Getting Along With Others

Your child gets his first lessons in how to relate to other people from your example. He learns how to get along with others from the ways you and he relate to each other. He also learns from seeing how you get along with other people.

There are several ways in which he learns how to treat others and be treated by others in return:
• How you treat him;
• How he sees you treat others;
• How you allow him to treat you and others;
• How others allow him to treat them.

You’ll see some of the effects of your “teaching by example” now. Other patterns, although laid down now, may not appear in his relationships until he’s older. He will learn ways to act with you now to try to please you and avoid your anger or disappointment. He will pick up from you different ways to act with others who are more or less powerful than he is, which he will use when he’s in conflict situations. And he will learn, from observing you, ways of treating his own mate and children which he will carry into these adult relationships.