Positive Parenting or Ego Parenting?

I've started reading Positive Parenting by Rabbi Abraham Twerski.
The first section of the book:

1. What is the goal
2. Where to begin
3. Who is this little person

I'm blogging about number 1, WHAT IS THE GOAL.

In a nutshell the Rabbi writes about how each of us is driven by our ego, and naturally so. When we speak about 'having' a baby we use the word 'have' which implies that this child is mine. To clarify, because yes indeed this child is mine, I'm the one who changes him and stays up with him at night when he can't sleep after all, I'll illustrate the point just by using the simple translation in Hebrew.

In Hebrew when we say I have a baby we say, "Yesh Li Tinok". The words, 'Yesh Li' actually do not translate to I have, rather, they translate literally to mean "there is unto me". This is a fantastically different understanding of what we 'have' in the physical world than what the English translation teaches us. In reality we don't 'have' any of it, one day it will all be gone. Rather we should think of it as, 'there is unto me', meaning that right now God has given me these gifts to use and they are entrusted 'to me' right now to use to the fullest.

So too our children!

They are entrusted on to us. We have only the time allotted to us in this world to give them what they need to develop their potential in this world.

And so back to the Ego.

There are two ways to look at parenting your 'little person'.
1. To raise the best child you can
2. To raise the best 'Noam' possible (insert your child's name here)

Some parents will look into a school, for example, and wonder what the best reputation they will get or what others will think, others will wonder what school will be best suited for THEIR child. Of course these are not easy decisions, nor am I trying to oversimplify something very big here.

We need to stop trying to fulfill our ego and start fulfilling the needs of the child.

Rabbi Twerski gives a wonderful tool to assess how much ego you're using in your parenting. He says, when the child does something that is not what you want him to be doing, assess how much 'hurt' you feel about it.

To the degree that you are hurt, is the degree that you are ego parenting.

In other words, if the child's misbehavior upsets you to the point where you are mad, upset, fuming, yelling, huffing and puffing, anything outside of being calm, then you are feeling that this is a blow to you. Whatever he is doing, he is doing it to you and you can't stand it. If we switch our lens we will realize that when the child is misbehaving, the role of the parent is to find out what that child needs and to help bring him to that point. It really shouldn't upset us because after all, these are little children who don't know better, and if you claim they do, then they're just trying to push buttons to see what their boundaries are, and who's there to give them those boundaries if not you?

So the goal in our new lenses, is to see the situation for what it is, recognize what the child needs, and help him get to where he's trying to go. We don't really need to 'work' on being calm when we have that in place, because naturally we will just remove ourselves from the equation and just deal with the child in a positive and guided manner!

For me this is news and I wanted to share.

Now onto the section 'where to begin'.