Respect

“My answer would be one word: respect. Your job as a parent is to respect your children. If you respect them, they will thrive.”

Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical and counseling psychologist, author and researcher. For nine years, she served on the faculty of the University of Denver in counseling psychology and gifted education.

Linda founded Gifted Development Center in Denver in 1979, where she has been blessed to work with well over 6,000 caring families. Passionate about giftedness throughout her entire career, she is a staunch parent advocate. To serve gifted parents, she founded POGO, PG Retreat, and Advanced Development Journal.

Linda has been studying the psychology and education of the gifted since 1961 and has written over 300 articles, chapters and books, including Counseling the Gifted and Talented, Upside- Down Brilliance: The Visual- Spatial Learner, Advanced Development: A Collection of Works on Gifted Adults, and Giftedness 101(translated into Swedish and Korean)

We demonstrate that we value children in the way we communicate with them. Try this exercise:

Close your eyes and imagine that you are asking your mother-in-law to get off the phone. Observe everything you can about yourself as if you were watching a movie. Now imagine asking your child to get off the phone. What differences do you notice in your choice of words, your tone of voice, your facial expression, your body posture, your amount of wait time? Why does your mother-in- law warrant being treated differently from your child?

The power differential between parents and children needs to be carefully re-examined in the context of our increasing lifespan. The most important relationships you establish are with your children. Their childhood is only a small slice of that relationship. If you are blessed, the largest portion will be when they are adults. Take a few moments to consider what kind of a relationship you want to have with your children when they reach adulthood? How would you like your adult children to feel about you? What do you have to do now so that this can happen?

My parents lived to be 94 and 98. In their later years, my sister—the eldest child—lived in the same apartment building and took care of them. Their parent-child relationship lasted over 70 years, and my sister spent more years being responsible for their welfare than they spent being responsible for hers. If you think about parenting from this longer view, it changes your priorities. The child you holler at for bringing home a B is going to decide when you go into a nursing home!

If you can look beyond the roles of parent and child, you can begin to appreciate that this presence you have brought into the world is your lifelong companion, friend, and fellow traveler on this journey called Life. Look deeply into your child’s eyes and you will see a unique individual with special gifts to bring you. Even the challenges they present are gifts to assist your own growth. If you have more than one child, you know how unique each child really is. This journey you are on together will hopefully last many decades, and, in the end, the roles will be reversed and they will parent you. It is important to develop a relationship with your children robust enough to survive throughout the lifespan and transform as developmental changes transform your roles. Your job is not to mold your children. You don’t want to be molded by your adult children. Your job is to get to know who these individuals are, because you are going to be in relationship with them for the rest of your life.

Respect means seeing, appreciating and valuing each other as lifelong companions.

Respect is a dance among equals who have chosen to journey together. This is a sacred trust. Not only will your children thrive as a result—so will you.