Understanding Your Child as Needed 3

When I do achieve acceptance of you, I quickly move to trusting you. I am willing to let

you be you without me having censor or control you. This trust is reinforced as I grow in

my understanding of you.

Finally, I am capable of loving you. I have moved beyond merely loving this or loving

that about you. I have grown to love you. Oftentimes in my office, I would ask one

spouse or the other if they loved the other spouse. Many times I would hear “yes, of course, “I love the way she looks” or “sure I love the way he is with the children.” But

that wasn’t my question. I would need to repeat it. “Do you love them. . . not only what

they do or how they look. . . . do you love them?” More often than not the room then

would fall silent as the truth of what I had asked penetrated to the soul.

If any of us were to honestly make a two column listing of our strengths and

weaknesses, the two columns would be relatively equal in number.

To help bring this back to the subject of this book, take a moment to make a two-column

chart about all that you presently know about that internal child. Don’t worry if the list

isn’t very long. The rest of this book will help the list grow. Be sure and list both

strengths and weaknesses.

When I truly love someone, I am able to not only enumerate a fairly equal number of

qualities in both columns. Furthermore, since it takes both columns to compose the

entire person, when I truly love someone I am also able to embrace both of their

columns without reservation.

When that isn’t possible, it tells me that there are stages in the pyramid’s development

that have been missed or have been only partially completed. When that’s the case, I

must return to the first level (Communication) and seek to determine where those

missing pieces might be.

In my own work with couples, I would often take them back into each other’s childhoods

to further the process of building understanding. More often than not we project on

each other our own backgrounds and experiences and then wonder why the other

person isn’t reacting like we think they should.

Below are some background questions that I would often use. However, in an attempt

now to transfer the thoughts of this chapter from the marriage relationship to our own

relationship with ourselves, I am going to ask you to complete the following questions

based on your own childhood experiences. Complete these questions as though I were

sitting with you and asking them to you.

1. How many children were in your family?
2. Were the oldest, youngest, middle?
3. Which sibling did you feel closest to? Why?
4. What did your dad do for a living?
5. Did your mom work outside the home?
6. What type of discipline did you parents use in relating to you? (harsh, easy, verbal, physical, removal of privileges, etc.)?
7. Who handled most of the discipline in your home?
8. Which parent did you feel closest to? Why?
9. How was your parent’s marriage?
10. Was touch an important component in your family? Explain.
11. What would be one of the happiest times you remember during your growing up years?
12. What would be one of the unhappiest times you remember during your growing up years?