Self-Worth & Emotional Safety

The two most significant and basic developmental tasks for children are self-worth and emotional safety. Of course, this is not something most children can do for themselves. Instead, children depend on being lucky enough to have internally developed parents who are competent to help them develop a complete and intact self-worth, as well as a solid base for feeling emotionally safe in an impersonal world that is often cold, indifferent, or even dangerous.

When children fail to develop self-worth and emotional safety, they usually spend the rest of their lives feeling insecure, doubting their value, and trying to create safety and value thru accomplishments, romance, money, social status, psychotherapy, distraction and approval. The problem is that once we miss the opportunity to establish our self-worth and safety as children, the only remedy is to first understand internal needs and potentials, and then become competent to feed and fulfill every one.

In an ideal world, most parents would be developed enough to understand internal needs, and competent to feed them in their children. What have you observed is true in your life: first as a child, and perhaps now as a parent? As a child, were your internal needs fed? Are you competent now to feed your own and a child's need for worth and safety?

Tragically, most people never learn how to master even their most basic internal needs for self-worth and emotional safety. The simple answer for how to create worth and safety in our adult lives is to master the five internal potentials to understand, care, master, create and contribute, and in the process also learn how to define and feed every internal and external need. Nothing to it!

Unfortunately, human history has shown that simple answers to complex problems never work, at least not for long. One reason is that each word in the simple answer above represents a complex web of awareness and skills we must acquire over time, step by step, and layer by layer. In this and my other four books on internal development are the specific steps and concrete layers of information people need to feed and fulfill every internal need and potential.

For now, however, we will define what is needed to feed a child's internal need for safety and worth, and in the process learn what we received or missed as children, and what we need to provide for ourselves as adults.

To begin, a child needs parents who truly understand self-worth and emotional safety, and can feed both in themselves. When a child's parents truly like themselves and each other, and give their time and energy in a context of relaxed attention and whole-hearted interest, then the child has real experience that he is valued and loved, and feels emotionally safe due to the internal competence and genuine understanding of his parents. What was your experience as a child? Does this describe what you received, or not?

First Steps

People have a very predictable response when I describe what is needed to feed their children's needs. That is, everyone immediately says, "Yes, but how do I actually do what you are saying?" Glad you asked! Step one is to recognize your own internal hunger to be seen, acknowledged, understood, and liked. Hatherley's second principle of a conscious life states that, "You cannot feed a hunger in your child that you do not recognize in yourself."

The reason for this principle is simple. To truly empathize with a hunger in your child (or mate, friend, or parent), you must have suffered from the same hunger in yourself. Without a similar experience, you can only imagine a child's hunger, and your response will be mechanical, or based on a technique. A far cry from being tender and compassionate, and motivated by suffering from a similar and perhaps unsatisfied hunger that in the past may have damaged you, but now, you have learned to feed for yourself.

How will being aware of your hunger to be seen, liked, acknowledged and understood make a difference? Simple, you will be more patient when your child (mate or friend), insists on receiving your energy and attention. You will also be more likely to want to give your attention even when no one is bold enough to insist on it! In addition, you will be aware that nodding, smiling and saying "Good job!", or some other normal but uninformative judgment is quite unsatisfying for both you and the other person.

Instead, you will practice asking questions that explore a child's experience, so he learns to acknowledge the facts of his experience, his emotional responses, and the consequences. You will also ask questions that explore the needs, motivations, and feelings of other people involved in your child's story, i.e. their perspectives. Of course, you will want to tailor the sophistication of your questions to the age and capacity of your unique child. There is no cookie-cutter formula here, you will need to consciously experiment and practice.

One way to determine the level of your child's awareness is to ask questions as you would an adult. Then, if your child gives you a blank look, or storms off, you know your question was too far over his head! So you back down, and try again. It is important to note that asking a question that is over your child's developmental head will not hurt him. It may irritate him, and he may temporarily think you are an idiot, but everyone survives and no one suffers real damage. Following this process, you soon see precisely what you can ask your child, and what you can't—works on husbands too!

My experience has been that most parent's underestimate their child's level of awareness. The reason is that most adults have no clue how to handle a child's internal needs, and in the name of "protecting" their children limit their conversations. This does nothing to protect the child, but it does protect parents from exploring the depths of their own understanding and competence. If it is of comfort, I have never seen any parent in danger of drowning from the depth of his/her internal understanding and competence.

Exploring a Child's Experience

One way to learn how to explore rather than criticize, judge, explain, or draw conclusions is through examples. For instance, one clear day in a rural setting a seven year old boy named Slater was riding his scooter down a steep hill. At the bottom of the hill was a six year old girl named Willa, standing with her bicycle. Slater's mother, Alison was nearby observing both her son and his cousin, Willa.

Bravely, Slater came screaming down the hill, but when he got to the bottom, Willa made a feint with her bicycle as if she was going to move in front of him. She did not actually block him, but her feint scared Slater, even though he held his course and was not hurt. Afterward, Slater shocked his mother by screaming at Willa, "I hate you!" The mother, Alison, was angry at Willa, and admonished her for her action. Also, she was shocked by the vehemence in her son's voice.

By this time Willa was acting concerned and Alison said to her son trying to elicit a little compassion, "Willa is really struggling now." and Slater replied, "Good, I want her to struggle." At this point Alison did not know how to proceed with either Willa, or Slater. If you were the adult here, how would you help these two children explore this event?

Most parents would want to explain to the two children the potential danger to Slater, chastise Willa for her action, get a promise to not do it again, and maybe try to calm Slater by getting him to "forgive" Willa, perhaps by saying "She didn't mean it." or, "She did not know what she was doing."

If this were a normal interaction, the adult would be doing most of the talking and the children would be looking put-upon, bored, or in Slater's case, just angry. The outcome would be that neither the children or the adult would learn anything new, and this dramatic event would disappear into history without touching, teaching, or changing anyone.

If the adult in this instance wanted to understand this event, she would have to acknowledge the facts and explore each child's perspective. To begin, we need to know a little about each child. Willa is a precocious six year old, and she knew very well that Slater was moving so fast he was nearly out of control, so her feint was going to at least scare him. Slater too is precocious, and usually the one directing things and feeling in control, which results in a subtle rivalry and ongoing competition between them.

In response, Alison could acknowledge to Willa, "I know you saw Slater coming down the hill nearly out of control—so what did you want to happen when you pretended to put your bike in his way?" She would need to be prepared for a sullen, "I don't know." and then reply, "Well, what you saw happen was that Slater was first frightened, and then angry. He was frightened because he felt in danger of being hurt. What do you suppose made him so angry?"

We do not know what Willa would say, but we can take whatever she does say and explore it further, or suggest, "Do you think Slater believes you did this on purpose to scare him, and that you enjoyed seeing him be upset?" (Willa has a history of playing tricks on her younger brother, Finch, to torment him, so this is not an unreasonable question.)

The point is that Willa is being given focused attention, and is exploring what happened rather than being chastised, explained to, preached at, or judged. In the process of exploring, some of Willa's motivations and purposes will be revealed, whether she likes it or agrees with it, or not. Willa will be learning that acknowledgment does not always feel good, but it does identify grains of truth, and she will see herself in more detail than she ever would if Alison only admonished her about what not to do.

Before leaving Willa to turn our attention on Slater, we would need to ask her, "How would you have felt if Slater had swerved because of your feint, and been hurt?" I would ask this question in a neutral tone to give Willa every chance to be honest, and to whatever she said I would follow up with another question, "What about it would have made you feel sad, happy, or whatever?" One thing Willa would learn is that if she is going to torment another child, she will in turn be mildly tormented by having to explore it in detail.

As an aside, this strategy works only if Willa also gets attention for positive and neutral, as well as negative events. We never want to pair attention only with negative events. If we do that, then the message the child gets is that if she/he wants attention, the best way to get it is to act out and do something negative.

Now it is Slater's turn for attention and time to acknowledge he was coming down the hill very fast and unprepared for Willa's feint, so Alison could ask, "Do you think Willa intended to scare you?" Being Slater, he will probably say "Yes." Then, another innocent question, "Do you think you might have wanted to impress her, and when she feinted with her bike and scared you it ruined the whole moment?" There is a grain of truth here important to both children, so it does not matter whether either one admits it or not, they will see that Alison understands something about their invisible motivations, and their ongoing but unspoken rivalry.

If Slater admits he did want to impress Willa, then Alison could explore the issue with more questions. If not, she could simply offer, "Well, if you did want to impress Willa, she certainly ruined it didn't she?" Then, Alison could add, "How do you feel about being scared by a six year old girl?" The reason for this question is that part of Slater's rage is feeling humiliated by a girl he wants to impress.

Slater and Willa are only seven and six, but already there are some male/female dynamics of competition and power going on. These dynamics are mostly unconscious and totally innocent, but significant because they are forming patterns that will continue in adult life.

The point of going through this process with the two children is to show them how to explore for understanding rather than judge, explain, criticize or conclude. In the process, they will learn how to accurately describe the facts of an event, separate facts from feelings, identify motivations and purposes, see two perspectives, and consciously try to build understanding, rather than take sides and assign blame. They will also experience the first step to experiencing real love, learning.

Consequences of Exploring

Perhaps surprisingly, teaching children how to explore by modeling it ourselves is a powerful tool in helping them develop self-worth and emotional security. It is also a secret key that opens the door to all the other dimensions of mental and emotional development. If there is one single cause for all the world's self-induced tragedy and trauma, it is the universal inability to explore reality, needs, and potentials until we understand them, and can respond competently.

On the other hand, if there is one single remedy for needless human trauma and tragedy, it is learning how to explore ourselves, life, needs, potentials, and other people's perspectives until we thoroughly understand every one. What we can learn from Slater and Willa's story is that if we give energy and attention, observe facts, ask questions, and teach children to think about and articulate their experience, we will model and teach a myriad of developmental tasks.

In our sample story, we not only acknowledged the facts, but we also explored the internal motivations, feelings, and purposes of both children, and we revealed our interest in understanding rather than controlling. This is opposite to a normal adult being primarily interested in trying to control the external aspects of a child's actions and attitudes, i.e., in this case, Willa's action and Slater's anger.

When a child experiences an adult genuinely wanting to understand rather than control, he/she immediately relaxes, and over time, will apply this process to himself.

One consequence of trying to understand rather than control is that the child drops judgment, and adopts curiosity. Now, the child develops a desire to learn about himself rather than judge, criticize, explain, or defend. This is critical to developing self-worth and emotional security, because the child learns that exploring leads to understanding, and understanding leads to a more satisfying experience of being alive.

In a normal externally-based life we expect our rewards to come from pleasure, approval, security and success. This is one reason we never create a file in our minds for wanting to patiently explore experience until we understand it. Sadly, we do not expect the internal experience of understanding either can, or will be satisfying, so we have no reason to spend the time and energy necessary to learn how to explore ordinary events and everyday reality.

Developing a burning desire to understand ourselves, life, and other people is itself a developmental task that changes our motivations, purposes, and priorities. Once we see both the need and reward for understanding internal motivations, needs, purposes and potentials, not only for ourselves, but also for our mates, friends, children and the entire human species, we create a conscious purpose for our lives that will transcend any desire for luxury, pleasure, approval, or the illusion of security.

When we teach children how to explore, and in the process they discover the joy of understanding, they become fearless in the face of emotional pain because they know that pain leads to learning—and learning leads to love.