When a disagreement happens, what’s a person’s deepest desire: to be right or for the other person to be right?

Both. To be right (pride) is our natural tendency and making the other person right (humility) is mental health’s most difficult to achieve, most prized accomplishment.

Here are two radiant results when humility is successfully instilled within your child?

1.       Growth is always a goal, “I don’t know it all.”

2.       Relationships are long-lasting and life-sustaining, “You are as good as or better than me.”

Three parenting steps are critical to achieve this mental health crowned jewel.

Step 1: Model Humble Parenting. Bottom line: during discipline make your child right at the beginning of a problem. Here’s the skill: Focus on how right your child’s feelings are that cause the behavior instead of all your reasons for how wrong your child is. That’s modeling humility: You putting “I’m right” aside and putting “You’re right” front and center stage at the beginning of conflict resolution.

Step 2: Encourage Self-Love. Putting one’s feelings aside at the beginning of problem solving is impossible without valuing yourself deeply – self-love. How do you bypass cockiness in the process? Establish humble self-love.  Achieve this by continually emphasizing two things: 1) your child’s value and 2) welcome mistakes, using them as an opportunity for continuous, non-shame growth. Several quick tips: Make sure at least seventy-five percent of your daily comments are positive and establish your child’s passion.

Step 3: Train Your Children to Love Others the Way They Love Themselves.  A miracle happens when humble parenting establishes humble self-love: children are prepared to love others the way they were loved by parents.  It does take tweaking. Here’s one of the first lessons to teach: “Own your part of the problem” before blaming others. When four-year- old Adam hits his sister encourage him to first share his feelings that caused the hitting and second identify what acceptable behavior he’ll try next time. Then let him say what part his sister played in the problem.

Humility really is an amazing mental health jewel. Creating and maintaining its radiance ensures joy and resilience for a lifetime.  

Next week’s blog will cover teaching compassion, a natural outgrowth of humble living.

Are you cringing? Isn’t loving yourself being self-centered? Yes, if you agree with 99.9% of our current culture’s understanding of self-love.

But, true love isn’t selfish.

It can’t be if the Bible labels loving yourself as the second most important commandment – Love your neighbor as yourself.

And true self-love is the cornerstone of mental health. Let’s celebrate Mental Health Week by learning how parents can instill true self-love within their child.

Self-love is: Acceptance for now of all that I am, just as I am; humbly knowing that there are always things to improve.

It’s humble self-love – your child ending up acquiring this core belief, “You are as good as me.”

Here’s an example of how parents can instill self-love when working through a lying problem.

A parent’s number one rule: first, validate the feelings causing the unacceptable behavior.