Smart Love - Compassionate Alternative to Discipline Children

Written by Martha Heineman Pieper, Ph.D. and William Joseph Pieper, M.D

Smart love offers a new understanding of the entire sweep of child development, allowing you to view the process of growing up through your child's eyes. With an awareness of how your child's experience of the parent-child relationship changes as she grows from infancy through adolescence, you will be better able to provide your child with a lasting conviction that she is loved and understood.

By reading this book, you will have a better understanding of your baby's cries, and why your two-year-old's favorite word is "no." You will discover why four-year-olds refuse to believe there is anything they cannot do by themselves, and you will learn that the best way to motivate children to do chores and homework is also the kindest and most gradual. With the help of smart love guidelines it will be possible for both you and your child to enjoy your child's adolescence.

We would like to mention here that although in these pages we sometimes assume the presence of two heterosexual parents, smart love methods are equally useful in any family arrangement. We wrote this book to help all parents, and we do not mean for any parent to feel excluded or overlooked.

Your Child's Inner Happiness

The fundamental viewpoint that informs our approach concerns your child's outlook at birth. Contrary to conventional wisdom, your newborn is not an undifferentiated blob who is aware only of himself. Instead, our research indicates that when your baby meets you he is an optimist with regard to human relationships. Unlike adults, infants are absolutely certain that whatever happens to them is for the best, because their beloved parents have caused or intended whatever happens. Your brand-new baby believes both that he is engaging your love, and also that the care he receives is ideal. When these inborn convictions are confirmed day after day, your child grows up to possess a lasting inner happiness. As we will describe, this unshakable inner happiness, in turn, will allow him to attain his highest potential.

Primary Happiness

Primary happiness originates in the conviction that all infants bring into the world that they are causing their parents, whom they adore more than life itself, to pay loving attention to their developmental needs. Your child's primary happiness becomes unshakable when he is certain that you love caring for him. As he matures, your child will increasingly use the knowledge that you are helping him to become happy and competent as the source of his primary happiness. Once his primary happiness is firmly in place, your child's day-to-day happiness will no longer depend on whether or not you are able to respond to any one particular need at a given moment.

We have found that children can acquire primary happiness that will not alter with life's ups and downs, and that this is the child's most important developmental achievement. Even though you may have been told that "healthy" doses of frustration build character, it is your caring responses that instill stable primary happiness in your child. As you will see, unnecessary frustration and deprivation actually interfere with your child's acquisition of stable primary happiness by causing him to develop needs to make himself unhappy.

Secondary Happiness

While primary happiness is generated within your child's relationship with you, secondary happiness is the pleasure generated by everyday activities (such as building with blocks, dressing a doll, solving a math problem, playing the violin, hitting a baseball). The process of developing stable secondary happiness begins in your child's second year and is completed only at the end of adolescence. With the same smart love guidelines you use to foster your child's unshakable primary happiness, you can help your child develop permanent secondary happiness.

In his first year, your baby uses the satisfaction generated by intellectual, social, and physical pursuits to supply himself with primary happiness. Being fed sustains your infant's primary happiness because it strengthens his belief that he is causing you to love caring for him. When you give food to your hungry preschooler, his primary happiness is nourished by your responsiveness and, in addition, he gains secondary happiness in the process of helping with food preparation (stirring,, mixing, and pouring).

As with primary happiness, secondary happiness follows a developmental course. Initially secondary happiness is unreliable because it depends entirely on your child's ability to attain whatever satisfactions his heart desires. By the end of adolescence, however, your child's secondary happiness can become as stable as his primary happiness because he recognizes that making constructive choices and pursuing them well is more reliably satisfying than getting what he wants when he wants it. Stable secondary happiness is linked to the enjoyment of activities and pursuits, but because it is not outcome-dependent it is not shaken by the occasional setbacks or frustrations that are bound to occur.

The All-Powerful Self and the Competent Self

In the early years, your child's secondary happiness is bundled with her conviction that she is so powerful that she can do and have anything. This belief, made possible by your child's cognitive immaturity, is one of the main reasons that she will be vulnerable to self-caused physical injury. If left unattended, your young child might, for example, decide to turn on the stove to cook, to drive the family car, to swim in the pool, or to plug in a hair dryer without the slightest inkling that she might not be fully capable of handling these activities.

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