The Road Less Traveled
    A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth
M. Scott Peck, M.D.

The Sins of the Father

- Some children punished frequently, severely, for minor infractions
    - This discipline is meaningless, since it is undisciplined discipline
    - Parents serving as undisciplined role models
- Children behave as they parents do
    - If parents day in and day out behave with self-discipline, restraint, dignity,
            then child will come to believe that this is the way to live
    - Role modeling
- More important than role modeling is love
    - Ultimately, love is everything
    - When we love something, it is of value to us, we spend time with it
    - When we love children, we spend time admiring them and caring for them.
        - We give them our time
- Parents who devote time to children, even when children are not misbehaving
    - They will perceive in children, subtle needs for discipline
    - Parents will take time to make these minor adjustments
        - Listening to children, responding to them
            - Tightening/loosening
            - Little lectures, little stories, little hugs & kisses
            - Little admonishments, little pats on the back
- Quality of discipline afforded by loving parents is superior to discipline of
        unloving parents
    - Loving parents will frequently agonize over the decisions to be made
        - Will suffer along with their children
        - Children think: if parents are willing to suffer with me, then it must not be so bad
                and I should be willing to suffer myself
- Children who are truly loved know themselves to be valued
    - This knowledge is worth more than gold
- Feeling of being valuable--"I am a valuable person"
    - Essential to mental health
    - Cornerstone of self-discipline
    - Direct product of parental love
    - Must be gained in childhood--difficult to attain as an adult
- When one considers oneself valuable, one will take care of oneself in all ways that are
        necessary
- Someone who feels themselves to be of little value, not worth caring for:
    - Will feel that it is not worth disciplining themselves
- When you perceive your time as valuable, you want to organize it and protect it
- With internal sense of consistent safety of world:
    - Child is free to delay gratification, secure in knowledge that opportunity for
            gratification is there if needed
- Children need the reassurance that they will not be abandoned
- Children who are excessively fearful of the future:
    - Perceive world as dangerous and frightening
    - Will not forsake any gratification or security
- For children to develop the capacity to delay gratification, then must have:
    1) Self-disciplined role models
    2) Sense of self-worth
    3) Degree of trust in the safety of their existence
- These 3 things are most important things that parents can give their children

To develop ability to delay gratification, children's parents must provide them with three things: self disciplined role models, a sense of self-worth, and a degree of trust in the safety of their existence. These are the most important things that a parent can give their children