Build Your Capacity to Create a Loving Home

Your home is where your children learn the most elemental lessons of human life — how to take care of their own needs and how to contribute to taking care of the needs of others. Home is a foundation for your children’s future relationships as spouses, life partners, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers, good friends, community members, co-workers, and stewards of the planet. And home is a sanctuary to protect your children so they can learn lessons of caring and contribution at their own developmental pace and with your support, guidance, and respect. A loving home is free of fear, which is the source of all conflict. It is a place where children trust that their needs matter and that everyone’s needs — theirs included — will be considered and cared for. They can then relax into the life that calls them forth with such urgency — and find their place in the net of giving and receiving that forms a family, a community, a nation, and a world. Respectful Parents, Respectful Kids is primarily about parent-child relationships. The processes and suggestions for improving respect and co-operation apply to all ages of children and are also very effective in communicating with adult family members. Each of the three parts of this book will contribute to a parent’s growing capacity to create a respectful, loving home.