Step by Step 3000. Book Four.
Unit 11. Managing personal development.
Part 1. Warming up.
Keywords
three certainties, options, significant, accepted.
Vocabulary
dynamics, daunting, render, devastating, applaud, tentative, thrive.
You're going to hear a report about the three certainties children need to feel healthy and positive about life.
A1. Listen carefully and note down the three things.
In my more than 40 years of working with families and conducting research in family dynamics and the roots of human behavior, I have observed again and again a few truths.
I have learned that all children, indeed all people, need three certainties to feel healthy and positive about life.
First, a child needs to feel that she has options, that she maintains some control over her life.
She needs to feel that she can do something to the world and the world will respond.
In fact, stress, I believe, might be defined as a lack of options.
Numerous studies have shown that people who have choices, are more highly motivated to work harder and even overcome daunting difficulties and pain.
Burn victims in hospitals who are allowed to participate in their own care, such as by dressing their wounds,
require less pain medication than those who are rendered helpless by having everything done for them. People want to help themselves.
They become empowered in direct relation to the choices and options they perceive to be available.
The second thing that a child needs to feel significant in the life of at least one other person.
Being ignored is devastating, one of the cruelest punishments possible.
It leaves the child angry, depressed and frustrated.
When people react negatively to the child, that arouses negative behavior.
When the parents respects the child's efforts to express himself and encourages her explorations, applauds her small victories from the first tentative baby steps on the child thrives.
Third, a child needs to feel accepted because his or her individuality.
Each child deserves to be acknowledged and cherished for the qualities that make her unique,
which can be hard to remember in a society that tends to encourage tolerance rather than welcoming differences.
Ideally, we should embrace others, and especially children, because of rather than in spite of, their differences.