One of the most important things our children learn from us is how to raise children. We learn child-raising practices without knowing it largely from experiencing how our own parents raised us. Our parents learned child raising from their parents, who carried on the child raising traditions given to them by their parents, and so on. The chain has been unbroken, handed down from generation to generation, possibly for thousands of years. This result is that you may be using very old child-raising thoughtware.

Through seriously questioning your own actions and motivations and choosing what purposes you serve when being with your children, you can create the possibility of shifting your behavior and your attitudes. You can take a stand and declare that, “The chain breaks here!” Then you can do something entirely different. This is important work. By making the effort to improve your parenting, and by being consistent, you can make a real difference in the quality of your child's life. Not only that, but by blessing your children with kindness, generosity, and respect, you are influencing the ways children will be raised for many generations into the future

A commonly held idea is that babies are stupid. Such an attitude is shockingly false. Babies are learning at a tremendous rate. And in terms of what the baby is experiencing, recall some of your first memories.

Can you remember how you first regarded yourself as ‘me’? Did you experience that ‘me’, then, any differently from how you experience this ‘me’, now? Most people do not. Regard your child with infinite respect as a full-fledged Being.

Talk to your children, and listen to them as if they were fully cognizant individuals deserving your complete attention. You are training them to communicate. Every sound the child makes is an effort to communicate.

If you ignore your child's vocally expressed communications to you by thinking that it is meaningless baby prattle, then so it will remain for a long time, perhaps even into their adulthood. And vice versa; every sound you make to your child is something the child wants to understand.

If you speak to your child in meaningless ‘baby talk’, then your child's efforts to learn verbal communications through imitating you will long be frustrated, because they are imitating nonsense.

Listen to your child and understand what they are saying to you, even if it is not proper language. Whenever they ask for it, give your child your full one-hundred percent attention. Then they will gain confidence that they can have your attention when they need it and will not develop the habit of having to nag you for your attention, or even use their Gremlin part to get negative attention from you, because negative attention is better than no attention at all.

Respond to your child in clear, complete sentences. In this way your baby learns that the world makes sense, and that they can communicate. Out of communication grows trustworthy relationships.

What do you say to your child?

Keep pointing out and repeating the names of things: wall, chair, potato. Sing to them; describe experiences; recite poetry; make up stories. Don't just talk to make noise, but rather talk to share the wonders of life.

For example, every night while brushing their teeth, count from one to ten in as many different languages as you can, one language for each section of their teeth. Then children will want to learn others languages because they experience it as fun and interesting. Vocabulary, knowing the name of a thing, is a life-long gift that you can give to your children.

Do not talk about your problems at work or with your spouse, your sexual escapades, or your worries about politics and the world of news. Your child will get to those things on their own when they have built the matrix in their Being to deal properly with those things.

There is a way that you can be, in general, such that who you are for the child is in support of their existence. They can get that you are voting “Yes!” for them. Being “Yes!” for your child does not mean being a doormat. Being “Yes!” for your child means to commit to your child's commitment, whatever it is.

When a child starts climbing on the furniture, instead of shouting "No! Get down from there! You are going to break your neck!," notice exactly what the child is committed to in their actions. Is it the physical challenge? Is it to get attention? Is it because they are angry?

If it is the physical challenge, consider squatting down next to your child and saying something like, “You really like climbing around, don't you?” By doing this you have acknowledged their commitment to expand their physical limits. Then commit to that so they experience your commitment as authentic. “Let's go outside and I can help you climb that tree.” Or, “Maybe you would like to take a gymnastics class with a trampoline or a climbing wall?”

If their commitment is to express their anger, consider squatting down next to them and saying, “It seems like you are feeling something big. Are you angry?” If they say yes, then you can listen to them say what they are angry about. Listening to them does not mean that you try to fix anything, or change anything, or defend anything, or explain anything. Their anger is not your problem. You just listen, and repeat back that you hear they are angry and precisely what they are angry about. They experience themselves as being heard, and that you were the “Yes!” to their anger.

When you are an authentic one hundred percente committed 'Yes' to your children, they learn to be a 'Yes' with you.

Keep your promises. Do not make promises you do not keep. This is one of the most powerful relationship tools you can own.

If you tell your child that you are going to leave for the park at two o'clock, and at one fifty-nine the phone rings and it is your mother who likes to talk for fifteen minutes, just say, “I'm sorry, Mom, but I cannot talk right now. We are going to the park at two o'clock. Can you please call me back tonight?” (Notice that the Dad takes full responsibility for making and keeping the promise and does not play victim to the child by saying, “I cannot talk now because Johnny will get mad if I do not take him to the park.”)

If you tell your child that they cannot have a lollipop because it is too close to dinner, do not give in and give them a lollipop because they get angry with you or because they start whining. If it is bath time, it is bath time.

There is no need for the father to be forceful, angry or aggressive about it. The father can have infinite patience, be creative and inviting, be consistent and gently firm, because he is already certain of the outcome through holding the space for their child having a bath.

Trust your child's judgment of character, even if it is inconvenient.

One time we were at a friend's wedding with our first daughter who was less than two years old. She disappeared for half an hour and we could not find her. Finally we found her off to the side of the crowd sitting on a bench next to an elderly gentleman we neither knew nor recognized. He was smoking a big cigar and apparently philosophizing to her about everything that was going on. We resisted and did not interrupt their communion. It went on for over an hour, she being totally enraptured with this stranger. When she was finished, she came responsibly back to us. We noticed a clear expansion in her worldliness and self-confidence after that.

Another time my partner and I had arranged a rare date for us to go out together as a couple. When the baby sitter arrived the children were not wanting to stay with her. Rather than rushing out the door anyway, we stopped and changed our plans, paid the babysitter, sent her home, and spent the evening together with the kids. Our lost date was a smaller wound than would have occurred if we abandoned our children to a stranger they were uncomfortable with.