Last night, my almost-a-daughter took me to see Sting for my birthday. I'm so glad I helped raise a child with good musical taste. Unbeknownst to me, her mother — my ex — was at the concert, too. Our relationship didn't end badly, so we've stayed friends, and it was good to see her in her element: grandmother, mother and "therapist," all at the same time. We had a good talk.
Dr. Barton Goldsmith
Mind you, this is someone who could still be upset with me — I ended our relationship 20 years ago. Many people would hold a grudge. Not "Bunky."
She's just too good a person to hold onto hate. Now, her daughter is raising two incredibly handsome boys with the same attitude — teaching them to be good to each other, which will serve them well and help them pick partners with the same values.
Teaching life lessons to young children isn't as hard as it sounds, and the rewards come back quickly. It's not just about teaching kids to behave, which is what most parents think they're doing. You also have to explain why Chuck shouldn't take Tom's toys. That extra effort sets the tone for the whole family — and it lasts for generations if you nurture it. The days go slow. The years go fast.
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I think about this a lot in my practice, actually. The families who come in years later with real trouble — adult children who won't speak to them, siblings who can't be in a room together — usually skipped that step somewhere. Not the discipline part. The explaining part. Kids can tell the difference between "because I said so" and a parent who's willing to slow down and show them the why. One builds compliance. The other builds character.
Learning to be a good person should start young, but it's never too late to absorb it and put it into action. Most of it comes down to choosing to make the people around you more comfortable. Simple in theory. Harder in practice, because our own wants and needs get in the way.
Being a good person isn't the same as being a doormat. It means making strong choices to help the people you care about, and letting them feel your empathy without you needing anything back. All you can do is set the example and hope it gets passed forward.
This family made a conscious decision to be good people, and now it's just who they are. Some of us didn't come from that kind of nurturing background, so we learn as we go. Having family around is nice. Having good people in your life — people who actively try to improve things for you as well as themselves — is something else entirely, whether they're related to you or not.
Watching this particular family across three generations now, I keep noticing the same thing: none of it looked like effort from the outside. It looked like habit. That's the part worth stealing — not the big gestures, but the small, repeated choices that eventually stop feeling like choices at all.
Dr. Barton Goldsmith, an award-winning Los Angeles-based psychotherapist, writer and keynote speaker, can be reached via e-mail at Barton@BartonGoldsmith.com.
