Eschewing Emotional Manipulation of Children

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize as a parent that when I tell my child that I will leave them if they do not come with me that this will create a great consequence for the child in terms of imprinting them with fear which will diminish their ability to live effectively.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as a parent, when I tell my child that they have to come with me or I will leave them, or I walk away and say 'Bye, I'm leaving now' instead of clearly supporting them to understand that it is time to leave and that we will all be going and supporting them to make the decision to come with me without fear, that if I do that, I am only supporting the child to exist in fear, and I am deliberately using the fear of loss to emotionally manipulate them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that, as a parent, I can prevent a situation where my child will not come with me by communicating with them effectively from the beginning and supporting them to develop an effective vocabulary and ability to communicate, and that I must support myself with this as well, and by doing that I can create an agreement with my child of support where communication is used instead of force and emotional manipulation.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I use force or emotional manipulation with my child, this in no way supports them to be able to make effective decisions, it in fact dumbs them down, because if I do not support them to understand reality and understand consequences through common sense and logic and instead imprint them with fear then they will live their life in fear and always trying to avoid the experience of negative emotion, which is not an intelligent way to live.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize, as a parent, the degree and extent of influence that I have, and that every word, every encounter, every experience counts and builds my child's understanding of the world and their understanding of themselves and directly affects their self-esteem.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the degree to which I affect my child's self-esteem.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to believe that my child is just learning everything on their own, so that I can feel like my child is special and therefore that I am special, when in fact I am the primary (along with my spouse) influence on my child and determine virtually everything about who they will become and how they will live.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I take emotional manipulation and force off of the table, then I will have to become MORE CREATIVE and support myself to become BETTER in order to be able to communicate with my child from the beginning effectively.

I commit myself to show that the best way to parent, is to take force and emotional manipulation off the table as an option, and rather 'force' myself to develop effective communication, clear, direct, and explain as much as possible, and that through this, my child will develop a keen ability to understand and communicate and reason.