Let's Listen

I see countless parents dismaying their child’s reality every day. A child will fall over and hurt themselves and begin crying. ‘Oh your okay, up you get.’ The parent/s say. I have walked over in this time and looked at the crying child and say, ‘Oh it really hurt you when you fell over. Did you hurt your knee or your hand?’ the child almost stops crying in a space of almost a stunned look at me – you understand me – I energetically feel from them. The child will then nod and feel validated in their feeling reality, feeling relieved that someone understands they  feel more than what they are given credit for.

We as adults, at no fault of our own, have been ‘trained’ by parenting passed down from generation to generation to be brought up this way – majority of us were brought up this way. Distract the child from feeling the feelings, the crying, the sadness, and even having too much fun on the other end of the scale.

Imagine this – a woman falls over in the street flat on her face, her knee bleeding, her bags of shopping go flying and it tops off her really bad day and is a crying mess – do you ignore her saying she’ll be right, get up you’ll be okay, hey look at that bird flying by. No way! You would walk/run over and help her up, asking her if she is okay and start picking up her things. Our children’s feelings are no different to that of an adult – they are very real. How we treat our children and their feelings are creating their adult self. Us as parents have a very big impact on their lives and their beliefs about the world with how we treat them from birth and conception.

Brain development begins in utero and the brain is about 25% of adult size at birth. In the three years that follow, the brain grows to 90 percent and develops the connections between nerve cells. (Royal Australian College of Physicians 2006) By the time we are 5 years old, we have created 95% of our beliefs about ourselves and the world. Through teenage hood we add a little bit more and another bit more as a young adult, but not much. By this stage the 5-year old child self is creating/running the world reinforcing beliefs about our world as our adult self. This cycles through our life, unless we are consciously working to rewire our brain/beliefs.

When we run to a child when they fall over and hurt themselves and acknowledge that they just fell and it really hurt them, it builds connection, trust, respect and love. As we acknowledge their feeling reality, they stay aware of themselves and other people’s feelings. They stay heart centred and connected to their feelings that come from their body/heart as they are acknowledged and feelings felt – keeping feelings moving (e-motion - energy in motion) allows hurt to move through their physical body rather than staying stuck in their body. When we brush off how they are feeling, their cognitive brain and/or ego steps in as they are being taught that what they are feeling is not important and not real. As their feelings are not being acknowledged, validated or felt, they aren’t being released thus creating stagnation in the energetic and physical body. As these feelings remain in the body energetically and stagnation occurs, they become really uncomfortable as unacknowledged energy. Without a compassionate person to listen to these uncomfortable feelings, the child creates ways to deal with these feelings to feel comfortable to function in this world. These ways are control patterns (Aware Parenting terminology), also known as addictions.

If a child’s feeling reality is not acknowledged, this lowers self-worth, self-awareness and self-respect for themselves. It also creates a dis-association to their feelings, creating a partnership with a dis-connected head-thinking reality (ie the ego negatively rationalising things that are really not okay in truth ie tolerating abusive behaviour from others as the feeling reality is overrun) rather than a connected feeling reality of truth, respect and compassion for themselves and others.

Being attentive to our children’s feelings, acknowledging and listening to their feelings allows the energy to move through their body. Tears released, releases stress hormones thus allowing better brain and physiology function. Stagnation does not occur when feelings are released through  crying, raging, laughing with an empathetic ear.

Being present with our own feelings, acknowledging, honouring, respecting and releasing them, not only role models healthy relationship with self for our children, but allows us to be present with their feelings, acknowledging, honouring, respecting and releasing them. We are born knowing that crying, raging, and laughing has a definite function for our body, children are our teachers. Let’s listen.

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