The Plowboy Interview: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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Most of us are raised with "I love you ifs". I love you if you become a doctor , if you do well in school, if you clean up your room. We try to buy people's love with compliance, by doing things to get it. Well, that's not love, that's prostitution. Real love has no claims or expectations. It doesn't judge: It listens and respects the individual as he or she is. Real love is unconditional love.

I had a case where an 11-year-old boy came home from school with one bad grade on his report card. His father saw that, and said, "So you don't care. Well, if you don't care, we don't care." He ordered the rest of the family to ignore the boy that night. The mother didn't even tuck him in bed. The following morning the child was dead. He had committed suicide. The lack of unconditional love killed that 11-year-old.

And he's not alone. Suicide is the third most common cause of death among American children today.

PLOWBOY: Children are very important to you. Do you feel that people can apply the lessons you're teaching—about dealing with negativity—to parenting?

KÜBLER-ROSS: Yes, they can if they keep in mind that children who grow up with unconditional love and firm, consistent discipline—both in equal measures—have few problems dealing with life. You can love a youngster and hate some part of his or her behavior. You don't belt or spank or beat the child for it, though. Kids don't learn from harsh words or beatings. Instead, every time a child does something wrong, try to turn your response into a firm expression of love by meting out an appropriate consequence, immediately.

PLOWBOY: Could you give me some examples of "appropriate consequences"?

KÜBLER-ROSS: If your three-year-old boy—for instance—acts up too much when you go to a restaurant, don't take him the next time you eat out. Show him that he has to stay home with a babysitter until he is ready to behave in a restaurant. If your little girl misuses or carelessly ruins a toy, don't replace it. Tolerate her pain and crying, and the guilt trip she'll try to put on you, and say, "That's terribly sad. Next time you have something you love, don't let that happen to it."

Or if, when it's time for your son to go to bed, he gets angry for more than 15 seconds or tries to hit you, give him a rubber hose and tell him to go beat his mattress ... let his anger out ... and then go to bed. If he sees you're not screaming at him or spanking him for expressing his natural anger, he'll learn that there's a certain time when he has to go to bed, and that there's a safe place for him to get mad and that will be that.

Naturally, you also have to serve as a living example of all these ideas. If you go around screaming and yelling and hitting, you can't honestly expect your children not to learn that from you. In fact, a parent's greatest gift to a child is simply to work on his or her own unfinished business. If you want to raise healthy children, you first have to heal the child inside of you. If you were beaten by your parents, instead of doing that to your offspring—imposing your physical power on totally helpless children and calling it authority find an outlet for your rage and anger. Go chop wood or beat a rug and curse whatever you need to curse. Then you can come back and deal with the problem without overreacting. Remember, though, that children should always know they're loved, even though they also know that you may not, at times, love their behavior.

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