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Our Children's Needs
Author: Robert Elias Najemy
A human being is pretty much formed and programmed in his or her concepts about himself or herself and the surrounding world by the age of eight. Most of the work, which is done today by psychologists and psychiatrists, is to solve the problems and fill the gaps left by the experiences of those earlier years. Wouldn¢t it be better to pay more attention to how we bring up our children so that they can be stronger, more able, happier, more in harmony with themselves and their environment? The future of the world depends on our children. The quality of our children and their ability to create a better world depends on us, but not in the way most may think. Let us consider here how we can help our children and ourselves to find harmony, health and happiness.
SEEDS DO NOT LEARN TO GROW
Seeds grow into beautiful plants and huge almost immortal trees with no education or training whatsoever. What they are to become and how they are to become that, are already printed in their consciousness and chromosomes. The same is true for all the animals, plants and insects upon the earth. Is man the only exception? Are we so unintelligent that we cannot understand what we must become and how we must become that? Are we so far behind the plants and animals in this matter? Or have we destroyed this contact with our inner consciousness, our inner voice that could guide us on our way?
Adults in their well meaning way, with an exaggerated concern for their children, and an underestimation of the divine potential which lies within those small beings, inadvertently destroy that small inner voice, as they try to mould their children into what they believe their child should become. This is also true of the educational system as a whole. Thus the question, concerning how we can help our children, becomes, more accurately, how can we help ourselves out of our mistaken concepts and anxiety about the future and lack of confidence in ourselves, our children and mankind so as not to become obstacles to the child¢s natural development?
Our emphasis should not be so much on how we can teach but on how we can learn and grow maturer emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Then the "real parent", the divine within each child, will take over for us and for our children. We cannot help our children find the voice within them if we have not found our own. We cannot help our children to be healthy if we have not created health for ourselves. We cannot help them have self-confidence unless we ourselves have it. Their self-respect depends on our self-respect, their inner peace on ours, and their self-mastery on our self-mastery.
Learning through example is much more effective for children than learning through words. When the person who gives advice is not an example of those words, then not only do those words have no power, but they create a feeling of resentment and rejection towards the hypocrisy which is so obvious. All children are idealists. They expect there to be a consistency between thoughts, words and actions. When there is not, they feel insecure, they do not know what to believe. Consistency gives a child a feeling of security and respect.
WHAT ARE THEIR NEEDS?
This list of children¢s needs will by no means be complete. These are some of the obvious needs that come to mind at this moment. When I asked a small group of children to think about the basic needs of children, one child shocked me with the most simple answers. She said, «The first need of children is PARENTS». How simple, how obvious, and yet today how fragile is that assurance that the child will have the same two parents from its birth until adulthood. «The second need of children», she said, «is to have a good relationship with your parents». This 11 year-old child was telling me what took so many psychologists so many years to understand and verify.
In working with adults with various emotional problems, most difficulties seem to originate from the lack of affirmation of love and acceptance during their childhood. When this base of love and acceptance is missing, then we have lot of work to do in our adult life in order to regain that self-love and self-acceptance. When this base of love is there as a child, then we can proceed on to other needs and activities. When it is not there, then whatever we will do in our lives will have as a major motive, proving our ability and our self-worth.
SECURITY
Children need to feel secure. Few feel secure when there are conflicts occurring around them. Few can relax inwardly when others around them are shouting, accusing, criticizing and hating each other. To a small child, tension between parents, or between parents and the child or other children, constitute a deep chasm of insecurity.
When the conflict is between the parents, it is often worse for the child. The child has not yet learned to feel separate itself from the parents. It feels identification with both parents. Thus when they are in conflict, it feels that the conflict is taking place between two parts of its own being. It might even begin hating itself as a result.
Children cannot feel secure if the parents do not feel secure. If we are constantly worrying and have anxiety about money, health and the future, then our children will automatically be programmed to feel insecure about these aspects of life. This insecurity will remain with them and they will waste large portions of time, energy and thought throughout their life, trying in vain to find «security» by controlling these external circumstances. As adults, it is possible that this inner programming that we are not secure may never be appeased.
Thus the most effective way to offer a security base to our children is not to be found in providing them with a large inheritance but rather to establish an inner feeling of security within ourselves. If we believe in ourselves and in our ability to cope with all of life¢s situations, the child will feel the same. As we feel more secure, we will have less moments of conflict with others and our home will be in general more peaceful and more supportive for the child.
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
We all know that a child needs love and want to be able to love our children unconditionally; but it is not so easy. We are human beings with needs, feelings, expectations, attachments, fears and conditionings which prevent us from being able to accept tour children independently of their behavior. Having children is an excellent opportunity in life to develop unconditional love. We are more inclined to forgive, overlook and to continue loving when we feel that this is our child.
What do we mean by unconditional love? We mean that our feelings of love and acceptance for our children do not change or fluctuate depending on what they do or say, or what they decide to do with their lives. It is not necessary to love and accept tour children¢s behavior. We must make a distinction between our children¢s being, soul or consciousness and their behavior. We can reject a certain behavior, and explain so to them, without rejecting their being or self. "I love you but I am disturbed by this particular behavior."
Our children need to know that we accept and love them regardless of what they may do, but also that certain forms of behavior are not acceptable to us. We should, however, investigate for ourselves why this behavior is not acceptable. Is it because it will be potentially harmful to the child, to someone else, or to ourselves? Or is it simply because we are programmed that it should not be done? Or does the behavior conflict with our expectations based on our personal needs and dreams for the child? Or are we afraid of what the others will think about our child and subsequently about us?
We must be very clear about why we are rejecting a certain behavior. Our rejection can come out of a place of real love and concern for the child, if, in fact, we are not simply protecting our own interests. As long as a certain behavior does no real harm to anyone, it is best to allow the child to pursue it. Something within them, some need is guiding them to explore that kind of activity. They have something to learn through doing that.
This does not mean that there are not moments where control or even natural or logical consequences may be necessary. But we need to be sure that the reasons are valid and have to do with real issues of safety or morality and not because we are disappointed with the their grades or selection of hobbies, interests or friends.
In order to love our children unconditionally, we will need to start loving ourselves unconditionally. We will have to let go of all the prerequisites we have put on our own self-love. We will need to love ourselves even though we are not perfect, even though we make mistakes, even when others do not love and accept us. The more we free our self-love from the various prerequisites, the more our love for our children and others will become unconditional.
AFFIRMATION
Everyone likes a pat on the back, recognition, strokes, praise or affirmation of his or her ability, goodness and worthiness. Our children have not yet formed images of themselves and need these positive inputs even more than adults. Children are not sure if they are able or not. They are small in such a large world. They are learning and thus making many mistakes as they try to learn how to do things correctly. In our attempt to help our children we often tend to point out their mistakes more frequently than their successes. The mistakes are what are more obvious and thus we feel the need to point them out. The successes are taken for granted. We over-emphasize what our children do wrong. This undermines their sense of ability, and they start to doubt whether they can really succeed. Thus they become preoccupied, worrying about whether they will be able to do it, and whether they will be criticized. Thus little energy is left for focusing on what they are actually doing so that they can do it correctly and succeed. Then, if our children¢s performance suffers, we become even more critical. This creates a vicious circle in which our children¢s sense of ability, success and worthiness is completely undermined.
Later in life we seek incessantly to prove that we are okay, a success, by attempting to gain money, fame and respect from others. But it is a losing battle because inside us we are programmed to believe that we are not okay, not able. Although we may become very successful, we will likely be unable to satiate our need to prove our ability over and over.
On the other hand, we may simply perpetuate the belief that we are failures and create continual failure in life, by undermining our success in relationships and at work and perhaps our sense of self-worth through alcohol, drugs, tranquilizers or other means.
To be continued.
If you are interested in improving your communication with your children, you can receive a free email course with 16 messages concerning how we can do so. Send in an email to the following address to get one message each week on More Effective Communication with Children for 16 weeks. communicatingchildren@GetResponse.com
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Robert Elias Najemy is the author of over 600 articles, 400 lecture cassettes on Human Harmony and 20 books; sold over 100,000 copies. His book The Psychology of Happiness is available at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0971011605/holisticharmo-20 and http://www.HolisticHarmony.com/psychofhappiness.html. You can download FREE articles and e-books and get guidance at http://www.HolisticHarmony.com
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