Childhood

The Stressed Parents Guide to Raising Great Children

Julie Hairston

AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Phone: 1-800-839-8640

© 2011 by Julie Hairston. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 09/13/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-5305-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-5306-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-5307-7 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011915301

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 3A

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Dedications

To all the children and grown-up children who help to heal

my child within every day-

Rod, Chris, Alex, Nicole, Shane and Roddy

Acknowledgements

To all the moms and dads, teachers, counselors, and mentors who inspired me to write a book about family healing and growth. To all of those wonderful individuals who have a noble calling to nurture, to love, to constantly give of themselves and to leave a legacy. I thank you for continually working on you so that your children benefit. You are healing the world through your wisdom and patience. You are the true leaders of the world.

Thank you to my husband who was born with the gifts of great insight and wisdom. You continue to raise others up and give them hope and expectation as you empower their lives. Thank you for sharing your vision and your genius. It offers me a chance to grow every day as it does countless others.

Thank you to my dear friend and my inspiration, Brenda Harding for seeing the need and inspiring the book to its fruition. You are a beautiful mom who balances it all with love, dignity, grace and tons of laughter!

Thank you my new friend Tony Loughran for delightfully turning this book into the humor that is life. Your illustrations hit the mark every time! Your depth and understanding is remarkable.

And Thank You from the bottom of my heart to my children-

Chris, Alex, Nicole, Shane and Roddy

for helping me to appreciate the child within me

and to really live, as you all do so exuberantly, in each moment.

Preface

Have you ever observed children playing on a playground? You most likely noticed the standard equipment, a set of swings, ropes and ladders and maybe a slide; simple equipment that when viewed through a child’s eye can have unlimited possibilities. Through the power of imagination, children can turn that equipment into a pirate ship, a shoot-out at the O-K Corral, an obstacle course, or a secret underground bat cave. It never ceases to amaze me in a room full of toys and play things, that a child always gravitates to a discarded empty box and quickly turns it into the best toy imaginable. How unhappy that child becomes when mom or dad decide to throw that box away when it becomes unrecognizable, (at least to the adults)!

What is happening within children in those early years of life? They are blank slates that are pure imagination. By blank slates I mean that they have no preconceived notions, no judgments, and no prejudices of any kind. They are totally free to form new ideas uncolored by any past performances or beliefs. Children are seeking and forming new paradigms and stories within each moment. Have you talked to a six year old lately? Everything that comes out of their mouth is, What if… Then they launch into this most unbelievable tale of adventure, fun and excitement. Follow that with, Well, what do you think would happen if… ? They are thinking all the time about the ‘What-ifs’ and conjuring up the most fantastic tales. Often when actively listening to young children, a hero emerges that is typically themselves.

Why don’t we do the same with our lives as adults? We might think that kind of play is for kids. You might not realize it, but our imagination rules our world. We may have forgotten the pure joy we felt as kids when we would leave home in the morning and play outside the entire day. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot to build the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth. We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and could play freeze-tag till the cows came home. We were never at a lack for something to do or create. We were the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors. And yet, today we might not see the world as our blank slate to create whatever our minds can conjure. We may be bogged down in thinking like an adult. What does this produce? We are not even close to living our best life and/or modeling the best for our children when they don’t see us risking a little or stepping outside our comfort zones into our imaginations.

Many of us spend a great deal of time reliving our pasts in our minds. Some of us may still be reliving a childhood that was less than favorable, possibly one that really hurt us. We are letting it rule our current thoughts. Many of us may not have experienced the kind of childhood of which dreams are made. Imagine, just for a moment, beating your head against a rock every day. The rock is not attacking you. You are careening your body into that boulder every time you waste a minute thinking about how that rock hurt you in the past.

This book is designed to help you create a new childhood experience that will blast through those rocks into a brighter future through the power of your imagination. We can only break through to a brighter future if we let go of what has been holding us back. Being stuck in a bleak past, doesn’t allow us a golden future. With some exceptions, we typically pass down to our children everything we are, whether it is conscious or unconscious. We are right now repeating many things our parents and grandparents willed us, whether we like it or not.

When we can become aware of some of the patterns we are performing for our children, we can make informed decisions about how to change them, which in turn, creates a happier childhood for our children.

This book is designed to create a new childhood experience for you first and foremost, especially if the one you had was not empowering and uplifting. It is time we use our imaginations to create the kind of childhood we always wanted, the kind of childhood we want our own children to experience.

Most of us are passing down to our children exactly the kind of lives we lived as children because we aren’t aware of the unconscious habits we project, especially if our childhood was less than ideal. Some of us are fully aware of the very real challenges of our childhood and are now consciously struggling to do the exact opposite of what we experienced as children. This can be good or bad but the intention behind it may not get us to where we want to go.

Regardless of the challenges we experienced as children, we are adults now. We are now the parents of children who are looking to us for answers. Parenting can be difficult when we are still searching for answers for ourselves. The good thing is that we are a constant work in progress. We often feel unprepared to help develop another human being’s life on a magnificent scale, especially if we are struggling with our own challenges.

Not long ago I was having a conversation with a friend about parenthood which led into some of the negative sides of parenting such as the guilt we place upon ourselves. There are many guilt trips we place on ourselves as parents. Some days we might feel as though we should return our parent membership card. We sometimes feel uninspired and lackluster in our approach to rearing our children. Sometimes, we get so caught up in the running of day-to-day routines that we have forgotten our purpose with our children. We don’t necessarily have great role models that can help us to become the type of parent that we think our children need and deserve. How do we measure how we are doing with our children? How do we know that we are not passing on our own inadequacies and neurosis to our children? How can we as parents empower ourselves every day so that we can feel that we are getting a little bit better with our emotional intelligence?

Over the past fifteen years, my husband and I have directed a leadership and sales development training firm. Through our systems we have helped thousands of corporate executives and individuals feel empowered in many areas of their lives. Our programs have been instrumental in creating the kind of positive changes in the lives of individuals ranging from sales people to CEO’s. Increased revenue, better communication, personal development, even new health and energy habits are just a few of the results realized by participants from our 45-day Life Balance Challenge series.

After contemplating the benefits our programs have brought to leaders from various sectors of the business world, I asked myself why family leaders could not realize the same or better results in managing their families. The same mindset that CEO’s need to run an outstanding organization, could also benefit those who run households and organize their family lives.

In fact, when we go to a company with a goal of creating a mindset shift to ultimately improve sales, we often find that we also end up improving relationships within the families of the company’s employees. This is a byproduct and additional benefit that occurs because of the emotional shift the employees undergo. We are inherently emotional creatures. It follows that once we can make that emotional shift in one aspect of our lives, we can be well on our way to creating other shifts in other areas, similar to a domino effect.

My friend wanted to create an emotional shift for herself and her family. She shared with me how overwhelmed she felt almost on a daily basis. She was trying to balance quality time with her husband, her children, her own creative me time, shuffling kids to practice, preparing balanced meals, cleaning house, balancing tires and checkbooks, and trying to get a good night’s sleep. Her biggest concern was that she wasn’t helping her children with their emotional intelligence. My friend described her home life where emotions were strained. Frustration was prevalent due to lack of communication. She shared a story with me that illuminated the issue very clearly. She and her husband have four children. As you can imagine there was constant coming and going in their home. One morning her husband was racing around trying to find his shoes in order to get to work on time. My friend was busy in her living room trying to put out a fire that was burning down their living room console that had started just moments before in the VCR machine. The children were running in and out and my friend was frantic as she called her husband. When her husband came racing in to the living room and noticed the fire blazing out of control all he could muster was, I’ve got to find my shoes, I’ll be late for work. Obviously, this was a family that was in total overwhelm and in need of help. I began hearing similar stories from other friends. Another dear friend shared with me how her communication with her husband was getting so strained, they found themselves raging in front of their children more often than not. Another father was discovering he had absolutely no communication with his son. When they did talk, it erupted in angry and harsh words. As