Carl Rogers was one of the most important psychologists of the twentieth century and his work, along with that of Abraham Maslow, formed the basis for the creation of today’s Positive Psychology movement. In 1957, Rogers described what he believed were the necessary and sufficient conditions for positive personality development to occur. Fifty years later they are still fresh and important observations and worth reading by any parent.
Condition 1: Parent and child need to be in contact with each other.
This first condition refers to the need that all children, especially young children, have for their parent’s full and undivided attention. “Hey mom, hey dad, look at me …look what I can do” we frequently hear our children say. In our busy lives it is so easy to get distracted by keeping on top of our very full to do lists that we don’t give our children our full attention. Parents do need time for themselves, they do need to attend to work and the demands of running the house, and they do need to pay attention to each other and siblings. Fortunately with our full attention, a little goes a long way. Just ten to fifteen minutes a day of being fully present with your child engaged in some kind of play that is meaningful to the child can yield great benefits. Being fully present with our children also gives a lot back to us. It helps us reconnect with the child in us and helps us to feel more joy, spontaneity, and creativity. On the negative side, a lack of this type of parental contact can contribute to bad behavior from the child. Children want our full attention so much that they prefer our full negative attention to no attention at all. When they are obnoxious or tantruming we snap to and pay attention, but in a way that leaves everyone feeling badly.
Condition 2: Genuineness
In Rogers’ words, genuineness (he also called it “congruence”) means that the parent “within the [parent-child] relationship … is freely and deeply himself, with his actual experience accurately represented by his awareness of himself. It is the opposite of presenting a façade, either knowingly or unknowingly.” You can see from the definition of genuineness, that it is an ideal to be strived for. As Rogers says “it is not necessary (nor is it possible) that the [parent] be a paragon who exhibits this degree of integration, of wholeness, in every aspect of life” or in every interaction with his or her child. It is important that the parent strive to maintain this attitude as often as possible when he or she is in relational contact with his or her child. Rogers is further careful to point out that this includes the parent “being himself even in ways which are not regarded as ideal.” For example, a parent’s experience in a moment with his or her child may be “I wish I was at work instead of here with my child” or “I am so angry I feel like hitting this child” or “I can’t take anymore of this neediness.” Of course these are not feelings to be acted on, or communicated to your child. However, in Rogers’s view, it is important the parent not deny the presence of these feelings. It is when we deny the presence of a feeling, that we are at the greatest risk of putting it into unconstructive action.
To the extent that the parent is genuine and does not need to deny any aspect of his or her experience, he or she will likewise not feel a need to deny aspect of his child’s experience. He will not need to impose his denial on his child, nor will he require that his child deny himself and his experience for the child’s sake. One of the ways that we harm our children is that we require that they, for the sake of our own unresolved psychological issues, deny themselves in order to protect us. Similarly, Deepak Chopra has argued that we most often reach for punishments and limits around our own denied and unresolved feelings.
Condition 3: Unconditional Positive Regard
The third condition is that the parent should hold the child in “unconditional positive regard.” Rogers defined unconditional positive regard as
experiencing a warm acceptance of each aspect of the [child’s] experience as being a part of that child. … It means that there are no conditions of acceptance. … It involves as much feeling of acceptance for the [child’s] expression of negative, “bad,” painful, fearful, defensive, abnormal feelings as for his expression of “good,” positive, mature, confident, social feelings … It means caring for the [child], but not in a possessive way or in a way as simply to satisfy the [parent’s] own needs. It means a caring for the [child] as a separate person, with permission to have his own feelings, his own experiences
Like genuineness, unconditional positive regard is to be strived for, but is present more in degrees. It is the foundation of all relationships that lead to growth. It frees the other person and demands that the other person please him or herself and not us. We give our prizing freely.
Condition 4: Empathy
Rogers’s next condition is empathy. It is important for the parent to have as clear a sense as possible of what the child is experiencing. That is, to have
an accurate, empathic understanding of the [child’s] awareness of his own experience. To sense the [child’s] world as if it were your own, but without ever losing the “as if” quality. … To sense the [child’s] anger, fear, or confusion as if it were your own, yet without your own anger, fear, or confusion getting bound up in it.
This isn’t always easy to do. Having empathy for a child can be difficult because children think differently from how adults do. Also, finding out what a child is experiencing is difficult because children generally do not liked to be asked too many questions about their experiences. They feel interrogated. Generally you must start with how you might feel, if you were the in child’s shoes and check it by saying something to the child out of that understanding and see how the child responds. The child’s response gives you your feedback. Having an empathic understanding of the other person aids in communication greatly. It helps you know how to present yourself and your ideas to the other so that you are most likely to be understood. The sincere effort to come to a clear understanding of the other person, so long as it is not experienced as intrusive, is a very positive, caring act that is usually improves the mood of the other person. The work of forming an empathic understanding and then reflecting it back to the child is very orienting to the child. He or she feels that you understand, that you care, that you don’t judge, and that you accept his or her feelings.
Another aspect of communicating empathy is emotional tone. For the child to feel that you are with him or her, the right emotional tone needs to be present. Harvey Karp demonstrates this powerfully in his Happiest Toddler DVD. He soothes the tantruming toddler by getting in the feeling and repeating it over and over. This is very calming to the child who now doesn’t feel that he or she needs to ramp up his or her display of feeling further to be heard. He or she no longer feels alone in the feeling and can calm down.
