You will, or else…

If it is true that the path to hell is paved with good intentions, then it confirms that good intentions are not enough to create positive outcomes.

If we raise children with the fear of negative consequences, they’ll never truly connect with the benefit of doing what’s right.

When that fear barrier is broken, and it will be broken at some point, we lose our children to influences and social structures that offer them inclusion and acceptance, rather than fear and punishment.

With ease of access to alternate value systems and cultural norms, fear and a demand for compliance is no longer sufficient to influence children towards doing good or being good.

Methods of escape in the form of substance abuse, pornography, demeaning and abusive social media trends, and more are accessible by toddlers, let alone teens or adults.

The only sustainable approach towards combating such harmful influences is not through the fear of hell fire, or the threat of punishment,it’s through the establishment of a healthy self-esteem.

A healthy self-esteem is built on how emotionally available their parents are.

But parents can’t give what they don’t have.

That is, if the parent doesn’t have a healthy self-esteem, they will rely on compliance and obedience to measure their worth with their children, failing which they will resort to being more controlling and intolerant towards bad behaviour.

Given the norms of intolerance and compliance that set the tone for many of today’s adults, connecting meaningfully with our children has become a struggle that many are not even aware of as we interpret the behaviour of the youth as willful disobedience, rather than as a desperation to feel significant.

If we can’t connect the youth with the value of the value system that we want to instill in them, they will connect with value systems that stroke their need for inclusion and understanding.

#selfworth #selfawareness #ownyourlife #selfmastery #mindfulness #personalpower #mentalhealthrecovery #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #socialorder #peerpressure #culturalbias #blindfollowing #theegosystem