Joe PolishFounder of Genius Network and President of Piranha Marketing

The Greatest Gift Parents Can Give Their Kids

16 Jan 2024 · 1 min

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A short YouTube talk by Joe Polish (uploaded Jan 16, 2024) in which the speaker recounts being born in Budapest, Hungary in 1944 to Jewish parents shortly before the Nazi occupation. He describes his mother’s prolonged fear and depression during his first year, explains how young children internalize parental emotions (feeling unwanted), and cites Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching that “the greatest gift parents can give their children is their own happiness.” The piece links personal history to the broader claim that parental emotional well-being powerfully shapes a child’s sense of belonging.

Chapters

So I got a certain message from the world. I was born in Budapest, Hungary, 1944. Jewish parents, two months before the Nazis occupied Hungary. So I spent the first year of my life with my mother under Nazi rule. And she was in terror the whole year. As you can imagine. Parents killed in Auschwitz and so on. My father was away in forced labor. The message I got from the world is that the world didn't want me. Not because Hitler didn't want me, because I didn't know Hitler. But my mother was unhappy. And children are narcissists in the developmental sense. They take everything personally. So when the bad things are happening, it must be about me. And if she's not happy around me. Thich Nhat Hanh, the spiritual teacher, says that the greatest gift parents can give their children is their own happiness. Because the children take that personally. It's about us. We must be great creatures. So when my mother is unhappy and depressed and in terror, I get the message the world doesn't want me.