from The Mastery of Love

Don Miguel Ruiz...and thanks to D for giving me this book for an early Christmas present!

This is good advice for couples, families and parents when he discusses the difference between fear and love:

p 60 ."..  Love is based on respect. Fear doesn't respect anything, including itself.  If I feel sorry for you, it means I don't respect you. You cannot make you own choices.  When I have to make the choices for you, at that point I don't respect you.  If I don't respect you then I try to control you. Most of the time when we tell our children how to live their lives, it's because we don't respect them.  We feel sorry for them, and we try to do for them what they should do for themselves.  When I don't respect myself, I feel sorry for myself.  I feel I'm not good enough to make it in this world...poor me...self-pity comes from disrespect."

This sounds very familiar to what I hear in the office day by day with  struggles between children and their parents.  If I have heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times:  "My kid doesn't respect me"  (whine)  ... "I am THE PARENT and should be respected"...all of this comes from fear and wrecks relationships.

the book proceeds on p 61 to say "...on the other hand, love respects.  I love you and I know you can make it.  I know you are stong enough, intelligent enough, good enough that you can make your own choices.."

read on--perhaps this is even another parenting manual that flies in the face of the pitiful comment "they never made a book that tells you how to be a parent"--the resources abound!!