Thursday, December 16, 2010

A Great Gift Parents Can Give to their Children

Stephanie Neikirk-Epes, assistant director at the Rose Garden Early Childhood Center gave a lecture on "Schooling the Will" on Thursday, November 4th. She wrote this blog highlighting a point from the lecture; one that inspired discussion and touched the souls of those present. Stephanie's words are as follows.

At this time of year, things get busy. In all the hurry and excitement of preparations and parties, we can feel resentment, tiredness, resistance and even anger. There are normal human emotions. But they can be especially disturbing when we feel them toward our own children. Of course, paradoxically - or perhaps not so - children can get anxious and become more clingy or more demanding if they sense our discomfort with our own feelings.

Children directly perceive our feeling life even if we don't talk about it with them. They directly perceive our feeling life even if we don't acknowledge how we feel, even if we don't accept how we feel. And because they learn by imitation, they imitate what they experience with and within us. Walt Whitman artistically describes this process.

There Was a Child Went Forth

There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look'd uon, that object he became;
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of
the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The mother at home, quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table;
The mother with mild words - clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by;
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust;
The blow, the quick loud word, the right bargain, the crafty lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture - the yearning and swelling heart.
Affection that will not be gainsay'd - the sense of what is real - the thought if, after all, it should prove unreal.
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time - the curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and specks?

We may or may not be like these archetypal parents, but the process of internalization for the child is the same...children internalize the world around them. They internalize without question or judgment both our feeling life AND our reaction to our feeling life. When we acknowledge the truth of our feelings/needs we teach our children to be honest, to accept who and what it means to be human. Clarifying all of this requires reflection, inner work - parenting is a meditative exercise.

So, if we find ourselves angry at our chilren, resentful, or tired, this is a sign that we need to create an adult only time and place as a down to earth way to meet a genuine human need.

We need to be comfortable with the truth that we each need a space for ourselves. If we can feel ok with this, our children will grow up with the idea that it's right for an adult to have boundaries, to want and need personal time and space. They will grow up knowing how to create this health-giving space for themselves.

This is a gift we can right now give our children for their future health.