The Smart Parenting Revolution: A Powerful New Approach To Unleashing Your Child's Greatness - Hardcover

Markova, Dawna

 
9780345482457: The Smart Parenting Revolution: A Powerful New Approach To Unleashing Your Child's Greatness
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 034548245X ISBN 13: 9780345482457
Verlag: Ballantine Books, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

A groundbreaking new approach to parenting emphasizes the cultivation of a child's strengths rather than correcting his or her weaknesses with a five-part approach that focuses on Success, Modes of attention, Attractions, Resources, and Thinking talents and offers a series of practical strategies, combined with real-world examples. 25,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dawna Markova, Ph.D., is internationally known for her groundbreaking research in the fields of learning and perception. She serves as the president of SMARTWired, the CEO of Professional Thinking Partners, and a research and consultant member of the Society for Organizational Learning. In the past forty years, Markova s work has expanded into the boardrooms and corporate headquarters of companies in America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. She now reaches hundreds of thousands of people around the globe through seminars, keynote speeches, and her eight books, which have been translated into seven languages. Dr. Markova was recently honored with the Visions to Action Award, for people who have made a profound contribution to the world. She was also a keynote speaker at the 2004 Spirit and Leadership Conference.

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Chapter One

Blaming the Victim: Disconnecting Children from Their Own Future “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

—Socrates

When we hold an infant in our arms, we all feel it—that gaping awe and amazement as we look at the prints at the ends of those tiny fingers. At that moment, it is as if a door inside our hearts opens—we feel a wave of wonder at the miracle of this child’s uniqueness and potential. My grandmother would have said that we are recognizing their spot of grace.

Before you read further, I’d like to invite you to pause and bring that moment alive again—the sensations, smells, sounds. Where were you? Who else was there? What time of year was it? What was your deepest wish in that moment? If you could have given that child a blessing, what would it have been? What did you dream for that infant? What was your commitment as a parent? And those who stand behind you—grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents—what do you imagine were their dreams and prayers for this tiny bundle of possibility?

In that first moment and a thousand times since, you’ve probably asked yourself how you could best cultivate this being so that he or she could blossom as fully as possible. You are not alone. Parents and guardians throughout history have felt what you felt. They have whispered fiercely, tenderly, lovingly, “I want my child to succeed, to be who he or she is meant to be in this world, to be happy, to know he or she makes a difference. I want to give my child the best I possibly can.”

How does the door close? How do we all forget? Rather than cherishing all that potential, we come to see Martin as “hyperactive” instead of energetic. We think of Sally as “inattentive” instead of imaginative. We label George “oppositional” rather than independent. How do we develop a handicap of trust that limits our perception of the unique island of brilliance on which each child stands? How does our attention shift from what might be natural resources that need to be developed to what could be deficits that need to be fixed? How do we learn to limit what could be possible for our children instead of learning to champion their innate gifts?

This happens gradually, but as they go through school, we shift our focus to what’s wrong with them and how it can be fixed. This is not unique to parents. As a culture, we are experiencing a crisis of understanding that results from the way we have learned to think about our children and the challenges they face. When I was in graduate school studying clinical psychology, I was meticulously trained in the history of pathology. I could sit down with anyone and within thirty minutes, while carrying on a polite conversation, diagnose their particular neurosis down to the numerical classification code. (No wonder, at cocktail parties, when I told people I was a psychologist, they quickly moved away!)

After several years, although proficient in categorizing what was wrong with every person I met, I found myself skilled in knowing how to help someone become sick or crazy. I also found myself feeling removed, remote, and isolated from the very children I wanted to help. My supervisors commended my “professional objectivity.”

I was not atypical. Since 1947, more than $30 billion has been invested in research that follows this deficit model. “The neurochemistry of depression is much better known than that of happiness, mostly because the former has been studied more intensively and for much longer.” As author Dacher Keltner said in the January 17, 2005, issue of Time magazine, “Until a decade ago, 90 percent of emotion research focused on the negative, so there are still all these questions about positive states.”

A recent search of psychological literature revealed 50,000 articles on depression, but only 400 on joy. When my daughter-in-law, Angie, searched the Internet, she found three times as many sites dedicated to learning disabilities as to learning abilities; 746 that track failures, 127 that track successes; 42,020 sites were focused on “What’s Wrong with Me?” and 90 sites were dedicated to “What’s Right About Me?”

We have made significant progress in many areas of individual treatment, especially those using psychotropic drugs. We have gained great proficiency in focusing on individual pathology and dysfunction. However, since this deficit model locates the problem “inside” the individual person and considers meeting the needs of at-risk youth largely a task for professionals, it fosters what could be called a “them” strategy: Since the deficit is inside us (or our children or both), the solution must be outside in “them”—the experts, the schools, the government, the drugs. If they don’t fix the problem, we have someone else to blame: them. This model results in continually dedicating more resources to design more medications, treatment programs, and fixes for the “special needs” children who we categorize according to their pathologies. In October 2003, Time magazine reported that fifteen million prescriptions were written for antidepressants for children and teens. A conservative estimate states that 5 percent of American children today are being medicated for ADD/ADHD, while in England the figure is about 0.3 percent. Are we raising Generation Rx?

What effect has this deficit focus had? In the past two decades, “in the midst of unprecedented material affluence, large and growing numbers of U.S. children and adolescents are failing to flourish. In particular, more and more young people are suffering from mental illness, emotional distress, and behavioral problems,” says the Commission on Children at Risk, a group of thirty-three high-profile children’s doctors, research scientists, and mental health and youth service professionals, in their report “Hardwired to Connect.”

The report continues, “Scholars at the National Research Council in 2002 estimated that at least one of every four adolescents in the U.S. is currently at serious risk of not achieving productive adulthood.”

In the time it takes me to stare out the window and sip my iced tea, four teenagers tumble through my mind: Curtis, twelve, who doesn’t like to talk a whole lot but is completely at ease break-dancing in front of an audience of two hundred adults; Max, who has to be forced to sit and do homework but can’t wait to volunteer for the Special Olympics; Tiffany, who is considered a troublemaker because she tells it like it is even when it’s not “appropriate”; Latisha, who pushes wheelchairs in an airport after school while dreaming of being a clothes designer. Which one out of these four?

Reluctantly, I return to reading the report: “Despite increased ability to treat depression, the current generation of young people is more likely to be depressed and anxious than was its parent’s generation. . . . About 20% of students report having seriously considered suicide in the past year. . . . Death rates overall since the 1950’s have dropped by 50%, but homicide rates among U.S. youth rose by more than 130%. . . . Suicide rates rose by nearly 140%. . . .”

More children come to mind: Clayton, ten, whose teacher says he’s below grade level, while he secretly draws pictures any artist would envy; Seth, eight, who...

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Verlag
Ballantine Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
034548245X
ISBN 13 
9780345482457
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
228
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Verantwortliche Person
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