I don’t know if you know, but I have another blog on wordpress called The Power of Respect. Today I have started a series of posts there on raising a democratic citizen. You might like to check it out.

This is concept is based on a chapter with that title, in my original book Parenting for the New Millennium. I didn’t see parents treating children in ways that would help those children develop the qualities and skills that would be good to have in the citizens of our democracy.

For example:

Parents are in charge of making the decisions for the family. How does that equate to the situations the children will experience when they are grown and voting citizens? It doesn’t.

How can we expect people to suddenly, at age 18, with no history of intelligent practice, suddenly to become wise decision makers….it is asking an almost impossible task of our youth.

They will most likely go through the process of ‘learning from their mistakes,’ that’s a familiar one, right? If they had been ‘learning from their mistakes’ all along, by 18 they would have learned a lot, and make many fewer mistakes.

If the Power of Respect had been the foundation in their family, they would have learned decision making as part of a loving family group, where everyone participated, everyone’s input was valued, no decisions were made if someone in the family objected, including them. (This is even better than majority rules. Maybe…)

They’d be learning wisdom and harmony in action.

With the Power of Respect they’d be learning a lot more, too. How to:

• respect themselves
• respect others
• be kind
• be responsible
• be trustworthy
• cooperate

…There is no end to the good qualities children raised with the Power of Respect can and do develop…

I’ve already given information to help you get started in an earlier post. If you go to the website http://www.besthelpfortroubledteens.com , even if you do not have teenagers, this site has a lot of valuable, helpful information

I’ll leave you with something else you can do to establish the Power of Respect as the bedrock, fail-safe foundation it can be for your family:

Do your best to cooperate with you kids (I say ‘kids’ because it includes children and teens). If they want something or to do something, instead of immediately thinking ‘no,’ think ‘how it might be possible.’

Be a living example of how to cooperate with someone. Then your kids get to see up close and personal how it works, what to do and how to do it. They get to feel how great it feels when someone cooperates with them, especially their parent.

Give it a try and let me know how it works. If you have a question you can put it in a response or email me at kvryce@parentchildteacher.com

Best Wishes,

Karen Ryce