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The Nurturing Parent

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  1. Introduction
  2. Getting Started & Assessment
    Description and Orientation
  3. Change, Growth and Letting Go
  4. My Life Script
  5. Nurturing Parenting
    Nurturing as a Lifestyle
  6. Nurturing Skills Rating Scale
  7. Cultural Parenting Traditions
    My Cultural Portrait
  8. Developing Spirituality in Parenting
    Ways to Increase Spirituality
  9. Making Good Choices
    Smoking and My Child's Health
  10. Families & Alcohol Use
  11. Families and Alcohol Use Questionnaire
  12. 12 Steps to Keeping Children Drug Free
  13. Self-Awareness Quiz
  14. Love, Sex, STDs and AIDS
  15. Dating, Love and Rejection
  16. Touch, Personal Space, and Date Rape
  17. Possessive and Violent Relationships
  18. Growth and Development of Children
    Children's Brain Development
  19. The Male and Female Brain
  20. Ages & Stages: Appropriate Expectations
  21. Ages & Stages: Infant Development
  22. Ages & Stages: Toddler Development
  23. Ages & Stages: Preschooler Development
  24. Ages & Stages: Skills Strips
  25. Feeding Young Children Nutritious Foods
  26. Toilet Training
  27. Keeping My Children Safe
  28. The Importance of Touch
    The Importance of Parent/Child Touch
  29. Infant & Child Massage (Refer to the Nurturing Book for Babies and Children)
  30. Developing Empathy
    Developing Empathy
  31. Getting My Needs Met
  32. Myths and Facts About Spoiling Your Children
  33. Recognizing and Understanding Feelings
    Helping Children Learn How to Handle Their Feelings
  34. "Feelings" Exercise
  35. Criticism, Confrontation and Rules for "Fair Fighting"
  36. Problem Solving, Decision Making, Negotiation and Compromise
  37. Managing and Communicating Feelings
    Understanding and Handling Stress
  38. Understanding and Expressing Anger
  39. Understanding Discipline
    Improving Self-Worth
  40. Measuring My Self-Worth
  41. Children's Self-Worth
  42. Ten Ways to Improve Children's Self-Worth
  43. Developing Personal Power in Children and Adults
  44. Helping Children Manage Their Behavior
  45. Understanding Discipline
  46. Developing Family Morals and Values
  47. Developing Family Rules
  48. Child Proofing Your Home
  49. Home Safety Checklist
  50. Safety Reminders by Age
  51. Rewards and Punishments
    Using Rewards to Guide and Teach Children
  52. Using Punishments to Guide and Teach Children
  53. Praising Children and Their Behavior
  54. Time Out
  55. Punishing Children's Inappropriate Behavior
    Why Parents Spank Their Children
  56. Verbal and Physical Redirection
  57. Ignoring Inappropriate Behavior
  58. Developing Nurturing Parenting Routines
    Establishing Nurturing Parenting Routines
  59. Nurturing Diapering and Dressing Routine
  60. Nurturing Feeding Time Routine
  61. Nurturing Bath Time Routine
  62. Nurturing Bed Time Routine
  63. Prenatal Parenting
    Changes in Me and You
  64. Body Image
  65. Keeping Our Bodies and Babies Healthy
  66. Health and Nutrition
  67. Fetal Development
  68. Foster and Adoptive Parents
    Foster & Adoptive Children: Attachment, Separation, and Loss
  69. Expectations on foster and Adopted Children
  70. Worksheet for Adoptive Parents
  71. Worksheet for Foster Parents
  72. ADDENDUM
    Parenting Resources
Lesson 5 of 72
In Progress

Nurturing as a Lifestyle

Hope4Families October 12, 2022

LESSON: Nurturing as a Lifestyle

Nurturing is the ability to care. It is a critical skill for all life forms on the planet – especially for humans because we are such complex forms of life. To nurture is to promote the growth and development of all positive traits, qualities and characteristics. To nurture is to treat oneself with caring, kindness, and respect. It is to keep ourselves physically and emotionally healthy, to make good choices, and to be our own best friend. Nurturing oneself is a necessary prerequisite to being nurturing parents. How can you care for someone else when you ignore your own needs?

TOPIC: Why We Don’t Nurture Ourselves

Within everyone is the potential to care or to hurt. This potential is fueled, in large part, by the experiences we’ve had during our lifetime. Inside everyone are four distinct traits of our personality that define the way we’re capable of treating ourselves and others:

The Nurturer. The part of our personality that is capable of giving care, concern and compassion. The caregiver we are with our children is our nurturer.

The Nurtured. The part of our personality that is capable of receiving care, seeking closeness and attachments, and accepting praise and positive touch.

The Perpetrator. The part of our personality that can be cruel, abusive to self and others, is capable of hurting others, and generally disregards the overall goodness and respect of other living things and objects.

The Victim. The part of our personality that believes the hurt and pain given by others is Justified and valid. The victim believes the hurt received is for their own good.

A simple way to understand our abilities to nurture or to hurt is to view both abilities on the scale of 0 to 10. A zero (0) represents the complete absence of the behavior. A ten represents the complete presence of the behavior. Imagine both abilities exist on a range of 0 to 10 in frequency (how often) and in severity (to what degree). 

NURTURING Parenting
All the Time
10
Most of the Time
9  8  7 
Some of the Time
6  5  4
Hardly Any of the Time3  2  1Never
0
HURTING Parenting
Never
0
Hardly Any of the Time1  2  3Some of the Time
4  5  6
Most of the Time
7  8  9 
All the Time
10

The presence of “Nurturing Parenting” to a high degree (8 or 9) means “Hurting Parenting” is at a low degree (1 or 2). The more “nurturing” you are, the less “hurting” you are – and vice versa. The goal is to stay nurturing all the time (10) or at the very least, often (7 8 9) and to keep “hurting” out of parenting altogether (0). If parents practice nurturing all the time (10) or high percentage of the time (7 8 9), children would develop a much nurtured part of their personality and in turn would develop very nurturing ways of treating others. If however, hurting parenting is practiced often, children develop the “victim” part of their personality and come to believe that being victimized is a natural and frequent part of life. Life as a victim gives birth to Life as a perpetrator. Perpetrators are those who victimize others. The training to be a perpetrator comes from experiences as a victim.

The nurturing philosophy of life and of parenting accept no degree or frequency of abuse and victimization. The inability of adults to take the time and to make the commitment to nurture themselves is housed in the belief that maybe, just maybe, we don’t deserve to be treated with respect all of the time, or maybe we can’t expect to live a good life all of the time, that a little victimization now and again helps us appreciate the good times even more.

Try This…
Draw your personality traits for (Nurturer, Nurtured, Perpetrator, Victim) on a piece of paper. The drawings can be literal or symbolic. Take time to review your Perpetrator. What do you notice? How do you feel looking at this rate? List the times your Perpetrator comes out. Do you see any patterns? 
Now do the same with your Nurturer. Compare your Perpetrator and your Nurturer. What do you notice? Make a list of when you’re asked to be a Nurturer and compare it with the list you made of the times you may act as a Perpetrator. Do the same with your Victim and Nurtured traits. Notice patterns.
Keep the list handy and add or subtract from them. As time goes by, notice how they’re changing.