ABSTRACT
To suggest a higher self-regard exists for those children who are the generous recipients of lavish attention is to invite emotional dependency and disturbance. The equation that "my parents ' , teachers ' , and others' acts of kindness toward me = me" i s not only misleading and fraudulent, but also unkind, if not cruel. To suggest to parents that they offer open favorable regard for their child is fine by itself, but to provide such external indicators for the alleged purpose of garnering personal worth is to strengthen the child's preexisting idea that "I'm nobody unless somebody favorably
acknowledges/relates to me. " Children, like all humans, are neither good nor bad. They each produce behaviors and have traits that either contribute to or detract from long-range happiness and sur vival. They are better off with the favorable contributions and worse off with the negative features, but are not better or worse people. Kindness is transformed to cruelty when parents and children are indoctrinated with the false assumption that favorable treatment strengthens worth, regard, or esteem. The two-sided coin of kind ness as cruelty exists for the following reasons:
1 . Places the child at the mercy of others ' treatment of and behavior toward him . If a child believes that his value to self is dependent upon others ' favorable regard, he remains emo tionally beholden to those others who are then free to push his buttons at will. Blind conformity and sickly gratitude rather than independent thought and preferential respect for others are set as goals in an effort to gather ongoing favorable regard from one's social group.
