The Big Answer

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Introduction

You'll encounter Winning Family Lifeskills being mentioned throughout this website, and you will see them in action in the movie (if it is made) and in practice in MC-related television shows, when they are made. Winning Family Lifeskills, along with P.E.T., are recommended for MCs to operate effectively. This section will tell you what exactly Winning Family Lifeskills are, and where they came from.

The Originator of Winning Family Lifeskills

Dr. Louise Hart is a community psychologist and educator who has raised two sons and a daughter. She travels extensively and conducts seminars on self-esteem, personal empowerment, and family development for conferences and agencies, educators and parents nationwide. She teaches people the lifeskills essential for creative and fulfilling lives.

She has written The Winning Family, the most balanced and complete book on parenting, and On the Wings of Self-Esteem, a guide to personal transformation by someone who has gone through it. And she has created these audiocassette tapes: Building Self-Esteem in Children, which offers many specific strategies for increasing self-esteem in children, The Winning Family, The Key to Winning—Increasing Your Own Self-Esteem, which focuses on cultural barriers to self-esteem, including perfectionism and comparison, Increasing Self-Esteem in Students, which focuses on how educators can build self-esteem in the classroom, The Bullying Antidote: Superpower Your Kids for Life!, Liking Myself, and The Mouse, the Monster and Me, which helps develop social skills that can bullyproof youngsters. She wrote The Effects of the Media on Young Children, which make great points. The points are a lot like the points these two books make: Your Children Are Under Attack and Media Sexploitation. Hart didn't write these two books.

The facts are known and it’s not that hard to teach, and yet students sit, bored, in factory-model classrooms where they listen to lectures and memorize facts even though what they need to be learning is how to think, cooperate, problem-solve and live

What kids need to be learning is how to think, cooperate, problem-solve and live, and they need educators who can build self-esteem in the classroom

She’s a leading educator in the area of self-esteem development, and has helped thousands of parents and educators. The true story of her own personal transformation has been an inspiration to many. Her Golden Rule of Parenting is "do unto your children as you wish your parents had done unto you." She learned this and much else in her own life.

The Winning Family should be required reading in the education of every person on the planet.

Winning Family Parenting

As most of us know, parents tend to make the same mistakes their own parents made with them, and most people who avoid this do the opposite of what their parents did to them. In other words, most people raised permissive do permissive parenting and most people raised by authoritarian parents do authoritarian parenting, but when people rebel against parental ways they usually rebel against authoritarian ways by permissiveness and rebel against permissive ways by authoritarianism. So in all cases above, misparenting leads to more of the same. And even when people strive for a more balanced approach by combining both methods, this too is a hopeless strategy, at least as dysfunctional as the others, and likely to add confusion to the long list of other symptoms the above misparenting will elicit.

The authoritarian-permissive continuum should be avoided; mixed parenting is even worse; authoritative parenting transcends this continuum and works great!

But there’s an alternative that is not only balanced and comprehensive, it’s actually inspiring. It’s the authoritative parenting method as described by Dr. Louise Hart. It centers on respect. Everyone’s needs are considered important—it’s very win-win. Parents share power with each other and with their children. They offer choices, and they treat children as capable, worthwhile human beings who are able to think for themselves and make good decisions. They teach responsibility and allow freedom. They participate in family meetings where everyone is involved in making plans, rules and decisions. Husbands and wives share power. Neither is dominant.

They let children learn from the natural consequences of their actions if possible, or the logical consequences of their actions if natural consequences are unlikely to arise. They provide structure but allow freedom. They teach responsibility by giving it, and encourage children to learn from their mistakes. They love their children and counsel them in empowering ways. They have high esteem and engender same in their offspring. They are sensitive to needs. They use many of the same communication and parenting tools as P.E.T., such as active listening, encouragement rather than praise, I-statements, conflict resolution, avoidance of communication barriers, problem owning, and natural consequences.

Praise is a bad way of instilling self-esteem—it produces not self-esteem but dependency; verbally encouraging is bad for kids if it is done with You statements but good for kids if it is done with I statements ("I'm wondering how you felt when you drew that" or "I appreciate it when you help with dishes")

Children brought up this way have self-responsibility and high self-esteem, are cooperative and good thinkers and problem solvers.

Winning Family Lifeskills

Winning Family Lifeskills are not just related to parenting. They're important in all other relationships as well including spousal ones and friendships. What’s more, Winning Family Lifeskills are designed to help each individual transform his or her life from symptomizing past mistakes to manifesting self-esteem and happiness.

“Fostering self-esteem in a child from the outset is easier and healthier than trying to repair damaged self-esteem later in life. Yet we cannot turn back the clock. We must start where we are now. If your children are older, it’s not too late. The same things that build self-esteem in the first place also repair damaged self-esteem later on—for your children and yourself.”

“If your emotional development was stunted as a kid, there’s hope! Healing is possible. And as you fill in your own developmental holes, you can become whole—and will be better equipped to nurture the development of your children.”

Unlike so many trips, therapies, fads, etc., that people have experimented with last century and this century, this lifeskill set is the genuine article—it actually delivers what it promises. Dr. Hart herself has lived the normal, dysfunctional way, but manifested great strength of character as she studied and thought and developed profound insights about what had and hadn’t worked about her life. She studied these subjects intensely, got a degree, and began to help others to see the light.

Winning Family Lifeskills are about changing your environment and relationships so that they all support and empower you and those around you—especially your family. They represent the highest level of the most profound human relationship knowledge available in the world today, as well as the most effective method for developing a winning life and a winning family.

Personal Transformation with Self-Esteem Guidance from Dr. Louise Hart

Dr. Louise Hart has written an astonishing book. It’s called On the Wings of Self-Esteem. This is simply the best self-transformation book ever written. It is also the most effective one. It respects the intrinsic worth, beauty and goodness in human beings, understands what happens in society in general and families in particular that block, cover, or distort our initial nature, and it guides us through the process that is required to recover all this beautiful humanness. Written in harmony with the incomparable wisdom found in her The Winning Family book, her guidebook and companion to personal fulfillment, freedom, restoration and autonomy should be required reading in the education of every person on the planet.