Parenting For Freedom

How to Achieve Excellence for Our Kids

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Photo by Amy Treasure on Unsplash

There are few things in this world as important as parenting. 

Without parenting, we might have children, but they will be deprived of the vital experience of being properly parented.

Sounds like a given, but the toll of lack of good parenting has on our world is only dimly acknowledged. 

Parenting Fundamentals

Photo by David Thielen on Unsplash

Parenting, like other enterprises of human life, is so integral to nearly everything, it acts as a cornerstone. 

If parenting is done well, almost everything that comes after—which is, in a way, everything—is also done well. 

Good parenting produces good people, people who can actually experience happiness, think clearly, and manage their emotions. People who can identify fraud, courageously confront cheaters and liars, and do so without unnecessary wrath and scorn. People who have compassion and forbearance for the intolerable, while remaining unwavering in the face of true evil. 

Unlike animals, people have to learn from an example, a role model, how to live life properly.

A healthy role model wants to be there for the child and wants to interact in a healthy way, curious about the child’s thoughts, emotions, experiences, and dreams. Encouraging when needed, disciplined when called for, and ever protective. 

If children need healthy food to keep their physical bodies healthy and disease-free, then children also need social food, and parenting nutrients, to be mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy. To use an analogy, a car might be in tip-top condition, but without a wise driver, it will be destroyed in no time. Role models provide this essential guide for children, so they can drive their lives successfully, making them able to avoid pitfalls as well as surmount obstacles when encountered.

Lock a dog in a closet from birth and what you get in the end is an extremely dysfunctional, easily manipulated, and subjected animal that will not achieve its full potential. Children are no different, deprivation of what they need produces bad outcomes, costing the child and society as a result.

Children all over the world are suffering from intense malnutrition—spiritual, emotional, and mental malnutrition. In this sense, while our children’s bellies are full of food (albeit of poor quality) they are empty of what they need most—guidance, support, and encouragement. 

As humans, we receive these things from other people, our father, mother, brothers, sisters, and extended family. 

The nuclear family, for the child, acts as the field upon which the dramas and challenges of life play out. This includes the challenges of going from incapable infant to more capable toddler, to even more capable kid, to young adult. The local community of people that interact with the child act as amplifiers of the values and ideals presented to the child. The greater community, these days expressed as mass media, is the place where children explore and reinforce cultural conditions and influences.

When there is an unbroken chain of beliefs and values, from parents to greater culture, the child has an integrated web of support to assist them in nearly everything they need in life. We do not have this today. Instead, we have a disintegrated, broken chain, where the parents say and do one thing, and the community does something else, while the greater community (mass media) propagandizes even more. The overall effect is deeply unsettling, producing confused and ultimately adrift children and adults, who are less able to achieve success and are easily duped by cultural trends and propaganda.

The transgender craze inflicting harm on young girls, in particular, is an example of this broken chain. The community and culture confuse instead of guide.

At each stage, the family, in concert with the outer culture of the extended family, local community, and grand community, needs to encourage the child to take on more and more duties while at the same time learning to manage internal upheavals, gaps in wisdom, and social dynamics. 

The zone of proximal development.

The zone of proximal development is a term that refers to the ideal balance between learned skills and unlearned skills. A child’s success later in life, which is arguably centered around good learning above all else, is directly dependent on how well the zone of proximal development is managed.

Real learning, not ineffectual memorization, requires personal investment, genuine curiosity, willingness to explore all information about a subject, and a drive to act on what was learned to entrench it into oneself. The zone of proximal development is greatly assisted by parents, and other child-helpers, who encourage the child to step out of their comfort zone to learn something new and try it out. 

If the parental figure and community support is absent or toxic, or not challenging enough, the child never develops the ability to seek for new knowledge, clasp onto it once encountered, and use it effectively to improve their lives. Children go on to become incompetent, emotionally-disturbed adults, who are easily led by manipulative minds, and easily swayed by groupthink to follow the herd—translation: the perfect person to act as a cog in the societal machines of tyranny. 

In summary, where we find ourselves today is in a world where parents, by and large, act as handlers for the globalist tyrants and technocrats of our age. We’ve been duped, had, deceived, defrauded, and manipulated.

Through no direct fault of our own, we’ve been recruited into an insidious campaign designed to deflate the precious innocence and joy of childhood, replacing it with endless homework, toxic school environments, and socially isolated conditions. As a respite from this torment, our children are subjected to overly stimulating and mentally distorting media, in video games, kid’s shows on TV and online, and music filled with overly sexualized images and messages. Social media replaces real, genuine, and healthy social interaction.

It’s a hard pill to swallow, I know; no one wants to believe they’ve unwittingly hampered their child’s potential. 

However, the silver lining is more than just comforting, it’s downright inspiring. The solution, once embraced, will not only turn things around, but it will make future generations immune to similar tactics. Not only do we have amazingly effective tools to address all the problems created by this complex situation we find ourselves in, but using these tools actually unlocks more potential. 

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Hormesis: Strength from Challenge

Photo by Alora Griffiths on Unsplash

Hormesis is defined as “a phenomenon in which a harmful substance gives stimulating and beneficial effects to living organisms when the quantity of the harmful substance is small (Sakai, 2006).”

The hormetic effect is when an otherwise harmful substance imparts healing and strengthening in the right conditions. The term is usually reserved for dietary phenomena, but the principle extends far beyond that. 

The zone of proximal development is the psychological equivalent of the hormetic effect. It’s like a weight trainer who “damages” their muscles via training so they can heal stronger—which is how muscle building works. When we learn just beyond our abilities, it strengthens us in many ways, activating potentials that wouldn’t have been activated without the challenge’s presence. 

For instance, defending oneself from physical attacks on the street is an intense and trauma-inducing situation. If we embrace the truth of the situation, as disturbing as it is, brain centers within the mid-brain come online, the xiphoid nucleus—at least this is what researchers at Stanford identified in mice, believing a human equivalent was likely at work in our brains. 

Read article

Courage and bravery, in this sense, not only act to support successful outcomes in challenging situations, but they also limit trauma and the formation of PTSD. Although mainstream science is still working out the mechanics, we know enough to formulate a good working theory.

When threatened, the brain stimulates the amygdala, a fear-identifying and response-inducing system. 

Let’s explore this in an illustration. 

You’re about to walk out the door for work with your coffee in your hand when you trip on something on the floor, causing your coffee to spill all over the place, including your freshly-cleaned work suit. As you stand there, dripping semisweet morning brew that is already soaking into the carpet, you begin to come to terms with a harsh reality—you will be late for work and there’s nothing you can do to change that. 

Response A: Cowardice and Half-Heartedness

In response A, you collapse into a pile on the floor, sputtering wails of tears and muttering to yourself how much the universe itself seems to have it against you. As this understanding (a mental construct formed by your response) seeps into your mind, the emotions of panic, existential angst, depression, and disillusionment set in—you feel an ever-growing desire to go back to bed and pull the covers up over your head. An old wound from the first time you felt tragically victimized by the universe descends upon you. Life is just too challenging sometimes, and you know it. You also know you’re ill-equipped to manage it. At best, all you can do is hope for a good day and accept your hellish fate on all the rest. 

This response, a fearful and non-brave response, reluctantly and half-heartedly accepts the truth of the situation. From this half-hearted stance, the old view, where everything was fine and you were going to be at work on time is still buzzing in your mind. It haunts you. It steals the joy of whatever this new situation has to offer. As a result, juxtaposed against the reality you now find yourself in, you feel divided within yourself, unable to let go of what was to accept what is all around you. This has the effect of demotivation, disillusionment, discouragement, and disempowerment—that’s a lot of dis. 

Your subconscious, ever seeking to prepare you for the world you believe you're in, generates emotions and thoughts that validate and support the conclusion you’ve drawn via your thinking, which is that you are a forever victimized person, always lacking, always insufficient and incapable, doomed to tragedy as surely as the sun rises. As a result, you’re depressed, you lack ambition and drive, and are therefore bored and uninspired most of the time, and a seemingly endless flow of distracting and unsettling emotions are your constant companion. 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of children raised in less-than-ideal conditions experience this profoundly tragic way of seeing the world and living life. 

But as bad as things are, a good role model can swoop in, and begin to shake things up for the better. Before discussing that, let’s move on to a better response.

Response B: Courage and Whole-Heartedness

In response B, dripping with coffee as you realize you’ll be late for work you think to yourself: “What can you do?” You chuckle to yourself at the comic nature of the situation, throwing a jab at the universe for keeping you on your toes. Realizing you can’t get back to the timeline where you were on time no matter how hard you try, you employ the radical acceptance of the truth coping method: “Might as well make the best of the situation,” you say to yourself with a smile as you walk away from the door, leaving brown footprints on the floor as you go.

You remember your close friends and family members, who at times in their lives were confronted with challenges, and instead of becoming bitter, they acted stoically and courageously. They accepted the truth of life fully, and told you as much, as a way to manage unexpected upheaval. Their role model influence helped guide you in this moment of personal struggle. It worked; they were right. That first time you employed stoic methods, things became vastly easier. This became your go-to method.

As soon as you made that still and quiet choice within your heart to accept the truth and face what lay ahead with dignity, all the frustration almost instantly transformed into excitement and humorous glee. You could have taken the whole situation very seriously, imagining how frustrated you might have gotten. At that thought, from your current carefree state, another chuckle escapes semi-pursed lips. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and bitterness for a universe that seems to hate you, you laugh it off, opening your mind and heart to whatever silver lining the new day has in store for you. As a result, you realize the universe might have something in store for you that you didn’t expect—a delightful surprise.

Again you’re reminded of your stoic friends, recounting stories of tragedy that turned into splendor through their capacity to accept reality as it is. Feeling a new lease on life, you change your outfit, play your favorite playlist for fun Fridays, speeding off to work, late, enjoying the rest of the day. As a result of your courageous reaction, you’re in good cheer, and with this, you are all the better able to take advantage of opportunities you would normally have discounted if you were still upset. 

These illustrations are just a small sample of the powerful effects of courage to face the challenges of life. The more we do it the better at it we become. 

Courage, Acceptance of the Truth: The Only Way Out

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Courage adds to itself. It makes us more courageous. It frees up mental and emotional energy, so we can better manage and take advantage of the opportunities of the moment. 

And in terms of character, it dissolves resentment and bitterness, thereby making us better people—good people. 

Conversely, the more we dwell on tragedy, suffering, and the seeming cruelty of life circumstances, the more bitter we become. Tragedy and hardship are tough pieces of meat; we need to chew thoroughly or choke if we swallow too soon. We’re robbed of joy and emotional solace, making us quicker to react toxically to life situations. We’re less able to think properly and discern wisely, thereby making it more likely for us to make more mistakes and suffer as a result.

The other important point from this illustration is the need for a role model.

Parents and other parenting allies, so to speak—the community—model for children. Our very choices and actions in our own lives are observed by the children around us. They quietly, and subconsciously, record and catalog these responses, drawing from them when they encounter similar situations in life. 

Role models that encounter challenges, embrace and grow from them, and teach our children that these things are possible in their lives. A path for transcendence and success, regardless of what happens in life, becomes easier to take. 

Adults who have faced the truth of their poor parenting and cultural condition, who courageously choose to fight on and learn anyway, to gain what was lost, can show other people the way. 

There is only one population of people that have willingly chosen to go against the grain to embrace the full, horrible truth of this world. This population we’ll loosely call the truth and freedom population. They are not just conservatives and Trump supporters—although many are within these camps. They are those of us who dared to seek the truth and attempt to do what’s right despite the challenges of life, despite a rigged system and thoroughly controlled population.

It takes courage to go against the grain, to seek for truth that undermines your relationships with your deceived fellows. These same fellows, who we likely are trying to assist with our newfound knowledge, reject us, often cruelly. 

Only courage and faith in a good outcome can assist the one who, like the hero, wanders into the wilderness of the unknown, cold and alone. Uncertain is their path forward, and yet they keep walking. 

Eventually, they find what they faithfully sought for but did not know was there. They find a superior truth and a better way of life. Like the hero, they want to bring these treasures back home, for all to enjoy. Yet again, they are denied by their fellows; the bitter cure is rejected in favor of sweet poison. 

There is something truly special about those of us who have chosen this path. To be sure, not everyone has walked away untouched. But each one who at least tries help pave the way for others. 

Children are watching. They are thinking. They are observing. They might not act today, or tomorrow, or next year. They might never step into the truth as we have, but some of them will. And for every one that does, the ranks of truth-inspired people increase, making it all the more likely more will choose the path of courage in the future. 

In closing, so many people and children were deprived of the vital mental, emotional, and spiritual nutrients they needed to become good, courageous people. While we can’t upend the situation overnight, we can do much simply by being an example for them. 

In future writings on this topic, I’ll begin to unpack more of the deep psychology of how this works. I’ll also discuss Adverse Childhood Experiences, and the unbelievable fact that our world appears to be set up to traumatize and as a result, cripple our children. 

‘The children are the future’ is a phrase that has incredible importance associated with it. 

Until we manage to face the truth of the situation we find ourselves in, we will continue to fail our children, wondering how the world has gotten the way it has. But when we do face this truth, and go through the necessary growth therefrom, we can raise children who will be immune to propaganda, deception, sin-enticement, and corruption. 

Badlands Media articles and features represent the opinions of the contributing authors and do not necessarily represent the views of Badlands Media itself.

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