The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

patience
or 
understanding
, so I expected her to give 
things.
In an attempt to 
compensate for my deficiency, I 
borrowed strength
from my position and 
authority and forced her to do what I wanted her to do.
But borrowing strength builds weakness. It builds weakness in the 
borrower because it reinforces dependence on external factors to get things 
done. It builds weakness in the person forced to acquiesce, stunting the 
development of independent reasoning, growth, and internal discipline. And 
finally, it builds weakness in the relationship. Fear replaces cooperation, 
and both people involved become more arbitrary and defensive.
And what happens when the source of borrowed strength—be it superior 
size or physical strength, position, authority, credentials, status symbols, 

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appearance, or past achievements—changes or is no longer there?
Had I been more mature, I could have relied on my own intrinsic strength
—my understanding of sharing and of growth and my capacity to love and 
nurture—and allowed my daughter to make a free choice as to whether she 
wanted to share or not to share. Perhaps after attempting to reason with her, 
I could have turned the attention of the children to an interesting game, 
taking all that emotional pressure off my child. I’ve learned that once 
children gain a sense of real possession, they share very naturally, freely, 
and spontaneously.
My experience has been that there are times to teach and times not to 
teach. When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an 
attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. But 
to take the child alone, quietly, when the relationship is good and to discuss 
the teaching or the value seems to have much greater impact. It may have 
been that the emotional maturity to do that was beyond my level of patience 
and internal control at the time.
Perhaps a sense of possessing needs to come before a sense of genuine 
sharing. Many people who give mechanically or refuse to give and share in 
their marriages and families may never have experienced what it means to 
possess themselves, their own sense of identity and self-worth. Really 
helping our children grow may involve being patient enough to allow them 
the sense of possession as well as being wise enough to teach them the 
value of giving and providing the example ourselves.