Parents: Accentuate the Positive

Have you ever found a paper or speech you had written many years ago and read it to discover you did not agree with very much of it today? As a teacher, educator and preacher I have a long paper trail. Unlike Harriet Miers I have written, spoken and discussed almost every imaginable topic. Oh well, there goes my chance to be on the Supreme Court.

I just finished reading a paper by Dr. Martin Seligman on the old gloom and doom approach to counseling and compared it to a much more effective style that looks for a person's strengths as well as his weaknesses. Man, have I changed my tune. Back in the Seventies I changed my doctoral emphasis after hearing two psychologists say things that really shook me up. They were insisting on a couple of things that caused me to completely derail the old ways of counseling and adopt a new and better way.

The first psychologist was O. H. Mowrer who said, "The early Christian church was the most powerful healing growth community that the world has ever known. I have researched many small groups and healing movements but none compare to the church." He added, "It is too bad that the church is selling its soul for a mess of psychological pottage."

As a Christian I was stunned and thought about my future. Then Dr. Carl Rogers spoke up "From now on the key to effective counseling will not be professional psychologists but trained lay persons. They are as effective as professionals and much less expensive."

I put two and two together and returned home from that conference with a decision to dedicate my life to making churches once again the most powerful healing growth communities in the world. Since then I have used the statements by these men as launching pads to equip Spirit filled men and women to take the love, truth and power of God to all people.

For far too long parents have listened to counselors with a gloom and doom philosophy. Mom and Dad, become detectives of the good and great in your kids. Stop obsessing over the negatives of a dirty room, long telephone calls and sloppy clothes and reinforce their strong qualities.