For reasons I won’t get into, from a thought process the source of which I won’t get into, I saw tonight the importance of NO for children. When you say no to a child, on something important, it is like a tattoo on their soul. It is the foundation, the building block, from which they will eventually create their selves, either in acceptance or rebellion. I think many children come quickly to appreciate parents who genuinely want to teach them useful life lessons. My own children are proud of how tough their mother was. And she was. They were lucky, in her, and in me. Both of them have said they will raise their own children the way they were raised.
When you only say yes. there is no end. There is no cessation. The outward impulses go on forever. Never saying no is a form of child abuse, for most children.
Consider that we all need no’s, but far too many children do not get them, or not in sufficient quantities. Consider that the tattoo, the mark, SHOULD be on the inside.
What do you see?