Essence of Wisdom for Parents<\/a><\/em>, I encourage all parents to continually grow their level of compassion.\u00a0 In the past, people had the notion that attitudes and attributes like compassion were locked into their person and generally not something that was changeable.\u00a0 However, there has been some real interesting research on this subject by Richard Davidson, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at UW-Madison.<\/p>\nRichard Davidson’s story is interesting.\u00a0 He was invited by the Dalai Lama to study the positive mental health of Buddhist monks.\u00a0 His research eventually led him to usingMRItechnology to evaluate the level of compassionate brain activity in people before and after meditating on compassionate thoughts.\u00a0 What he found through his research, was that by consistently meditating in a compassionate way, the part of the brain that is active when we are compassionate actually grows.<\/p>\n
For Christians reading this, it may seem, at first, like heresy studying another religion to learn about love, but I’ll suggest that if you believe that God’s laws are true, then the next logical conclusion is that they are discoverable.\u00a0 I think this is the jist of what Paul argues in Romans 2:15.\u00a0 Therefore, the idea that Buddhist philosophers, Confucius, or today’s observant psychology researchers might discover something of the world God made isn’t only impossible, it’s a near certainty.\u00a0 On the other hand, it is likely that their understanding of what they have observed will be limited without also having a greater understanding of God.<\/p>\n
Having given all the disclaimers, I’ll suggest below a Christian oriented exercise to help grow a caring and loving attitude within yourself.<\/p>\n
For the next 30 days, pray 30 minutes a day using the prayer pattern described below.\u00a0 If you do not feel like you can set aside 30 minutes a day to pray (which will be true of nearly all the readers of this post I am sure), then just do the best you can.<\/p>\n
Start your prayer time by thinking about the people close to you that you love.\u00a0 Your parents, your children, your siblings, whoever it is that is closest to you.\u00a0 As you are praying for them, think about both their good qualities and those qualities that bother you the most, but then focus back on the love.<\/p>\n
Every one of us, (yes – this includes both you and your family) has a mix of good qualities and real issues.\u00a0 With our close family, we have found a way to see past these issues and find the beautiful person underneath.\u00a0 As you pray for your family, you will also come to understand that many of the “issues” that your loved ones have are really scars from past pain in their lives.\u00a0 We all understand pain, and we all understand the scars that it can give us.\u00a0 Scars that can build up into a hard shell that begins to hide us from the rest of the world.\u00a0 Hide us from all except those caring enough to see through them.<\/p>\n
As you continue your prayer, start to change your focus from your immediate family to other people in your life.\u00a0 Co-workers, neighbors, the people in your small group \u2013 whoever else is in your life.\u00a0 As you did with your immediate family, think about their good qualities and their bad qualities.\u00a0 Think about their scars, but also think about the wonderful human being that may be trapped behind those scars.\u00a0 This human being may need your love, your kindness, and your encouragement to break free of those scars.<\/p>\n
As the final phase of your prayer time, change your focus again to people in your life that seem to make life difficult for you, a nasty boss, a troubling co-worker, whoever they may be and repeat this process outlined above.\u00a0 If they are nasty people, think about what their life must be like.\u00a0 Do they have a circle of warm supportive friends?\u00a0 Do they have a world filled with deep meaningful relationships?\u00a0 Quite possibly not.\u00a0\u00a0 They may be living in a hollow empty world, perhaps filled with possessions, but not relationships.<\/p>\n
As you start your prayer exercise, you will go into it understanding that the love and compassion you have for others runs at different levels.\u00a0 For your immediate family, you may have greater feelings than you do for your neighbors.\u00a0 Is this the way it should be though?\u00a0 Recall the old saying that was popular a few years ago \u2013 the question “What would Jesus do?”<\/p>\n
Well in Mathew 12:46-50 we get our answer:<\/p>\n
While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”<\/em><\/p>\nYou see that Jesus does not love his immediate family any less than you do, what Jesus is demonstrating is that he doesn’t love any<\/em> of his children any less.\u00a0 All the people in your life were created by God and deserving of your greatest love and compassion.<\/p>\nIt is prudent to realize, as you exercise and grow your compassion for others, that being compassionate does not imply that you should be taken advantage of or that you know longer have to do time management.\u00a0 You do not have to give all your money to everyone who has a need.\u00a0 You will go broke quickly.\u00a0 Money is one of those things that the more you give, the less you have. \u00a0However, you can give other more valuable things away.\u00a0 Kind words, a sympathetic ear, recognition, and encouragement are things that grow within you the more you give them away.\u00a0 My suggestion is to start with these as you begin to utilize the newfound well of compassion within you.<\/p>\n
If you keep this prayer habit up, and this new outlook on people, you will find that your children will emulate it.\u00a0 As your children become teenagers and old enough to understand, take the time to talk to them about compassion and how to always look for the real person underneath the shell.\u00a0 If you do these things, then you will be on your way to setting your child up for a good life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Growing a compassionate attitude in your children means growing one in yourself first. This prayer exercise will help you do this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16,19,17,20,18],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wisdomtidbits","tag-compassion","tag-how-to-grow-a-child","tag-how-to-help-kids","tag-how-to-raise-children","tag-raising-of-children"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102,"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pressedthoughts.com\/authors\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}