: Dude, you have never raised children, have you? If you give a child
: EVERYTHING it wants, and totally respect them on everything they do no
: matter what, they turn into spoiled little brats who can't stand not to
: have their every little whim. they also don't learn to appreciate anything
: whatsoever. However, if you give a child limits, and you confine them to
: those limits until they are old enough to understand why those limits
: exist (to protect us, and not just to limit us for the heck of it. Think
: of traffic lights and stop signs,) gradually giving them more and more
: freedom to exercise their agency to act on their own, then they generally
: turn into decent human beings. Not always, but usually. The reason the
: world is going down the pot these days so visibly is because no one wants
: any limits. Everyone wants what they want when they want it, not realizing
: why a little self-control is good for us.
: Anyway, I could go on for hours on the subject of Theodicy, but I wont.
I haven't raised children and one day I will. Giving unconditional love is very easily confused with being a wuss that accepts everything, that's not the case.
Basically you encourage good behaivor with rewards and ignores bad behaivor.
If your child wants to act like a brat and cry whenever he doesn't get his way, let him. You have standards, and one of them may be that crying is not a tool for getting things. Even though you have this standard, you still respect your childs choice of a strategy to gain what he wants, so you let him cry, but you don't give him what he wants (and you don't comfort him), that would be to encourage bad behaivor. Instead you let your child discover by itself what works and what doesn't. You let him choose his life and become an independant person that chooses his own view of life. You'll teach your child, but you won't force it on him. Naturally, he'll respect you for setting boundaries (where you ignore him) and for the rewards and attention you give to him when he behaves right.
-goran
