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The Secret of Happy Children: A guide for parents
Steve Biddulph
This book – a classic worldwide bestseller – aims to let parents be themselves and children grow up happy, full of self-esteem and feeling loved.Steve Biddulph lets you into the mind of your child to show how the positive ways in which you relate to a child will have a strong effect on growing self esteem, responsibility, stable emotions and present and future happiness.He shows how negative language will affect children and explains why children may rebel and how you should deal with any discipline problem that should occur.You will find out how kids experience emotions such as anger, fear, apathy. Other issues are discussed such as fathering, ages and stages, stopping tantrums before they start, and curing shyness.The book is full of scenarios, familiar dialogues and case histories with cartoons.
Copyright (#ulink_ce0e84ed-a3a1-5f7c-8891-7f864fd0906d)
Thorsons
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Australia by Bay Books 1984
Revised edition 1988
Angus & Robertson edition 1995
Published by Thorsons 1998
© Steve and Shaaron Biddulph 1984, 1988, 1993, 1998
Steve and Shaaron Biddulph assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
Illustrations by Allan Stomann
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780722536698
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007388318
Version: 2016-09-08
The secret of
happy
children
Steve Biddulph
Dedication (#ulink_a56c7628-a886-5f48-8631-998dd4017068)
Thanks to all in the Transactional Analysis community from the early seventies onwards, especially Colin McKenzie, Pat McKenzie, the Maslens, the Mellors, and Jean Grigor. These people both saved my life, and set me on this wonderful road. To my parents for a good start. To my partner Shaaron Biddulph for all that she has taught and given me. To Doro, June and everyone at Parent Network for bringing my work to England. To everyone at Thorsons UK. And to all of us parents everywhere, for struggling on and still remembering how to laugh.
Contents
Cover (#u34fe1b9f-c504-5308-a58b-6ea8b37d452b)
Title Page (#ue639ecaf-ad35-5236-9995-396b98ac8891)
Copyright (#u73e364df-c9b6-55cb-84f2-4e4e3ef6fe21)
Dedication (#u50896f4a-1d0b-58db-ad79-22b2e0130098)
Foreword (#u2a78f859-99b2-5641-a838-a4282eccf189)
1 Seeds in the Mind You hypnotise your children every single day. You may as well do it properly! (#u716aebf6-b169-5eaf-a33f-d1d6af6a82ae)
2 What Children Really Want It’s cheaper than video games, and healthier than ice-cream! (#ua79ed1a0-926f-56f6-a27e-7ff335e93db6)
3 Curing by Listening How to help your child deal with an unkind world (#litres_trial_promo)
4 Kids and Emotions What is really going on? (#litres_trial_promo)
5 The Assertive Parent Firmness. Do it – now. (#litres_trial_promo)
6 Family shape Dad? Who’s Dad? (#litres_trial_promo)
7 Ages and Stages Do you mean this is normal? (#litres_trial_promo)
8 Energy and How to Save It Good news – your children need you healthy and happy. (#litres_trial_promo)
9 Special Situations How you can help if you’re a teacher, a politician, a grandparent, neighbour or friend. (#litres_trial_promo)
Postscript (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Appendix (#litres_trial_promo)
The Story Behind this Book (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Foreword (#ulink_80a2e243-aa7d-55d1-8d32-b081c2c4b9b4)
Why are so many adults unhappy?
Think of all the people who have problems – who lack confidence, cannot make a decision, worry about little details, can’t relax, or can’t make friends with other people. Think of those who are aggressive, putting people down and ignoring the needs of those around them. Add to the above all those just holding on until the next drink or the next tranquilliser.
In one of the richest, most peaceful countries in the world, unhappiness is epidemic. One adult in every five will at some time need psychiatric care, one marriage in three ends in divorce, one adult in four needs medication to relax. It’s a great life!
Unemployment and difficult economic circumstances don’t help, but unhappiness is present in all income groups – rich, poor and in-between. It’s a problem, in fact, that no amount of money seems to solve.
On the other hand, we are often puzzled by some people’s constant cheerfulness and optimism. Why is it that, in some individuals, the human spirit blossoms in spite of apparent hardship?
The fact of the matter is that many people have unhappiness programmed into them. They have been unwittingly taught to be unhappy and are simply living out the script. When reading this book you may realise that, by accident, you are hypnotising your children into disliking themselves, and causing them to have problems which may last a lifetime.
How this happens and how to change it – in fact, how to create happy children – is what this book is all about.
1 Seeds in the mind (#ulink_d83794a7-5b86-5f07-bb1f-fe10b93b3452)
You hypnotise your children every single day. You may as well do it properly! (#ulink_d83794a7-5b86-5f07-bb1f-fe10b93b3452)
It’s nine o’clock at night and I’m sitting in my office with a tearful fifteen-year old girl. She is dressed in fashionable, older-than-her-years clothes, but the effect is only to make her look more helpless and childlike. We are talking about the fact that she is pregnant and what can be done about it.
This is familiar ground for me, and for anyone who works with teenagers. It doesn’t mean, though, that it can be hurried. What matters is that, for the young woman sitting in front of me, this is the worst day of her life and she needs all the support, time and clarity, that I can offer. About all, she must make her own decision.
I ask about her parents’ likely reaction – when they find out. She almost spits out the answer.
‘Oh, they’ll say they told me so. They always said I’d never amount to nothing!’
Later, as I drive home, that one sentence stays in my mind. ‘They always said I’d never amount to nothing.’ I’ve often heard parents talk to kids like that.
‘You’re hopeless.’
‘God, you’re a nuisance.’
‘You’ll be sorry, just you see.’
‘You’re as bad as your Uncle Merv’ (who’s in jail).
‘You’re just like your Auntie Eve’ (who’s fond of a drink).
‘You’re crazy, do you hear?’
This is the kind of programming that many youngsters grow up with; it is passed on unwittingly by overwrought parents and continues as a kind of family curse down the generations. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy because saying it often enough makes it come true. Children, with their brilliant, perceptive, strangely co-operative ways, will usually live up to our expectations!
These are extreme examples, which we’d all recognise at once as destructive. Most negative programming, however, is much more subtle. Observe children playing in a vacant block, climbing trees. ‘You’ll fall! Watch out! You’ll slip!’ cries the voice of the anxious mother from over the fence.
The slightly drunk father ends a half-hearted argument with his wife, who goes off in a ‘huff’ to buy some cigarettes. ‘There y’are son, never trust a woman. They’ll just use y’up.’ The seven-year-old looks up solemnly and nods. Yes, Dad.
And in a million sitting rooms and kitchens:
‘God, you’re lazy.’
‘You’re so selfish.’
‘You silly idiot, stop that.’
‘Dumb!’
‘Give it to me, stupid!’
‘Don’t be such a pest.’
What we have discovered is that this kind of comment doesn’t only have the obvious effect of making the child feel bad momentarily. Put-downs also have a hypnotic effect and act unconsciously, like seeds in the mind, seeds which will grow and shape the person’s self-image, eventually becoming true facts about the child’s personality.
How do we hypnotise our children?
Hypnosis and suggestion have long been a source of fascination to people. They seem slightly mystical and unreal and yet are well accepted scientifically. Most people have witnessed them, perhaps as part of a stage show, for getting help to cure a habit, or for relaxation.
We are familiar with the key elements of hypnosis: the use of some device to distract the mind (‘vatch ze vatch’), the commanding tone (‘you will feel nothing’), and the rhythmic, repetitious tone of the hypnotist’s speech. We also know about post-hypnotic suggestion, the ability to implant a command which the unsuspecting person later carries out, often to his or her dismay, at a given signal. It all makes for good theatre, but also for excellent therapy in the hands of a qualified practitioner.
What most people don’t realise, however, is that hypnosis is an everyday event. Whenever we use certain patterns of speech, we reach into the unconscious minds of our children and program them, even though we have no such intention.
The old concept – that hypnosis required an altered state of mind, or trance – has been abandoned. This was only one form of unconscious learning. The rather frightening truth is that the human mind can be programmed in normal waking life beneath the awareness of the person involved. Already in the US, many sales and advertising people are being trained in the use of hypnotic methods embedded in normal business conversation – a chilling concept (For more details, see ‘Further Information’ in the Appendix.) Fortunately hypnosis requires great skill to use in a manipulative way, and can be countered if the subject becomes aware of the process. Accidental hypnosis, though, is so much part of everyday life that parents – without realising it – implant messages in their child’s mind, and these messages, unless strongly contradicted, will echo on for a lifetime.
Hypnotised without knowing it
The late Dr Milton Erikson was recognised as the world’s foremost hypnotist. He was once called upon to treat a man who suffered extreme pain from cancer, was refusing to have hypnosis and was not being helped by painkillers. Erikson simply stopped by his private ward and talked about the man’s hobby of growing tomatoes.
A careful listener could have detected the unusual rhythm in Erikson’s speech and the stressing of odd phrases, like ‘deep down’ (in-the soil), growing ‘good and strong’, ‘easy’ (to pick), ‘warm and loose’ (in the glasshouse). Also, the observer could have noted that Erikson’s face and posture changed very slightly as he spoke those key phrases. The man in question simply thought that it was a pleasant exchange. Until he died, however, five days later, as doctors knew he must, the man felt no pain.
‘You’ messages
A child’s mind is full of questions. Perhaps the greatest of these are the questions, ‘Who am I?’, ‘What kind of person am I?’, ‘Where do I fit in?’. These are the questions of self-definition, or identity, upon which we base our lives as adults, and from which we make all our key decisions. Because of this a child’s mind is remarkably affected by statements which begin with the words, ‘You are’.
Whether the message is ‘You are so lazy’ or ‘You’re a great kid’, these statements from the important ‘big’ people will go deeply and firmly into the child’s unconsciousness. I have heard so many adults, overcome by a life crisis, recalling what they were told as a child: ‘I’m so useless, I know I am’.
Psychologists, like many professional groups, tend to complicate things just a little, and call these statements ‘attributions’. These attributions crop up again and again in adult life.
‘Why don’t you apply for that promotion?’
‘No, I’m not good enough.’
‘But he’s just like your last husband. Why did you marry him?’
‘I’m just stupid, I guess.’
‘Why do you let them push you around like that?’
‘That’s the story of my life.’
These words – ‘not good enough’, ‘just stupid’, did not come out of the blue. They are recorded in people’s brains because they were said to them at an age when they were unable to question their truthfulness. ‘But surely,’ I can hear you saying, ‘children must disagree with the “you” messages they are given?’
Certainly children think about the things that are said to them, checking for accuracy. But they may have no comparisons. At times we are all lazy, selfish, untidy, stupid, forgetful, mischievous, and so on. The preacher in the old-time church was on a sure thing when he thundered out, ‘You have sinned!’ – everyone had!
‘Adults know everything; they can even read your mind.’ Such are the thoughts of a child. So when a child is told ‘You’re clumsy’, he or she becomes nervous, and is clumsy. The child told ‘You’re a pest’ feels the rejection, becomes desperate for reassurance and so does pester. The child told ‘You’re an idiot’ may violently disagree on the outside, but inside can only sadly agree. You’re the adult, so you must be right.
‘You’ messages work at both the conscious and unconscious levels. In our work we’ve often asked children to describe themselves, and they will say things like ‘I’m a bad kid’, ‘I’m a nuisance’.
