The Child Whisperer (3 page)

What is a Child Whisperer?

T
he term
whisperer
became popular when the 1998 movie
The Horse Whisperer
depicted a philosophy of working with horses based on an understanding of how horses think and communicate. This philosophy trained both horse and human to accept one another and work responsively together. One of the goals of a horse whisperer is to make the animal feel secure around humans so that horse and rider can achieve union and increased cooperation.

After the horse whisperer’s popularity waned, we were introduced to Cesar Milan. He became famous for his work in rehabilitating problem dogs on his popular television show,
The Dog Whisperer.
The same philosophy applied to working with dogs—that if the owner could intuitively read their animal’s needs and respond correctly, the animals would cooperate.

Your Children Are Not Animals or Pets

There’s a big difference between horse whispering and child whispering: Your child is not an animal or a pet. Your child is a person and I do not see you as “owning” them.

However, this same principle applies in all instances: When you know how to read the messages you are being given and you respond to them in kindness and with inspiration, you will experience more cooperation and mutual respect. I have witnessed amazing changes when parents apply the same Child Whispering techniques I will teach you in this book. Try them and your children will be happier, more successful, and cooperative.

How Child Whispering Works and What it Does

“Child Whispering” is my philosophy of working with children based on the model of Energy Profiling. Energy Profiling is an assessment tool that considers body language, communication, learning processes, personality, physical characteristics, and numerous other qualities. This model provides parents with an intuitive understanding of how their children see the world and innately express themselves.

As a result of identifying your child’s true nature—or Type—based on my Energy Profiling system, you will become your own “Child Whisperer.” You will more clearly understand the pattern of your child’s thoughts, feelings, social interactions, motivations, and priorities. You will learn what they are naturally designed to express and experience, as well as what honors and supports them. As a result, you will be able to parent in a way that creates a greater degree of mutual cooperation and deep bonding with your child that significantly decreases the need for discipline.

Most parents have been trained and convinced that disciplining children is the way to get a child to cooperate. But let’s look at the definition of the word discipline:

“The practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience.”

—Webster’s Dictionary

Consider how backward this approach is! Yes, children need to understand appropriate behavior, but do we really believe that they could not learn through any other means but punishment? Do we really need to teach them by coercion? No. In fact, children learn more positive lessons through other means. For example, a two-year-old who imitates her mother isn’t trying to help because she was punished. She just chooses to help because she wants to.

Instead of trying to discipline and train children into a certain way of being, parents will be more effective when they recognize their children’s natural way of being and parent them according to their individual needs. Every child is innately different. I often hear parents say how different their children are, even though those children grow up in the same house!

. . . .

MARK AND MARIO’S STORY

Each Child is Different

My two sons, Mark and Mario, are perfect examples of how two children can be complete opposites of each other. If I hadn’t understood their true natures through the model of Energy Profiling, I could have easily judged certain tendencies and behavior traits they each expressed naturally as flaws.

Mario, our fun-loving son, has a natural gift for spontaneity, bright ideas, friendliness, and an upbeat, hopeful attitude. His nature expresses itself as randomness that can be judged as irresponsible. Mark, our more serious son, has a natural gift for structure and focus. He prioritizes being his own authority, which can bring out others’ judgment that he’s a know-it-all. The same parenting approach DID NOT work for these two sons.

Once I discovered how to parent each of them true to their natures, I was able to honor both boys in the way they needed. Becoming a Child Whisperer gave me the insights I needed in the exact moments that made a difference.

I worked with these two very different children based on an understanding of their true natures and primary needs. Their unique natures showed up in their thoughts, feelings, communication, learning style, and even body language and facial features. Believe me, they were motivated by very different needs, and they each perceived my love through different eyes! As a result of child-whisperer parenting, both my sons felt safe, secure, honored, and understood—a gift I felt grateful to give. This experience has increased cooperation and harmony in our relationships to this day. That’s what Child Whispering is all about.

. . . .

Why Anyone Can Become a Child Whisperer

My friend has a young son who gets very excited to talk to me when he knows I am coming over. I have had four-year-olds ask me for my autograph. Recently an 11-year-old girl told me she had prayed to be able to meet me. Parents frequently tell me their children want to meet me and they really love and appreciate me. I find this to be one of the greatest honors of my career. To have children so endeared to me is incredibly humbling.

These experiences do not happen because I am special. They can happen to you, too—and I want them to! On a deep, unspoken level, children naturally respond to adults who know who they are and respect and love them for their true selves. How could they not want to be around someone who helps them feel understood and at ease? How could they not want to connect with a Child Whisperer?

To many children, I am a Child Whisperer, with a natural ability to see and relate to their innate nature. But this is not a special gift unique to me. In fact, it’s not even a special gift. Anyone can become a Child Whisperer with the information in this book. In fact everyone
should
. As I said, children are telling us all day long how to be Child Whisperers.

I wrote this book with the intent to help you become a “Child Whisperer” with your children, grandchildren, and any other children in your life. I want to help you understand this approach so clearly that you trust yourself and open up to receive inspiration on behalf of the children in your life. Ready to be a Child Whisperer? It’s time to get started.

What Is Your Goal as a Parent?

Y
our journey into the Child Whisperer parenting style starts with your own answer to this vital question:

“What is my ultimate goal as a parent?”

The answer to this question matters very much. And if you and I are not on the same page about the purpose of parenting, you will not use the information in this book very effectively.

I believe that
the purpose of parenting is to raise children true to their natures so they can grow up feeling honored, confident, and free to be themselves.

That’s a big goal. How could any parent know if they’ve succeeded? What standard of measurement should we use? I would like to offer three vital questions that will help you evaluate your success as a parent. Come back to these indicators as you practice and hone your Child Whisperer skills to see how you’re doing.

Three Questions to Measure Success as a Child Whisperer

1.
Do my children know who they are and accept themselves?

It doesn’t matter who understands and accepts your child if your child doesn’t understand and accept him or herself. Your children cannot maximize their potential gifts and future happiness if they do not feel that their inner natures are worthwhile and valuable.

This does not mean that you should praise your children for every single thing they do from the second they wake up to the second they go to bed. This just means that you can consciously point out their natural tendencies and express appreciation and love. Believe that those tendencies can develop into your child’s greatest strengths, rather than judging them as frustrations that get in your way.

The most powerful gift you can give your child is the permission to be their best self.

2.
Do my children use their natural gifts and trust them?

As your children grow up, they will face challenges and take on responsibilities. The best way to prepare them is to help them develop and optimize their natural gifts to best serve them in the future.

Use your family experience to create those opportunities. You ask your children to carry out tasks all the time. Make them count! Ask yourself, “Am I aligning what I ask my children to do with activities and experiences that will help them develop their natural gifts and talents?”

3.
Are the things I think are important really important?

This is the big one that gets a lot of us stuck. As parents, we obviously love our children and we want them to succeed. But focusing on success (however you define it) before you focus on the true root of success will automatically undermine all your efforts.

Here’s the real trouble: Some of our highest expectations for our kids are more self-focused than we like to believe. Even if you define success as your child’s happiness, who’s to say that you’ve measured their happiness in the way that best honors them? You might find certain actions important that are actually hurtful to your child!

Let me give you an example. I spoke with the mother of a four-year-old boy who would not look at strangers when they talked to him. She worried that he was being rude and needed to practice social skills for later in life. She wanted to know how to encourage him to engage with people. Social interaction is obviously a good skill to learn, but consider one other part of the story with me.

This young boy’s true nature is naturally more serious and quiet in new social settings or around unfamiliar people. Because of his naturally still energy, he needs time to observe before participating in a new environment. He prefers to engage in life in his own way and his own time.

At four years old, this boy could not yet have an agenda to be rude. He was merely living true to his innately serious and reflective nature. These are some of the messages he might take from the demand to engage socially before he’s ready: “I need to please others to be loved. I need to change my nature to accommodate others. I need to do what others want me to do so they can be comfortable, even if it makes me uncomfortable.”

Teaching this boy that he needed to live contrary to his true nature was hurtful to him—even though the skill being taught was supposed to contribute to his later success. Here’s the trick: Teaching him this skill would probably create the opposite effect by causing him to withdraw even more! In fact, the adults I’ve worked with who still can’t look people in the eye are most often those who were shamed about who they were as children.

By allowing her son to just be in a new space in his own way, this mother will communicate that he is more important to her than the potential reactions of other people. She will actually help him develop more self-confidence to interact by expressing her own trust in him that he can make the choice when he feels ready.

Do not misunderstand this example. I am not saying that we should allow children to do whatever they want, whenever they feel like it. I am not saying that we shouldn’t bother teaching our children social skills or appropriate boundaries. As parents, we have an extraordinary responsibility to guide and to teach.

What I
am
saying is that we need to reevaluate the expectations behind our guidance and our teaching. Why do we
really
place certain expectations on our children, especially in social situations? How much do our expectations serve our parental egos, and how much do they honor our children’s specific needs? Do we want to
look
like good parents—or do we want to actually
be
good parents?

Children who experience genuine support as they grow up naturally express themselves in pursuits congruent with their true expression. The natural byproduct of parenting this way is a child’s future happiness and personal success.

Tiger Moms and True Success

At the time of this writing, the recent book
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom
, by Amy Chua, has received a lot of attention. It’s one of those books you either love or hate. I do appreciate that it has brought a lot of attention to the question of what makes a good parent. It has opened up the conversation about parents who raise children to be high-performing, high-achieving adults. I personally think that such an approach is one of the primary reasons for widespread childhood depression.

Consider how many high-performing, depressed adults we already have in this world. They know how to do, do, do—but do they know how to just
be
?

Where did we go so wrong to accept the belief that our
doings
give us value? The truth is, we are enough just as we are. And so are our children. They were born with infinite value inherent in their being. We send our children one of the biggest false messages we ever could by teaching them to base their self-worth and value on performance.

The pursuit to do enough may look different, depending on your family culture (how high are your grades, how clean is your room, how long did you practice, how many friends do you have?), but the resulting exhaustion and discouragement for both parent and child is the same. And it creates a void in a child’s life that no amount of doing will ever fill.

. . . .

KAYLEE’S STORY

Do, Do, Do

Kaylee was overdoing it! As an adult, she felt pushed to do, do, do and go, go, go, even when she didn’t want to. And when she sat down to get to the root of the problem, she discovered a pattern that went back to her childhood.

As a child, she had always tried to tone down her big, vibrant energy so she wouldn’t overshadow her sisters. She didn’t feel she had permission to just be who she was, and so her repressed energy came out in frenzied efforts to prove herself in other ways. As an adult, she overworked herself, feeling like she had to make up for lost time.

She needed to reframe her experience to let those childhood hang-ups go (which she did!) and tell herself, “I am now being my amazing self. My energy is purposeful. I am here to make a difference, just by being me.”

. . . .

Where Our Value Really Comes From

When we believe that high performance is the standard of success—both for our children and for our parenting—we encourage our children to grow into over-achieving adults, conditioned to believe that their achievements create their value. Then, sometime in their adult lives, they have to face and undo that lie in order to find that their true worth is a unique and constant part of their being, and that they are lovable and valuable, just because they exist.

I am not against supporting a child in becoming a high achiever. I value success and achievement. In fact, my own children achieve great success and I cheer them on and support them in their many endeavors.

Here’s the key: Outward successes are not measurements of my children’s inner worth or my worth as a parent. What matters most when we parent is the way we help our children develop their abilities true to their unique nature. When we have this focus, success and high achievement just become natural by-products in your children’s lives. Our children don’t have to struggle, stress and overwhelm themselves to feel valuable. Their accomplishments just become a natural, outward manifestation of how inwardly confident these children feel about themselves and their own abilities.

Whose Success Do You Actually Have In Mind?

Consider for a moment:

• Which standards have you set for your children that actually satisfy your
  own
  needs?
  
• Do you need your child to be or look or act a certain way in order for you to feel like a good parent?
  
• What motivates you to want your child to be a certain way or accomplish certain things?
  
• Do you need your child to look good so you feel good?
  
• Or do you really believe that what you are doing has value to your child’s development and personal happiness?
  

This is a big one: If you have ever worried about your children missing certain opportunities, take a look at yourself. Are you trying to avoid dealing with failures or regrets in your own life? Your child is not responsible to protect you from uncomfortable emotions.

The best time (and the trickiest time) to ask yourself all these questions is when your buttons get pushed, when you feel your child is really stirring things up.

Whenever you experience parent-child conflict, or your child does not want to cooperate or comply with something you’ve requested, STOP and ask yourself:

Is this about me or is this really about my child?

Just put yourself in that frame of mind as you read the rest of this book and right away, you’ll find shortcuts to some healthy responses. My goal for you is to help you create a genuinely happy family—one that operates through joy and understanding and love. The key is choosing a perception that honors your child’s true nature.

. . . .

ADRIA’S STORY

You Can Create a Happy Family

Adria is a three year-old with a LOT of energy. Her naturally bright, bubbly nature is very animated and random, so much so it sometimes exhausts her mother. Adria often climbs on people and jumps and shouts. When she feels upset, she can get loud and stubborn! Her tantrums were a real challenge for her parents, but something’s changed.

Her mother has identified Adria’s dominant Type through Energy Profiling and has embraced and honored it. She’s given her daughter the kind of attention that Adria needs and they naturally experience fewer tantrums in their home.

For example, Adria came home from nursery school one day with a picture she was excited to show off. She immediately interrupted something important her mother was doing and wanted her mom to celebrate her picture with her. Another time, her mother might have acted irritated or frustrated, but she decided to honor Adria’s energetic delight. She didn’t just give Adria attention—she gave Adria
the right kind
of attention, specific to her Type. As soon as that happened, Adria calmed down and snuggled up to her mom. They spent the next few minutes together, basking in the joyful moment.

Adria’s mother said, “I imagine that if I hadn’t acknowledged her in this moment and continued to do what I wanted, I might have destroyed her confidence in doing what she enjoys and made her feel less important. I love her!”

. . . .

How to Increase Your Gross Family Happiness

Have you ever heard of the country of Bhutan? A few decades back, they started talking about
Gross National Happiness—
the idea that
being
is more important than
doing
(more important than “success”). Why don’t we take on that standard and parent according to our child’s level of happiness? What is your
Gross Family Happiness?

The first step to creating happiness in your home and becoming a better parent can be summed up in two simple statements that I encourage you to tell your child today. No matter how young or old your child is, no matter how many struggles you’ve had or misunderstandings you’ve experienced, say these two statements to your child:

“I want to help you be happy being YOU.”

“I love you, just the way you are.”

If you mean them when you say them, you’re already on the right path to becoming a Child Whisperer.