Our children are the seedlings of our life. The question is - how do we encourage them to grow? What do we expose them to without our awareness? Is our influence confined to what we say to them or is it what we say
around them, how we act
around them, and the vibration of our own energy?
How many times have we, as parents, had discussions filled with conflict, fear, judgment, or criticism around infants and toddlers as if those tender young seedlings weren't even in the room? Even if those small children cannot understand the meaning our words, they absorb the meaning of our feelings. How many times have we told our children to do something that we ourselves do not do? Remember the old cliche, "Do as I say, not as I do?"
Children understand double standards. They often ignore our words. They watch our actions and absorb our energy.
When small children are in the room while we verbally judge and criticize someone, our children learn judgment and criticism. If we indulge in negativity, we teach our children about negativity. If we are perfectionists and harshly criticize ourselves, our children absorb perfectionism.
When talk about our children in their presence, they absorb the labels, key phrases, and tags that we give them. "He's such a good boy." "He's a picky eater." "He's doesn't try." Without knowing it, we seed the soul of our children's minds and hearts with weeds.
How then can we better parents?
Awareness. When we become aware of the weeds in our own minds and hearts and develop processes to outgrow them, our children absorb those processes too. They watch us growing. They feel us growing.
Photos from Flickr.com courtesy of Tico.
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