It’s important to be precise about what’s meant by affirmation. Affirmation has to come from another person. Abuse and withholding emotional support is obviously not affirmation. But neither is what we have today, which is excessive, gushing, and ridiculous over-affirmation, or what one writer called TMPR—Too Much Positive Reinforcement. Everyone gets a trophy and every child is extra special. Leftists demand affirmation for sexual preference or race. Compare that to how previous generations enthusiastically affirmed the true, the good and the beautiful. Things were “marvelous,” “lovely,” “resplendent.” You got respect not because you were black or female or Irish. If you did something notable or dressed well you got affirmed. Even minor things were called “swell.”
Affirmation has to be grounded in human reason yet connected to transcendent values. You don’t throw a party because your kid made it to first base in pee wee league. You do, however, let him cry when he loses, tell him that he’s good to have tried, and that as a child of God he has intrinsic value whether he plays or not. A lot of the patient profiles Baars explores in both Born Only Once and it’s follow-up, Healing the Unaffirmed: Recognizing Emotional Deprivation Disorder, are simply examples of adults letting children be children. That is, they don’t tell boys not to cry, and they don’t tell girls to put on more makeup. There’s also a crucial component of the spiritual—of seeing other people as touched with the spark of the divine, which is good and worthy of praise simply because they exist, and God exists in them.
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